When Empire Returns for a Friendly: England vs India Women and the Absurd Global Theatre of Cricket

England Women vs India Women: A Cricket Match That Somehow Matters to the Entire Planet

By the time the first ball is bowled at Lord’s on Friday, roughly 1.6 billion people will be pretending—some more convincingly than others—that the outcome of a women’s limited-overs match between two ex-colonies is the single most consequential event since the invention of indoor plumbing. Stockbrokers in Singapore will set aside their spreadsheets, UN interns in Geneva will refresh Cricbuzz instead of human-rights reports, and a goat-herder in northern Kenya will huddle round a crackling transistor radio wondering why anyone still schedules bilateral series in a world that is, by most credible accounts, on fire.

Welcome to the 21st-century paradox: we are simultaneously more connected and more existentially doomed than ever before, yet we still agree—via the invisible handshake of global capitalism—to care deeply about 22 women in white flinging leather at one another for six hours on a patch of grass that used to be an asparagus bed.

The geopolitical back-story is almost too tidy. Britain invented the game, exported it at gunpoint, then spent two centuries losing sleep whenever the colonies learned to play it better. India now supplies the broadcast revenue, the streaming eyeballs, and the Bollywood after-party invites, while England retains the quaint tradition of calling the sport “ours” despite a win percentage that resembles post-Brexit export figures. Somewhere in the Hague, an intern is updating the “soft-power index” spreadsheet to reflect this.

On the field, the cricket itself is refreshingly free of empire. Heather Knight’s side wants to prove that a small island with chronic rainfall can still produce athletes who don’t dissolve in direct sunlight. Harmanpreet Kaur’s tourists arrive carrying the expectations of a nation that has already anointed them either world-beaters or national disappointments, depending on which WhatsApp forward you opened this morning. Both captains will insist—through clenched smiles—that this is “just another game,” which is exactly what people say before a divorce hearing.

The international ripple effects are predictably absurd. Sri Lankan sports-apparel factories have pivoted entire assembly lines to produce retro-style India jerseys because “nostalgia sells better than wins.” Silicon Valley start-ups are live-testing an AI model that predicts ball-by-ball anxiety spikes among diaspora populations, presumably so meditation apps can push premium subscriptions the moment Smriti Mandhana edges one to slip. Meanwhile, the ECB’s marketing team has booked an emergency brainstorming session titled “How to make winning feel less like colonial guilt,” a workshop that will generate seventeen PowerPoint slides and zero actionable ideas.

Off the pitch, the match is a handy Rorschach test for whatever axe you’re grinding. Development economists will cite the record-breaking broadcast deal as proof that gender pay gaps can close when enough men realize there’s money in it. Climate activists will point to the chartered flights, single-use plastics, and floodlights powered by natural gas as Exhibit A of sport’s carbon addiction. Somewhere on Twitter, a verified account will compare the coverage disparity between this fixture and the concurrent Afghanistan-Zimbabwe men’s series, then get ratioed by a bot farm in Minsk. Everyone wins, except the planet.

And yet, for all the cynicism, there is something almost heroic in the stubborn refusal of these athletes to acknowledge the cosmic joke they’re part of. They train as though the next cover drive could solve the energy crisis; they celebrate boundaries like each one erases a micro-plastic from the Pacific. In a timeline saturated with performative despair, their sincerity is so anachronistic it loops back around to avant-garde.

When the final wicket falls—probably to a dubious DRS decision that will spawn a thousand conspiracy memes—one dressing room will dance and one will cry. Both will board carbon-intensive flights home, where politicians will weaponize the result for domestic brownie points. And somewhere a child in Lahore or Leeds will decide that cricket, not crypto or coup d’état, is the most beautiful waste of time imaginable.

Which, if you think about it, is exactly the kind of delusion that keeps the species limping forward. See you at the next meaningless spectacle.