The women's game and the record book

England staged and won the inaugural women's World Cup in 1973, two years before the men's 1975 event, making it the older of the two competitions.

Source: ICC, Women's Cricket World Cup history · applied

Australia won in 1978, 1982, 1988, 1997, 2005, 2013 and 2022, far more than England's four, while New Zealand (2000) and India (2025) have one title each.

Source: ICC, Women's Cricket World Cup records · applied

India were cruising at 191 for 3 chasing 229 when Shrubsole took 6 for 46, bowling England to a nine-run win in front of a full house at Lord's.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, 2017 Women's World Cup final · applied

India made 298 for seven and bowled South Africa out for 246 at the DY Patil Stadium, Shafali Verma taking the player-of-the-final award for a maiden title.

Source: ICC, 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup final · recall

England beat New Zealand in the first Women's T20 World Cup final in 2009; Australia have won seven of the nine editions since.

Source: ICC, Women's T20 World Cup history · recall

Australia won in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2020, 2023 and 2026, two runs of three straight titles, a dominance the men's competition has never seen from any side.

Source: ICC, Women's T20 World Cup records · applied

86,174 watched Australia beat India by 85 runs on International Women's Day, one of the largest attendances ever for a women's sporting event.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, 2020 Women's T20 World Cup final · applied

New Zealand beat South Africa by 32 runs in the Dubai final, Amelia Kerr taking player of the tournament, for their first Women's T20 World Cup.

Source: ICC, 2024 Women's T20 World Cup final · recall

Suzie Bates has opened the batting for New Zealand across every edition since 2009 and has made more than 1,200 runs in the tournament, clear at the top of the list.

Source: ICC, Women's T20 World Cup records · recall

Australia posted 156 for 6 and held South Africa to 137 for 6 in Cape Town for a sixth title, the home side's first final ending in a 19-run defeat.

Source: ICC, 2023 Women's T20 World Cup final · recall

The Women's Premier League began with a season running from 4 to 26 March 2023, five franchises playing a short round-robin and knockouts.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WPL history · recall

Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, UP Warriorz and Gujarat Giants make up the league, most run by the owners of the matching men's IPL team.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WPL teams · applied

Smriti Mandhana went to Royal Challengers Bengaluru for ₹3.4 crore, the most any woman had been paid in a franchise auction at the time.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, 2023 WPL auction · recall

Mumbai Indians won the inaugural WPL in 2023 and again in 2025; Royal Challengers Bengaluru took the title in 2024, their first in any senior competition.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WPL records · applied

Viacom18 paid roughly ₹951 crore for the WPL's media rights over five years, a figure that made it comfortably the best-paid women's league in the sport.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the WPL broadcast deal · recall

The Women's Big Bash League began in 2015-16 with the same eight city identities as the men's competition, the first women's franchise T20 league anywhere.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WBBL history · recall

The WBBL set the standard for women's franchise cricket for years, but the WPL's far larger broadcast deal and player fees took over as the richest women's competition in 2023.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on women's franchise leagues · applied

The women's tournament is played a little earlier than the men's, mostly across October and November, so the two Big Bash competitions do not compete head-on for grounds and attention.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WBBL schedule · recall

The WPL, the WBBL and The Hundred's women's competition now offer overlapping short contracts, so the best players sign a run of them across the calendar much as the men do.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the women's franchise calendar · applied

Adelaide Strikers won the Women's Big Bash in 2022 and 2023, the first back-to-back titles since Brisbane Heat's in 2019 and 2020; the two Sydney clubs had taken four of the first six titles.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, WBBL records · recall

The ICC committed in 2023 to matching the prize money at its men's and women's World Cups and other events, so the winners of each now receive the same purse.

Source: ICC, on equal prize money · applied

The ECB created eight regional women's teams in 2020 and offered around forty professional contracts, the first time most English women cricketers had been paid to play full-time.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on English women's professionalisation · recall

The BCCI equalised match fees in 2022, so a woman and a man now earn the same per Test, one-day international or T20, though the graded annual retainers still differ.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on BCCI women's pay · recall

A leading player's fee for a single six-week WPL season can exceed several years of her central-contract retainer, which is why 2023 is seen as the turning point for Indian women's pay.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the WPL and women's earnings · applied

Cricket Australia moved its women onto full professional terms with a share of the pay pool around 2017, and its leading players have been the highest-earning women in the game since.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on Australian women's pay · applied

Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and others introduced women's contracts during the decade, so by the mid-2020s a paid women's set-up was the norm among the leading nations rather than the exception.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the spread of women's contracts · recall

