WOMEN’S cricket so far has been free of all the grime and shenanigans which big money invariably brings to sport.

There’s been a newness, a freshness, dare I say almost an innocence about their game, which is not in any way belied by their ability to bowl killer 77mph Yorkers a la Shrubby, or to smash the ball out of the ground like Tammy Beaumont, or to have the cat-fast stumping reflexes of the sloe-eyed Sarah Taylor.

But the money has to come in to expand the game for tomorrow’s young women. I accept that. So, perhaps the glorious World Cup match is the last time this kind of innocence will be felt. I suppose it’s not different really to a child growing up. “Our children, when young, are part of us. When they grow up they are just other people.”

But our sweetest memories are of them when young. As at Lords.

ALLAN FRISWELL Keighley Road, Cowling