Former England cricketers receive death threats for criticising the schedule

1 hour ago 5

ARTICLE AD BOX

3 min readJul 2, 2026 05:25 PM IST

death Australia's Beth Mooney, left, and Australia's Ashleigh Gardner celebrates after winning the Women's T20 Cricket World Cup semifinal against West Indies in London, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Former England cricketer Kate Cross, who called the ICC’s arrangements for scheduling the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup “ridiculous,” said she has received death threats and abuse online.

“We’ve been getting death threats and abuse online,” Alex Hartley said on the latest episode of No Balls: The Cricket Podcast, which she co-hosts with Cross.

“I woke up this morning to post about the ICC scheduling for the semi-finals to 450 comments on that Instagram post. Normally, we will get 30 per post. There’s been a little bit of confusion because what we said doesn’t warrant death threats and abuse,” Cross said.

The semifinals for the World Cup are scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday this week. While the top team in Group A would face the second team in Group B in Thursday’s knockout clash, it was the other way around. However, the rule also stated that if India qualified for the semifinal, they would play that semifinal on Tuesday against the top team in Group A—a stipulation the podcast duo criticised.

“I’ve actually spoken to somebody at the ICC to clarify everything that has been said. This is what the ICC said: ‘We’d like to clarify that this has nothing to do with India and that this has been done to optimise spectatorship in the UK as much as the global viewing.’ So, my interpretation of that is that the 6:30 start is for the UK audience,” Hartley said.

“It feels like we’ve cleared that up. Thanks everyone that has got in touch and supported us. That’s been lovely reading all those (messages). It’s mad, isn’t it? We spoke about social media so much on this platform but let’s just be a bit kinder. Like I wasn’t slagging off India as a cricket team,” Cross said.

“I was just saying ‘I don’t think that any tournament should be based on a cricket team getting through a semi-final’. Turns out that wasn’t right anyway. To the person that quote us, if you are going to quote us, quote what we say don’t quote what you think we’ve said. The people have opened up to their interpretation,” she added.

Read Entire Article