Women’s cricket can change world for the better
It has been a quiet week of satisfied reflection for SA’s Test cricketers and one of frustrated but proud reflection for the women’s team which came agonisingly close to reaching Sunday’s final at Lord’s after losing to hosts England by just two wickets with a couple of balls to spare.
Many regular cricket watchers had never seen a women’s match before this tournament and many of the game’s stars had spent up to a decade in relative obscurity before suddenly becoming household names – at least in cricketing homes.
The women’s game in SA has taken greater strides in a shorter space of time than in any other nation, mostly thanks to the sponsorship of Momentum which enabled the top six players to be retained on full-time, professional contracts just more than three years ago.
They soon realised that it was counterintuitive if not counterproductive to have half a professional team and quickly doubled the number of contracts. For the first time, the country’s best players were able to concentrate on improving their fitness and skills without worrying how they were going to earn, beg or borrow their next rent cheque.
If the effect on aspirant women cricketers in SA has been significant, on India’s female population it would be astronomic. Kolkatta Knight Riders captain and former national opener, Gautam Gambhir, went so far as to say that victory in Sunday’s soldout final at Lord’s would have a greater impact on the country than the men’s World Cup triumph in 2011. Sadly for India, but gloriously for England, the hosts won a tense, close match.
Captained by 34-year-old batting legend Mithali Raj, it should come as no surprise that this Indian team has “attitude” in abundance, and all of the right sort. Mithali placed herself on the boundary in an early group match which her team was winning comfortably — and finished off a novel that had caught her imagination as much as she had caught the imagination of a maledominated media.
“Who is your favourite male cricketer?” she was asked — by a man — after the match. “Would you ask a male cricketer who his favourite woman cricketer is?” she replied, deadpan.
The undoubted star of the tournament, however, was Harmanpreet Kaur, who smashed an unbeaten 171 to eliminate red-hot favourites Australia in the semifinal. The runs came from just 115 deliveries and included 20 fours and seven sixes. It was an innings of rare power but was the exception which proves the general rule — that women’s cricket is subtler than the men’s game, more defined by brain than brawn, and the more watchable for it.
The Australian women had to sign short-term employment deals with Cricket Australia because, like every professional cricketer in that country, they were all out of contract before the tournament began and are, once again, officially unemployed.
The pay dispute between the Australian Cricketers Association and Cricket Australia not only shows no sign of coming to an end, it is worsening by the week.
The ramifications for the world game may not only be “long term”, they may be fatal for the way we have enjoyed it for more than 100 years.
Cricket Australia’s chairman, David Peever, a former MD of mining conglomerate Rio Tinto where he systematically crushed workers trade unions, is intent on doing so again with the Australian Cricketers Association.
The result will be the exiling — or willing exodus, actually — of a generation of Australia’s best players. They may be financially secure already, but they still have the ideal of playing for their country.
The determination they have shown so far in defying Cricket Australia’s attempts to scrap the profit-sharing model which has been in place since the late 1990s suggests that they will not be bowed. So far, the second and third tier of Australian players have been similarly resolute.
Their resolution is not based on personal gain. They do not trust their employers to spend the income wisely or fairly.
Steve Smith, David Warner, Mitchell Starc and the rest of the national players want to ensure that domestic players, men and women, are guaranteed a fair share of the revenue pie — which is why they will not compromise on the 27% share they received until June.
The benefits to the women’s game in Australia, and women in society, are just one among several very good reasons to support the players.
They will be tenfold more in SA and a hundredfold in India. Every game of this World Cup was televised and women’s cricket is now poised to genuinely shape, even transform society.
Cricket may be heading towards an era of international, bilateral inconsequence in the men’s game with one-day international and Test series meaning less and less, but in the women’s game there is every reason to believe the game can empower women and educate men towards a much better world.