The Time I Got to Volunteer at the Women's T20 World Cup 2026

Part 1: The Flags

 10.07.2026

If you've been following me since 2024, you'll know that when a World Cup comes around, I am all in. Squad previews, constant posting throughout the tournament. I did it for the 2024 T20 World Cup, I did it for the 2025 ODI World Cup. This time, I was a lot quieter, and there were a few reasons for that. Life has changed quite a bit for me between then and now, and time hasn't really been on my side.

But the other reason is that I was actually a lot closer to this one than I have been to any previous World Cup. I live in the UK, so when this tournament came around, I originally just planned to go and watch as many games as I could. Then this little opportunity popped up to volunteer, and like the cricket-loving crazy nerd I am, I absolutely jumped at it.

In my application I said I wanted to learn more about what happens behind the scenes at a World Cup. I knew going in there was only so much you could learn as a volunteer, but there was a whole side to cricket I genuinely didn't know anything about. I know the game. The players, the pitches, the tactics, the rules. What actually goes into running a tournament at this level? No clue.

I got selected as a ceremonies volunteer at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester. And I did not know what I was getting myself into.

The Rehearsal: 12th June

The day before our first shift, the ceremonies volunteers had a rehearsal.

This was the first time we were told that we'd be supporting the people in charge of the big flags. The ones that come out on the field during the national anthems. At a World Cup.

Now, we were all adults. So in the moment, we all kept our cool, but I am fairly certain we were all doing backflips in our heads.

What we were not prepared for was the wind. Manchester, in general, is a cold city so a windier than normal evening is just a little more than 'it's windy today'. They needed us to take the ICC flag out and open it up to mark out the key spots we'd need to nail the ceremony flag unfurling.

Ten to twelve grown adults.

One flag.

The flag won.

It was doing that thing from PE, the parachute game, and someone runs in, except nobody wanted to be anywhere underneath this flag, no one was laughing and the flag was clearly out to get us. We would tame it but it would always come back to fight. For a few minutes it was genuinely unclear who was in charge of the situation and the answer was not us.

We eventually got what we needed done. Our supervisor, who was running the whole operation, then looked at us and said: right. Country flags next.

Those flags look big on TV, but standing next to one in person, forget big, the word humongous doesn't cover it. You need at least fifty people to hold one properly open. There were twelve of us and like the confident critical thinkers we were, we took one out anyway.

We should not have done that.

The flag opened halfway, became a wave, and that was the end of the exercise. The supervisor said: health and safety risk. Inside we go.

So there we were. A group of adults, at Old Trafford, hauling these enormous flags through the building and into Lancashire's indoor training facility because the wind had beaten us. Inside, we finally got them fully open. They took up almost the entire room. We then spent the next while on our hands and knees folding them one seam at a time so they'd unfurl correctly during the actual ceremony.

I genuinely think it's the best team building exercise I've ever done. I would recommend it to anyone. Ideally not in gale force winds, but honestly, maybe in gale force winds, because that's where the real bonding happens.

That was the 12th, the day before the first game.

Day 1: 13th June — Ireland vs Scotland & Australia vs South Africa

We rocked up to our shift at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday the 13th. Our job was to get the flag bearers ready. Hand out uniforms, tell them where to go, keep everything moving.

The flag bearers were a mix of adults and kids, 14 and above. They came in groups, from local clubs, friends, family, all sorts, which was really nice to see. The challenge was getting them all kitted out. Each flag bearer needed a t-shirt, cap, trousers and a white ICC t-shirt. The thing about free stuff is, everyone loves it.

Every ground gets a set allocation for the entire tournament and in our case this was four match days worth of stock. At least a hundred flag bearers per match day. So we're managing queues, checking sizes, making sure the stock lasts. You want to give everyone a great experience. Everyone's excited. It's brilliant. It was also absolutely chaotic.

Saturday was somehow even windier than Friday had been.

For context. I was wearing my purple volunteer t-shirt, a long-sleeve black top underneath, then the white ICC t-shirt on top, then my purple volunteer jacket, then a rain jacket over all of that. Five layers. Still cold. It wasn't even the temperature, it was the wind, and the wind had brought friends this time.

So now we're all looking at each other thinking: are the flags actually going out in this?

If you watched the Ireland-Scotland game at Old Trafford, you know the answer. The big flags did not come out. We did take the ICC flag out, so we did get on the ground, but it was so windy we were told not to hold it up. We were told to put it on the ground and put one knee on it just to stop it moving.

We had more people than we'd had at rehearsal. Still had to kneel on the flag.

The big flags stayed inside because it was a genuine health and safety risk. Most of the flag bearers were children. It's not worth risking injury for the sake of a pretty ceremony. That's just not a hard decision.

They swapped in smaller flags that were held by 5-6 children instead, which became a talking point. The No Balls podcast, hosted by Alex Hartley and Kate Cross, mentioned it and said it looked funny on TV. I didn't even know it was being talked about until I saw the clip.

