Ali Brookman · @ali_brookman
16th Jan 2014 from TwitLonger
@thefulltoss @ConnorCricket @RafNicholson @CricketPixie (P.S. this is extremely long and rambles)
You talk about the subtext of the BBC's promotion of the game, for example, about how they seem to imply that the women's game is as important as the men's game. But that's really difficult to take seriously when you consider that for that to be the case, there must be some sort of editorial mixed message, as the men have had lots more coverage (when you consider things like the TMS podcasts and the Cricket Show and the all-day highlights packages et . When the women's Test came up against the men's ODI, the ODI was given Sports Extra precedence (which doesn't really tally with an organisation that places women's cricket and men's cricket on an equal priority level). Also, I don't remember much coverage by the BBC of the England Women's tri-series against the West Indies and New Zealand in October.
However, the points you make are quite interesting. I think there's a real danger of coverage of any sport that normally exists outside of the public sphere being patronised when it's covered by the mainstream media, although this normally only comes about when people ill-equipped to talk about it get dragged into doing just that. That famous video of Richard Keys and Andy Gray talking about the 1998 Women's FA Cup final is a case in point - a set of highlights that looked like they were from an amateur match anywhere in the UK (mostly because it WAS played by amateurs - Arsenal Ladies only went semi-pro four years later). Now, when you look at coverage of women's football, it's a million times better.
(Something I don't like, when it happens, about women's sport coverage is when it is lionised as being much more sporting; so for example when Clare Balding said that people should watch women's football because the crowds were more well-behaved and there was less diving, I didn't think that was particularly helpful to women's football)
There's also a danger of over-earnest promotion of the game, but I'm not sure how guilty women's football/cricket are of that. The fact of the matter is that more girls are playing both sports than ever before, thanks to the work of @Chance2Shine and @WomenSportTrust among many others. Granted that a lot of them draw inspiration from the men's game when they're growing up and looking for their heroes, but more of them now have the ability to look up to people like Kelly Smith, or Casey Stoney, or Charlotte Edwards, or Sarah Taylor, or Katy McLean or whoever. Team sportswomen are becoming more and more relevant.
Also, about participation, girls are allowed to play in the same colts teams as boys, and, certainly in Surrey, are allowed to play two agegroups down (so an Under 12 girl is allowed to play in the Under 10s) up to a certain point. The minis teams of my club, Godalming, have a very healthy contingent of girls.
And the ECB did plenty marketing-wise regarding the 2013 Ashes - I thought they did it pretty well and generated encouraging attendances and awareness. The #RISE campaign ended up providing a link between the men's and women's Ashes, which was a good idea. But they could do a lot more, and it'll be interesting to see how this summer goes, when there isn't the lure of an Ashes series.
I'm not sure how the "tell" and "show" analogy really works - does that mean that all live sport reporting on the radio is abstract? I suppose it is, in a way, but I think it's harsh to use the limitations of a medium as a stick to beat women's cricket with. Giving out lots of tickets to schools probably wouldn't have worked during the women's Ashes as they took place during the school holidays. The price to get into Wormsley for the Test was only £10, which was an absolute steal compared to what you'd pay to watch even a Championship match. Even a ticket to go and watch Aldershot on Saturday would cost me nearly double that. The Chelmsford T20 was pretty much sold out as well.
I've just re-read this and a lot of it is waffle, not sure it really was meant to be quite this long. It's not meant to be a massive whinge about how women's sport is unfairly treated by the media, it might come across as such.
When I first read your article I found the "Don't forget about women's cricket!" really off-putting, and it really clouded my view of the rest of the article. Re-reading and re-reading it, though, you raise some quite interesting and thought-provoking points, especially about "new sports" and the DNA of sports coverage (good guy/bad guy, historical significance, etc.). I guess I switched off a bit because that BBC section reminded me of lots of other pieces on women sport that genuinely are riddled with rampant sexism. You lost me at that point, which was a shame.