Hours after Anya Shrubsole had bowled England to victory in the World Cup Final, one bookmaker offered odds of 14-1 on her winning this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, a shorter price than Chris Froome, Lewis Hamilton or Mo Farah.

Shrubsole took six for 46 as England beat India at Lord’s, ensuring July 23 will never be forgotten by competitors and spectators alike. In time, though, August 10 may become a far more important date for the women’s game in this country.

Southern Vipers and Western Storm open the second edition of the Kia Super League, the women’s Twenty20 tournament, at the Ageas Bowl that day. “17 Games, 13 Venues, 6 Teams,” flashes the short publicity video on the ECB website. “Kia Super League is coming to a venue near you.”

The ECB desperately need this tournament to ride the World Cup wave. Average attendances last summer were good, topping the 1,000 mark — substantially higher than the FA Women’s Super League achieved in its first season.

The objective for this summer is twofold: bigger crowds at the KSL games, and more young girls joining the ECB’s All Stars scheme, which aims to introduce children between five and eight to cricket.

Standard Sport understands about 40,000 children have so far signed up to All Stars, including about 10,000 girls, who have heroes to inspire them — Heather Knight, the England captain; Nat Sciver, the star all-rounder and inspiration behind the ‘Natmeg’ shot; Sarah Taylor, the brilliant wicketkeeper-batsman; Katherine Brunt and Shrubsole, the match-winning bowlers.

Ellyse Perry, of Australia, New Zealand’s Suzie Bates and Stafanie Taylor, of West Indies, lead the overseas contingent, and the event will be shown live on Sky.

The challenges are clear. One day after the KSL starts, the Premier League resumes, a giant Pac-Man ready to swallow any sport that dares cross its path. Four days prior to the opening game, there is the final of the women’s European Championships in football, with England one victory away from a place in that game.

The KSL runs for 23 days, during which England’s men’s team play two Tests against West Indies, while the NatWest Blast quarter-finals take place in the last full week in August. There is, then, no lack of competition for airtime.

Yet Clare Connor, the ECB’s head of women’s cricket, is hopeful KSL can hold its own. The organisers have made some smart moves, including staging matches at grounds like Blackpool, Liverpool and York that rarely — if ever — host county cricket.

The database the ECB built for the World Cup allows them to alert spectators near Taunton and Bristol when Western Storm are playing, while those near Derby and Leicester can receive similar updates about Loughborough Lightning.

“Attendances will be a really good indicator of whether the World Cup has captured the imagination,” Connor, a former England captain and current ECB board member, told Standard Sport. “Hopefully fans will want to see England and overseas players perform. That would be the greatest marker of success.

“We hope to take the World Cup trophy on tour during the competition, to as many games as we can. Our marketing and communications teams have worked really hard to try to join everything together.”

The tipping point for the women’s game may be three years away, when nine T20 games — one international fixture and eight domestic ones — will be screened live on terrestrial television. Behind the paywall, the World Cup final drew 1.1million viewers, whereas the footballers’ victory over France in Sunday’s quarter-final was watched by 3.3m on Channel 4.

Shrubsole’s SPOTY odds may have drifted to 20-1 since the final but they show women’s cricket can break into the mainstream. If the KSL is done right, it will be an important step towards that goal.