What disappointed me wasn't the podcast. It was the comments.

Alex Hartley had actually clarified it was a health and safety call, though they'd said it was about the safety of the children in the podcast, when it was genuinely about the risk to everyone involved, both adults and children, which is exactly right and everyone was told this on the day. But then in the comments a flag bearer who'd been there replied complaining about it, and you had others piling on saying it didn't even look that windy.

If you were at that ground that day, you know how windy it was. It was too windy to ever rehearse, so the flag bearers never even saw how big those flags were because they were folded up the whole time. I get that. But when I saw the comment from the flag bearer, I thought, really?

And that's one of the bigger things I took away from the whole experience. I already knew social media was a place where people assume the worst without context. But when you're on the inside of something, when you know exactly what happened and why, and you watch people confidently get it wrong from the outside, it does feel different. I felt genuine sympathy for event organisers because you make the right call and people who weren't there still make it a joke.

The Moment I Did Not See Coming

For the second game, they were using pole flags. Not the small ones that needed six people to hold them open. A single pole, one person. Much more manageable.

I thought that's all this was. Something small going alongside the ICC flag. At no point did I stop and actually think about what carrying a pole flag meant, and there is a very specific reason my critical thinking had completely abandoned me.

We were based in the indoor training facility, separated from the other side by a net. And on the other side of that net, the Australian women's team were warming up.

Ellyse Perry was on the other side of that net.

My all time favourite player. Just there. A net between us. My brain turned to absolute mush. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The fangirl in me was fully activated and I was doing everything I could to look like a normal professional volunteer and not a person who had completely stopped functioning.

So that's the state I was in when I walked into a conversation about the pole flags.

One of the other volunteers had been handed the South African flag and someone was explaining what to do with it. I drifted over. She looked at me and said: you're a bigger cricket fan than I am, maybe you should take this.

I was stunned. This volunteer just handed this flag over to me and she absolutely didn't have to. Could have kept it. She saw how much it meant to me and gave it away.

Another volunteer took the Australian flag and I'm standing there holding the South African flag, still not fully processing what this means, getting more confused as they explained how to hold it, because it didn't make sense for a pole flag to go out with the ICC flag in the centre of the field.

It did eventually click, and thank god for that, because this flag wasn't going to the centre of the field. This flag meant I was walking out behind the players. Right behind them. With the mascots. During the national anthem.

I think my brain fully shut down at that point.

We walked out at the same time as the mascots, waited for the players, and suddenly I was standing next to Ayabonga Khaka. For the entire national anthem. Laura Wolvaardt, Marizanne Kapp, the whole South African team walked past me and I was next to them.

When it finally clicked what I was actually about to do, my brain just stopped functioning. That's the only way I can describe it. Laura Wolvaardt walked past me first. I took a deep breath and I think I just forgot to breathe entirely. Old Trafford was noisy, one of the best crowds of the tournament, and I couldn't hear a single thing around me. I was just watching these players walk past me thinking, wow.

The little kids next to me had absolutely no idea. I was probably twice their age but I felt about half of their age.

The little girl in me who once dreamt big dreams was absolutely screaming inside. I grew up in a country where cricket wasn't really a thing, so seeing something like this wasn't just unlikely, it felt impossible. Yet here I was, standing in the middle of Old Trafford right next to the players, during a World Cup national anthem. I still can't fully believe it happened.

I wanted to say something to them. Wish them luck, say hello, anything. But I couldn't. I just smiled. At least I hope I did.

I walked out holding that flag, trying to keep it at the right height, trying to hold it together. Then the top of the pole got caught on the spider cam moving around filming the players. I untangled it as fast as I could, walked around, and I'm pretty sure I ended up facing the wrong way.

My brother filmed it. I went back and watched the footage. The spider cam came down towards the pole. That one was not my fault. Everything else? Yes, absolutely was on me. Did it matter at the end of the day? Definitely not.

When we walked back in, the volunteer holding the Australian flag, my partner in crime for the whole thing, told me she'd wished Ellyse Perry good luck for the game, and Ellyse had responded.

Neither of us stopped smiling for a long time after that.

The rest of Day 1 was spent trying to stop flag bearers from helping themselves to more free kit than they were supposed to, and then carefully folding everything back up before heading out to enjoy the cricket. I'll write about the cricket separately. But the joy I felt that day, and the disbelief I still feel now looking back, is something I genuinely can't put into words.

Day 2: 15th June — India vs South Africa

Day 2. India versus South Africa. That game. If you watched it, you already know, but being there for it was something else entirely.

By this point, those of us who'd done the rehearsal and the first shift felt like we knew what we were doing. However, there was one thing we hadn't managed. We still hadn't taken the big flags out. Two games in and the weather on Day 1 had made sure of that. Day 2 was warm. The heatwave was just starting, and we all knew today was the day.

The flag bearers that came in were a different crowd. India were playing, so naturally a lot of Indian fans had signed up, and a lot of them wanted to hold the Indian flag. Managing expectations around that was its own little challenge. Equal numbers on each flag, and not everyone was going to get what they wanted. You do your best.

