The journey of Meg Lanning’s Australians is documented in The Record, which tells the story of the 2020 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.
From the 21st of February to the 8th of March 2020, the 2020 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup was held in Australia. I could forgive you for forgetting because it was approximately 50,000 COVID years ago. I certainly had. It’s not yet a year, but it feels like ten.
The Record is a new documentary by Footyology’s own Angela Pippos and Nicole Minchin (The Wedding Party) via their production company HER FILMS, which also produced two ALFW documentaries: League of Her Own and Heroes, both of which I highly recommend. It centres around the Australian Women’s T20 team World Cup journey and the ICC’s quest to beat the world record for attendance at a women’s sporting event.
I should preface this review with the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever, in my entire life, sat through any kind of T20 cricket match, men’s or women’s. I’ve watched a number of Tests and enjoyed them, but it’s not my sport. I still need a reminder on what an over is from time to time and in fact, had to google it when I was watching this. I’ve never been to any live cricket and I was only vaguely aware this was on last year because I kept hearing about it on the news.
This could all be put down to me just not being super into cricket but as I started watching I was struck by the fact that I couldn’t actually recall women’s cricket at all before 2010. We’ve apparently had a women’s team since 1934 (according to my friend google), which I had no idea about. And it wasn’t until Belinda Clark popped up as a talking head in the documentary, that I realised I had heard of her, but had no idea she’d been an Australian women’s cricket champion.
It’s a testament to the talent of the Australian women’s cricket team that the sport has taken off in such a big way in the last decade, and a big part of that is T20.
Whether it be, Big Bash League, internationals or the World Cup, it’s arguably led to a resurgence in interest in the sport, particularly from women and girls, for whom there were no development pathways until very recently.
The Record highlights this through the personal stories of a few players and their respective journeys to the elite level of their sport.
Familiar backstories of women in sport emerge: being the only girl playing cricket at school, playing cricket as a woman from a line of male cricketers, going to play cricket whilst coming from a background where that wouldn’t be an expected pathway as cricket is usually a “rich man’s sport”. Through the personal stories of these players, it highlights the barriers to sport women can face as well as the expectations of society.
Much time is spent at the start with the team saying expecting to beat the world record for attendance was mad, that it couldn’t possibly done because attendance at women’s sport is generally expected to be much lower than for men’s sport.
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Although there have been notable exceptions in recent years, especially in Australia, such as the opening round of the inaugural AFLW season, the 2019 AFLW Grand Final and, internationally, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, it’s still expected that crowd figures will average much less than the men’s version of any sport.
It made for a very ambitious goal from the ICC and helps to highlight that even with great success in women’s sport, there are still certain societal barriers there that prevent women’s sport from being perceived as the same elite level as men’s.
The Record is brilliant in that you can follow and understand it easily even when you don’t have more than a cursory understanding of the sport and figures involved. The narrative flows and makes for engaging viewing, a lot of that coming down to solid direction from Pippos and Minchin as well as editing from Sara Edwards.
The craft behind the documentary is also evident when the various matches Australia played as part of the tournament are replayed to the audience.
Although, I was aware of the outcome I gave an audible gasp when Indian bowler Poonam Yadav got Ellyse Perry out for a duck in the first game. It felt like I was watching the game in real time, a true feat for a documentary where the outcome is well known.
The format of talking heads intercut with footage from behind the scenes of the Australian team, media footage and matches helps to build the narrative in an engaging way whilst also opening the doors of elite women’s sport to everyone.
Prior to this I had really only heard of Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy and Meg Lanning. And even then, I really only knew they were cricketers. I couldn’t have told you anything about them at all.
But through the use of interviews with certain members of the squad, you begin to feel a personal connection to them and their stories as shown on screen. I also loved that we heard from several different captains of various international teams involved in the event as well, it was really refreshing to hear about the event from multiple perspectives, not just an Australian one despite predominantly following them.
Which brings me to my personal highlight of the entire thing: Beth Mooney’s interview. Throughout both parts of the two-part documentary, Mooney shows up and gives my favourite talking head interview of everyone involved.
Not only is her commentary about her performance, herself as a person and the team enlightening, but her self-effacing attitude combined with her dry wit and excellent use of words, makes for a lot of fun and some of the most memorable lines of the documentary. For a cricket player I had never heard of before, I would now consider myself a fan.
The only real negative (and even then, it’s not really a negative) aspect of The Record is that a lot of time is spent discussing Ellyse Perry. She’s discussed in the footage shot at the time of the event, she’s discussed in the interviews and various media that pops up throughout the documentary. But Ellyse Perry herself is never interviewed and we don’t actually hear from her in other forms. This might be for a myriad of reasons, but seeing as so much time is spent discussing her and speculating on her fitness for the tournament, it would’ve been nice to hear from the cricketer herself.
Regardless, The Record is an engaging, refreshing take on the sports documentary genre and interesting insider look at elite level women’s sport and the ways it differs from the men’s game.
At times it has the rhythm, pace and feel of a Hollywood sports movie, which works enormously to its advantage.
It debuts on Amazon Prime this Friday, and if you enjoyed The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team from the same streamer, you’re going to enjoy this.
