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since 1997 Feb 16

2018 Diary

A Ramble on Women's Cricket
 - with diversions -

This diary will be updated erratically throughout the year.

Previous Page : Simply the Best?

 

Which Came First?

 

There have been a number of articles about women's participation in cricket published in the newspapers and elsewhere during the last six months. All have concentrated, not unreasonably you may feel, on the number of women playing the game.

 

I have to admit on being very unsure on how many that really is. The advent of softball, which I loudly applaud, has certainly meant many more women with either a bat or ball in their hand but is that really playing cricket? Maybe it is, or more importantly, from the way I view it, will that it encourage more women and girls to play 'the real thing'? Please don't for a moment think I am against softball in any way, or indeed any of the other initiatives recently launched to get more people playing something akin to the game. I am all for anything of this nature!!! What I am still unsure about is how many of those participants will take up hard-ball 50-over or T20 cricket at any level at all from club and, hopefully, on up.

 

Let's hope they do in their droves.
 
But I started typing this piece with a completely different thing on my mind and, as often happens to me, diverted into a slightly related topic. But back to what I was originally thinking about.
 
Long before many (or perhaps all) of these initiatives I had noticed a trend indicating that women were getting more involved with the sport. I know that from time immemorial women have done the teas, run kids to and from games, and likely scored while their husbands and sons play out in the middle. May they continue to do so, but I was thinking of the fact that, lodged comfortably on my sofa watching my favourite sport on the box, I was noticing a change. There seemed to be many more women of all ages in the crowds on a day when only the men are playing.
 
Now when this first occurred to me, women's cricket appeared on the TV as often as hen's teeth in the farmyard - well, nearly anyway! Was I imagining it? As a lad sitting on the grass near the boundary rope at Hove (those were the days!) I can only recall seeing very few of the opposite gender, and they might well be there under sufferance, with head in a book or staring at a knitting pattern. Now I know far fewer women knit these days but they probably still read in equal number. They could now peer at a tiny screen in their hand, of course, and live in a virtual world rather than the real one.
 
Now I'd like to back this idea up with pictures, but in my youth I didn't carry a camera to matches - I simply couldn't afford the kind of kit that would have been any use, and that's apart from the consideration of getting it across most of Brighton and a slice of Hove on a bicycle. (What did I do with that bike while the match was on? I simply can't remember).
 
In recent years I have the excuse that now I have the kit, I very rarely watch a men's game unless it's the second fixture following the main event of a women's match. One might expect more women to be in the crowd at these events anyway.
 
Am I wrong in thinking women started following as watchers before the growth in the sport in terms of players? I don't think so... And if I'm right I wonder why it happened that way round...

The Overs Problem - a Solution??

I think I might have an answer, if indeed a complicated one.
Let's take an example in the form of a men's Test match where the crowd is bursting at the seems. There should be 9 overs bowled in a day and, of course, there won't be. Let's say there's 85. The weather has been fine all day and there have been no avoidable interruptions. Now each member of the crowd have been cheated of 5/90th of their gate money and they deserve compensation.  But where should that money come from?
The answer, obviously, is the players. They were the ones who failed to deliver. The match referee could easily decide if one side or the other is to blame, or possible it could be proportioned between the sides. Now I hear you say "their match fees won't come close to covering it". That's not my concern. My feeling - they should be fined the amount.
Anyone think we wouldn't get 90 overs in a day then?
Next Page:  16 overs+4 balls