West Indies women

          

It was the culmination of the spectacular rise of West Indies over the past four years, fuelled by the brilliance of players like Deandra Dottin and Stafanie Taylor. Since 2009, they have won ODI and T20 series' against both England and India, and made the semi-finals of the last two World Twenty20 tournaments, achieving two huge upsets in the process: beating England by two runs in 2010, and New Zealand by seven wickets in 2012. This is even more impressive when you realise that, before this recent World Cup, upsets in women's cricket were rarer than Geoff Boycott hitting a six in a Test match.Teams from Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica participated in the inaugural Women's World Cup in 1973. India did not. Neither of the Caribbean teams got anywhere near the final but, given that this was the first official international cricket they had ever played, they performed impressively: both teams beat a Young England side featuring Sue Goatman and Megan Lear, future stars of the England squad, and Jamaica came within touching distance of beating an International XI made up of players from all the competing countries. Heyhoe-Flint wrote in 1978 that the Jamaica team she had faced in 1970 was "surprisingly good. They possessed many of the qualities of the West Indian men, particularly in the field.But what few people realise is that all this should really have come thirty years earlier.The Caribbean Women's Cricket Federation (CWCF) was founded in late 1973, with the aim of developing a West Indies team to compete on the international stage. They were successful. In 1976, Australia, the second-best women's team in the world, toured the West Indies and played two Test matches. Both were drawn. Later that year India hosted West Indies in another six-Test series. The two teams were reasonably evenly matched, winning one Test each. The West Indies' involvement in women's international cricket predates that of India. By 1970, women's associations existed in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent, Guyana and St Lucia. In 1970, an England XI toured Jamaica and a year later Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago competed in a triangular tournament, hosted by T&T, against an England side captained by Rachael Heyhoe-Flint.