What comes to define success for a country in a sport?

Is the success of an individual or a team, the success of a system?

Does Neeraj Chopra's Olympic gold medal come to define India's success in javelin throw? Or does Harmanpreet & Co's title triumph - after losing the league stage game - come to define the team's world dominance?

Sports, by nature, has a tendency to allow one moment, or one game, or one tournament - of immense pressure, of course - to come to define 'champions'.

A year and a half ago, Sophie Devine, and other players from the New Zealand team, hopped around local communities in the country showcasing what they brought back home from Dubai - a shiny World Cup. That hop-athon wasn't just in the hope of introducing young kids to the sport, but also to enamour them by the glory of it, and hope some of them may be keen to take it up, starting from that summer in New Zealand.

The White Ferns walked into the 2026 T20 Women's World Cup as world champions of the format. But even before they could fully shrug off the early tournament rustiness, they stand staring at the risk of elimination from the opening stage itself. It's not unusual in sports; the other prominent global sporting fest running parallely at this point - the FIFA World Cup - has witnessed plenty of grand legacy team endure such crashes in this quarter of the century. What did it say about the teams or the footballing structures in France, Italy, Spain, Germany? Or what does football speak of the financial giants, England, while they perennially wait to bring the cup home?

To each of them, it says one thing: success has so many perspectives and so many versions, that the idea itself can seem abstract.

Five years ago, for a few parents in Selwyn District, in Canterbury Country, one pain point was that there was no cricket coaching available in their area for girls once they entered high school. Till the age of 12, girls could play in mixed-teams, and thereafter if they wanted to continue pursuing the sport, they would have to travel to Christchurch, around 25 kms from Selwyn, and play for teams in the city. Not surprisingly, it was also a point when most girls would drop out of cricket in Selwyn.

So, in March 2021, four parents came together, and before the start of the cricket season in October, formed the Selwyn Wahini Cricket Club - an all-girls cricket club. Over the years, its popularity has swelled. It now has eight teams across different age categories, with around 80 girls and women actively participating, including eight mother-daughter duos.

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The first time New Zealand were crowned World Champions (in the 50-over format) in 2000, it required a rather dramatic ending. In the penultimate over of the chase, the Australians en route to the target of 175 suddenly found a bail falling off the stumps much after the ball had passed the batter, Cathryn Fitzpatrick. A gush of wind, maybe? The answer still remains a mystery. The decision of the third umpire was accepted, and New Zealand went on to win their maiden title by 4 runs.

It was still a time in world cricket when they could claim themselves to be among the three strongest teams in the world - much like they had for nearly half a century. But over the next few decades, other teams started playing catch-up, and New Zealand ceded their position to the likes of India, South Africa - and to a point, even West Indies.

In 2016, the year West Indies won their maiden World T20 title, a report commissioned by Sarah Beaman studying the state of the relationship between cricket and women in the country, came up with some alarming findings.

She wrote in the report, published in November that year, "The 1992 amalgamation of the New Zealand Women's Cricket Council with New Zealand Cricket was considered trailblazing: a model for the rest of the world. But the buzz quickly faded: women's cricket, which had been run by women for women for 58 years, was soon run mostly by men; the partnership became a takeover. Female participation - as leaders, volunteers, and players - declined."

The lethargy towards women's cricket in the decade leading up to that wasn't unique to New Zealand. As the men's and women's cricket boards merged world over, despite access to greater funds and facilities, there was a general lack of direction or foresight among administrators who had previously not been associated with women's cricket.

In 2016, New Zealand were still placed third in world rankings, but the roots were getting weaker. There was a 40 percent decline in participation in secondary school girls cricket in the decade leading up to that, and only 10 percent of those playing the sport were females (out of that, 90 percent were under the age of 12). Much like in Selwyn, the drop-out from the sport once girls joined high-school was a pan-country phenomena. Of all the females who were playing, only four percent happened to be adults.

What was intriguing about these findings was that there was neither a dearth in women playing sports nor was there a gender-imbalance in cricket-watching in New Zealand. In fact, 54 percent of the television audience for the Super Smash were females.

Then why was the entire system struggling to bring girls to play cricket in New Zealand?

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"There is a long held perception that cricket is a slow, long and boring sport," says Jess Davidson, the Women and Girls Participation Lead with New Zealand Cricket.

It's understandable that cricket isn't the most exciting activity for kids. The shortest format of the game is longer than most sports. It involves wearing too many gears which can feel heavy and restrict movement. And out of 22 players in a game, at least 16 at any point, are likely to be stationary - not the most exciting prospect for those getting into sports to run around and release high amounts of energy. The adrenaline rush of cricket doesn't quite add up.

While a lot of this clearly may not make sense to kids in south Asia, in a country like New Zealand - where there are ample opportunities and access to play multiple other sports - and no cricketing icon who overshadows the aura of an athlete from another sport - the repulsion towards cricket can be understandable.

Despite the relatively boring nature of cricket, as per a 2022 report by Gemba, it was the second most popular sport in the country - witnessing rising interest - but among women's sports, cricket wasn't in the top five of either viewership or participation. Unlike sports like netball and hockey, cricket was seen as largely a sport played by men.

But beyond the perception bias, there were also structural hindrances. In 2016, nearly 58 percent of the clubs didn't offer cricket for girls, and more than 90 percent of the clubs didn't have a girls-only teams. For example, Izzy Sharp, the New Zealand batter, who grew up in Pleasant Point - outside Timaru - could play in mixed teams till she was 12. But thereafter, had to travel nearly 160 kms one way, twice a week, to train in Christchurch to access a girls-only team.

By then, the report from Beaman, with problem areas identified - primarily lack of women's representation across board, including in non-playing roles such as coaches, administrators, etc - began to be worked upon. "That was very much the catalyst for change," Davidson claims.

