If you're getting back to women's cricket after a deluge of the men's sport, here's a quick guide to follow the upcoming World Cup better. It's the same sport, but played with different tactics and gameplays. The match-ups may not make sense, the stroke-making may seem different, and the ball may not disappear into the crowd nearly as often as you're used to watching.
This can be an entry barrier for some fans - while women's cricket has grown steadily in terms of viewers, the women's World Cup final last year attracted less than a third of the one billion sets of eyeballs that were recorded during this year's Men's T20 World Cup final.
Understanding the nuance of what you're watching is critical to enjoying it, so if you're trying to get on board with the women's game for the 2026 T20 World Cup that gets underway in England on June 12, here are answers to some of the questions that might come up along the way.
1) Nine runs needed off the last over, two right-handers in the middle, and the ball has been handed over to Deepti Sharma, an offspinner, to defend the target. The match-up is not making sense. Is it a poor tactical call, or have India run out of frontline bowling options?
Given how the Indian team is likely to stack up, in all probability the captain would have run out of frontline bowling options. And yet, there are two good reasons why Deepti would not be the worst candidate for the job, and they go beyond the fact that she is one of the more effective death-over operators.
Firstly, the match-up conventions of men's cricket (offspinner to left-handers, and legspinner to right-handers) does not hold true in women's cricket, especially for right-handers.
Women batters vs bowling types in T20s since 2025
In reality, these generic matchups are only broad segregations that don't account for the natural strength of each batter, and as a result, don't hold true for every player - men or women. The height, trajectory, speed, degree of turn and angles - all of that matters. For example, Australian offspinner Ashleigh Gardner may still be brought on to bowl against India's left-handed batter Smriti Mandhana.
At the same time, the opposite also holds true. Nicola Carey, Australia's left-handed batter, has scored at a pace of 149.58 against offspinners, while being contained to 91.83 against left-arm spinners in all T20s since 2025. Other Australian batters like Gardner and Phoebe Litchfield have also been more destructive against deliveries turning away from them than those coming into their swinging arc. Similarly, don't be surprised when captains bring on their offspinners against Harmanpreet Kaur, when they would have the option of employing a leggie or orthodox left-arm spin against the Indian captain.
In women's cricket, the average of a larger sub-set shows no significant preference. Moreover, Deepti herself is equally adept bowling against both left-handers and right-handed batters.
Secondly, it is very common for spinners to operate in the death overs. Since the inaugural season of the WPL, 57.2 percent of the death overs have been bowled by spinners. It's been just as common in women's internationals as well.
Last three editions of the Women's T20 World Cups (overall % of overs by spin | % of overs by spinners at death)
2020: 58.6% | 60.9%
2023: 53.4% | 50.8%
2024: 62.5% | 60.1%