We did the rehearsal, brought everything back in, folded the flags back up, and prepared for the real thing. And when we walked out to the middle for the ceremony, the noise hit me like a wall.

On Day 1 we had around 15,000 at Old Trafford. For India vs South Africa we had 11,000. Roughly 4,000 fewer people, but that Indian crowd was the loudest thing I have ever stood in the middle of. The ground was erupting before the players had even walked out. They were cheering the flag unfurling. Just the flag opening up, and the noise was unreal.

I looked around at my fellow volunteers and every single one of us was smiling. Surprised, a little overwhelmed, but just smiling and taking it in. Nothing quite prepares you for what it feels like to be standing in the centre of that.

I thought about the Indian players, both the women and men, and the pressure they carry every time they walk out. I got a tiny, tiny glimpse of what that crowd feels like from the inside. I don't even want to imagine what it's like to actually be playing under it.

After the ceremony we went back in, sent the flag bearers on their way, and folded everything back up. Which sounds simple. It is not simple. You have to fold them in a way that gets all the air out so they fit back in the bag they came in. Rectangular flags, circular flags, different challenges, genuinely. By the end of the tournament we were experts. On Day 2 we were getting there. Flag folding as a team building exercise. I will stand by this forever.

After that I went and sat in the upper stand to watch the game. Still in my volunteer kit, which I found out later we weren't supposed to be wearing in the crowd. Lessons were learned and no harm was done. I think. I hope.

There was a lovely couple in front of me trying to get on the big screen by scanning the QR code, but because I was sitting right behind them, I may have accidentally been in their shot every time they tried. I feel a little bad about that. I still don't know for certain that's why they never made it on screen, but I suspect it didn't help.

The fans around me clocked the volunteer shirt and asked what I did. I explained the ceremonies role, and somehow the conversation turned to cricket data and stats. If you know me personally, you'll know I'm not the kind of person who starts conversations with strangers. I'm quiet and I keep to myself, but these guys accidentally picked exactly the right topic, and suddenly I had a lot to say. I made a few predictions during the game and when they came off, they turned around and said, yeah, you were right. Which was pretty satisfying.

There was a lovely lady sitting next to me who said it was so nice to see a young girl so passionate about her cricket, which isn't the first time I've heard that but it's always nice to hear.

One more thing about Day 2, and it ties into the whole social media thing.

I was sitting in a really good position for the Arundhati Reddy over, where Kapp played around the field. I was sitting in between fine leg and square leg, and I could see exactly what was happening with the field changes. I watched Kapp play that lap over fine leg, saw the boundary, watched the field move. I could see the Indian captain and from her body language she wasn't entirely in agreement with the field change, but she went with it. The gap opened up and Kapp put it straight through there.

I saw people online afterwards criticising the captain for that field change. From where I was sitting, it wasn't her call. It was the bowler's.

That was the thing though, I knew more being in that ground than I would have watching on TV and I still didn't know everything. I could see body language, I could see field changes, but I couldn't hear a word being said. Being there gave me more context than a screen ever could. It made me want to slow down with my own analysis. Be a little more careful. A little more considered. We could all stand to be a little kinder, honestly.

Day 3: 19th June — India vs Bangladesh

Day 3 was a slightly different pace.

India versus Bangladesh, Thursday afternoon, middle of the heatwave. I might have had over ambitious expectations for this game but it still surprised me. I expected more. India were in a precarious position needing wins, and Bangladesh were a trickier side than people gave them credit for. Yes, their win record isn't great, but their bowling is strong. If they ever figure out their batting, they're a genuinely dangerous team. A must-win India game felt like it should have pulled a bigger crowd.

But it was a Thursday. Middle of the day. School, work, the heat. It all got in the way. The crowd did build as the afternoon went on and by the second innings it felt a lot louder.

By this point I was comfortable. I'd done every session, I knew the routine, and there were a lot of volunteers doing it for the first time. So I naturally started taking the lead on a few things, helping people know where to go and what to do. Going from not knowing what you're getting yourself into to being the person who does know is a nice feeling.

The flag bearers that day were a younger crowd. More teenagers than we'd had before. When you're out there holding a flag the rules are simple. The phone stays in your pocket, you look forward, and you're respectful of what you're holding.

Teenagers, predictably, did not always follow the rules. Phones out, looking around, searching for the camera.

But honestly, I can't even be annoyed about it. I was absolutely awestruck being out there in the middle of Old Trafford. I'm an adult. These were kids. If I felt like that, I genuinely cannot imagine what it felt like for them.

Day 3 was also the first time I actually held one of the country flags. Day 1 the big flags didn't come out. Day 2 I was on the ICC flag. So getting my hands on one of those massive country flags for the first time, yeah. Still pretty awesome.

Thanks for reading so far. Now be responsible, take a break from your screen, get yourself that cup of tea and head over to part 2 😌