Equal match fees cover only the payment per game; the graded yearly retainer, the larger part of the income, remains lower for women at almost every board, so total pay is still well behind.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the remaining women's pay gap · applied

Most women's Tests are scheduled over four days and often run out of time for a result, so players and boards have pushed for five-day matches, as used in the multi-format Ashes.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on women's Test cricket · recall

Points are awarded across the one Test, three one-day internationals and three T20 internationals, so a side can win the Ashes without winning the Test.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the women's Ashes format · applied

Professional domestic contracts, equal event prize money and the WPL together turned the women's game over the decade from one most players fitted around a job into a full-time career for the leading names.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the women's game in the 2020s · applied

Sachin Tendulkar scored 15,921 Test runs between 1989 and 2013; Joe Root, second after passing Ricky Ponting's 13,378 in July 2025, was still more than 1,600 short in 2026.

Source: ESPNcricinfo Statsguru, Test batting records · applied

Muttiah Muralitharan finished with exactly 800 Test wickets, taking the last with his final delivery in 2010; Shane Warne is next on 708.

Source: ESPNcricinfo Statsguru, Test bowling records · applied

Tendulkar made 18,426 runs in 463 one-day internationals; Kumar Sangakkara and Virat Kohli are the next names but neither has passed it.

Source: ESPNcricinfo Statsguru, ODI batting records · recall

Brian Lara made an unbeaten 400 in 2004, reclaiming the record from Matthew Hayden's 380 and beating his own 375 from a decade earlier.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, Test batting records · recall

Rohit Sharma's 264 in Kolkata in 2014 is the only men's ODI innings past 250; Martin Guptill's 237 not out in the 2015 World Cup is the next highest.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, ODI batting records · recall

De Villiers reached his hundred in 31 balls at the Wanderers in 2015, breaking Corey Anderson's record of 36 set a year earlier.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, ODI batting records · recall

McCullum brought up his hundred in 54 balls against Australia in Christchurch in his farewell Test, beating the mark of 56 shared by Viv Richards and Misbah-ul-Haq.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, Test batting records · recall

Tendulkar made 51 Test hundreds and 49 in one-day internationals for exactly 100 international centuries, a figure no other player has come close to.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, international batting records · applied

Laker took 10 for 53 and 9 for 37 in the same 1956 Test, 19 wickets in a match that nobody has equalled; Anil Kumble's 10 for 74 in 1999 matched only the all-ten innings.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, Test bowling records · recall

Every figure here is the current best, so the book updates as soon as a batter or bowler goes past it, which is what separates it from a settled list of the greatest players.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on cricket's record book · applied

Mithali Raj scored 7,805 runs in women's one-day internationals between 1999 and 2022, well clear of England's Charlotte Edwards in second.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's ODI batting records · applied

Jhulan Goswami took 255 wickets in women's one-day internationals over a 20-year career, retiring in 2022 alongside Mithali Raj; no one else has passed 200.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's ODI bowling records · applied

New Zealand's Amelia Kerr made 232 not out and also took five wickets in the same match against Ireland, aged 17, the highest score in women's one-day international history.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's ODI batting records · recall

Meg Lanning scored fifteen one-day international hundreds before retiring in 2023 and won seven World Cups in all, five of them as captain: the 2022 50-over title and the T20 titles of 2014, 2018, 2020 and 2023.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's ODI batting records · recall

Kiran Baluch's 242 remains the highest score in women's Test cricket, made in only Pakistan's second women's Test; Australia's Ellyse Perry has the next-highest with 213 not out.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's Test batting records · recall

Mithali Raj played 232 women's one-day internationals across 23 years, more than anyone, captaining India in two 50-over World Cup finals.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, women's ODI records · recall

Australia won 26 women's one-day internationals in a row between 2018 and 2021, passing the 21 straight wins by Ricky Ponting's men's side, a record across either game.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on Australia's women's win streak · applied

With only a handful of women's Tests scheduled each year, there are far fewer innings in which a score like Kiran Baluch's can be beaten, so old marks last much longer than in the men's game.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on women's Test records · applied

South Africa's Shabnim Ismail took more than fifty wickets across the Women's T20 World Cups she played, the most in the tournament's history.

Source: ICC, Women's T20 World Cup records · recall

Far more of the women's game has been played in the last decade than in all the years before it, so its records are being reset far more often than the men's long-standing marks.

Source: ESPNcricinfo, on the women's record book · applied