Why WPL was really a special experience

Never mind picking a single memory from the inaugural season of the Women's Premier League, even listing 10 would not do justice. Let recency bias rule: Issy Wong's post-hattrick surfing on DY's deafening wave of sound. Shikha Pandey's face-of-fury fist-pump after launching into a six over cover, her team on 95/9.

- Sharda Ugra

Nat-Sciver Brunt's re-imagining the 360, carving the space between her leg stump and the keeper's reach, paddling, reversing on her way to victory. Saika Ishaque, left out from East Zone, tossing the ball up, snaffling Alyssa Healy and Tahlia McGrath in one over. Harmanpreet's diving single-hander slip catch against UP Warriorz, off Hayley Matthews. Matthews being Matthews in every game...

This is what competitive cricket action does. Separate itself from whatever is roiling and boiling around the event and have hearts 'n' minds dive into the instant. Smelt men's cricket and women's cricket together into that larger much-loved entity called Cricket. But of course, there is a difference between the men's game and the women's, the matter of power and speed instinctively identifiable. Except once the brain and the eye switch frequencies, the comparison fades and we settle into women's cricket and savour. At WPL, we discover again that the women's cricket frequency operates via lower heating and decibel levels. What comes through is in no way less authentic.

Women's cricket appeals to the aesthetic form with the bat and trajectory, loop, dip and swerve with the ball. (What it does not require are WPL boundaries between 42-45m so chivalrously offered this season.) The WPL also showed that the women's game is also responding to the athletic requirements of the day-fielding, diving, catching. The 80m six is no longer an anomaly and Wong & Sisters strive to race across the 130kph barrier. There haven't been enough accurate speed guns around the women's game, but as of today, the fastest ball bowled by a woman was Shabnam Ismail's 128kph rocket in the Women's ICC T20 World Cup semi-final versus England.