But all recommendations aside, how to make a 'boring' sport by design more exciting to girls, who won't even play it over the weekends?

"We're introducing shorter formats on different days of the week to try and suit different sorts of schedules, so that girls can play. They might play after school on a Wednesday and then that frees up their weekend if they want to play another sport," Davidson says.

To bring girls into the sport has required some creative experiments.

"For our young women, they're telling us that it's really important they have a sense of belonging. So one thing that we're really trying to work on is how can we, through cricket as a vehicle, ensure our young women feel like they belong.

"We know girls want flexibility, they want variety. So as a cricket organization, we need to make sure we're adapting. We want to have almost a variety of options where young women can choose the game, the time commitment, the format which suits their schedule best.

"So we have a national program called Year Girls. That is really short and sharp, 45-minute sessions, fun, modified games, all the equipment's provided, and it doesn't matter if girls have never played before. We have a Bluetooth speaker. It's blaring, the music is playing. The girls get to pick the songs. It's a very low commitment for girls to come along, try out cricket for the first time, and hopefully if they enjoy it, they'll bring their friends back."

One of the key aspects of bringing more girls into the sport, is to modify the rules of it - not have a 11 v 11 contest.

"One of our formats is called Smash Fives. It's almost like a hybrid of cricket and baseball. You bat for five overs, you swap over, then you're fielding for five overs, bat for five overs, field for five overs. If you only have 40 minutes or an hour, you might do two innings, so two rotations. Or if you've got longer, you might do 90 minutes and do three rotations. We piloted Smash Fives format with Year 9 and 10 girls, and they really liked that it was action-packed. They weren't standing around for long. They were always on the go, either batting or fielding. So it was a really quick change. We found that it particularly appealed to young women.

"One of the other formats is Smash Yard Cricket, and that's just taking pretty much the key elements of playing in the backyard, making up rules. It might be one hand, one bounce. Pretty much just getting girls involved and everyone having equal opportunities.

"That's breaking down a lot of areas where previously, for instance, school girls teams, they would only play with 11-a-side, which some of the smaller schools might have struggled to field a team of 11. By just reducing that to six or eight or nine-a-side, we're seeing a lot more schools now entering teams."

In a decade since the report, the overall participation of girls in the sport has shot up from 10 percent to 15 percent. In fact, in the year following New Zealand's T20 World Cup win, the number of girls and women playing the sport has shot up from 15,691 to 18,051. 43 percent of those are above the age of 12.

A similar change was witnessed in Selwyn Wahini Cricket Club, where the number of teams shot up from five to eight in the aftermath of the World Cup win.

These are not big wins, and Davidson admits that they are way away from reaching their long-term targets; but to begin small is the point. Success has many parameters.

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The distribution of participation in women's cricket has been geographically divided in New Zealand - with regions like Auckland and Christchurch getting far more participants. In other regions, due to absence of clubs and teams, many cricket aspirants either had to travel to these cities or choose another sport altogether. As a result, while newer programs have been initiated, the sport in the country has been largely dependent on local communities to drive participation. The swelling of teams in Selwyn Wahini, for example, has largely come through the south Asian diaspora.

"We are the fastest growing region in New Zealand, so we have an awful lot of Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan players; it's a very diverse group," says Jenny Duncan, one of the founding members of Selwyn Wahini. "They are terribly passionate and that's what keeps the club driving along. We also do a bit of sponsorship, like Sri Lankan cultural festivals and others, and in turn, they provide us with parents to help us out

"Our three senior teams (over age 12) - they all practise together. There is one father and a paid coach who teaches them. Everyone is voluntary except our paid coaches, who get paid for two hours of coaching ."

While the rise in participation among females is a positive sign for the cricket system, it has come with its share of challenges - not enough coaches to train and manage the players.

"With more growth, we have more teams, and it needs coaches and administrators," says Davidson. "A key challenge for us is around the volunteer network. We as a sport are extremely reliant on our volunteers, giving up their time and effort to coach and manage teams. The more players we have, the more volunteers we need. They remain the backbone of community cricket in New Zealand. People are busier with their lifestyles. Quite often in local clubs, there's one person doing a lot of jobs, wearing a lot of hats. The moment they leave, they take a lot of institutional knowledge with them. So we're trying to make these clubs more sustainable with a better succession plan."

"One of the things we are looking at is not having 16-week contracts throughout the summer. Instead, we are trying to get people to manage with whatever time they can. Maybe one person on a Tuesday evening, the other on Saturday. Small amounts of time. Try to get cricket clubs working together, sharing resources, like even one staff member working in two different district associations."

But the change has started - from an unlikely quarter. One of the eight teams in the Selwyn Wahini Cricket Club is of 'Socialite Women', those who are around mid 20s to 40s. To form a socialite team, they need 8 players - Selwyn has 14 players to choose from.

"With the socialite women team you needed at least 13 or 14 in your team because they all have children - and things always go wrong on a Saturday," Duncan says. "We have 14, and even then, it is chaos."

Eight of those players in the Socialite team even have their daughters playing. The daughters play in the morning, and the mothers play in the afternoons - so they can all go and watch each other.

"That's how socialite women started. One day, I went down to one of the very young girls' practises. It was all Pakistani, Indian and Sri Lankan mothers who wanted to start a team. I told them - I'll help you start a team, you get the numbers. It's the best thing we could have got.

"Daughters already had a team - the mothers came wanting to to form a team of their own. Three of them had never played cricket before and wanted to give it a go. There were some who had played cricket when they were teenagers, and now they are 40 - it's been a very long time. There are three who still play cricket; they are all in New Zealand women's Over 40 cricket team.

"Now, in Selwyn district, anyone who wants to play cricket, can."