Sell-out crowds for the Women's Ashes NatWest IT20s at the County Ground, Chelmsford, and the BrightonandHoveJobs.com County Ground, Hove, have helped to set a new record attendance figure for an international women's cricket series in England.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has today revealed that nearly 22,000 fans have attended a Women's Ashes match between England and Australia this summer. The total includes peaks of 3,450 and 5,750 in Chelmsford and Hove this week, over 5,000 across the four-day Kia Women's Test in Canterbury, and nearly 8,000 during the three Royal London One Day Internationals at the start of the series.
The previous best was set during the 2013 Women's Ashes, when 18,000 spectators attended the multi-format series.
ECB Director of England Women's Cricket, Clare Connor, said:
It's absolutely brilliant news that every summer more and more people are buying tickets to watch the England women's team play. This represents a clear measure of how the women's game is continuously growing, and I hope that the thousands of women and girls who have come along and watched a Women's Ashes match this summer have been inspired to play cricket themselves.
The quality of some of the cricket that has been on show during the series has been world class. Increasingly international women's cricket is becoming a real spectacle, and my thanks to all the host venues for their hard work in delivering the matches to such a professional level.
Women's sport across the board is winning over more hearts and minds than ever before, and it is exciting that cricket is at the forefront of this movement. In 2016 we have the launch of the new ECB Women's Cricket Super League, followed by England hosting the ICC Women's World Cup in 2017 - so the large crowds experienced during this Women's Ashes series bode well for the success of those two events. We have a huge amount to look forward to and we will all strive to take the women's game to new heights, both on and off the field.