In many ways the women’s game is ahead of the men’s
Cricket SA acting CEO Thabang Moroe was bang on the money when he was banging on about the money last week, especially when he said the Momentum Women’s Proteas players should be paid the same as the men.
It is most certainly a conversation we should have.
South African sport is as guilty as local business of not doing enough to close the gender pay gap and of perpetuating the unspoken myth of male superiority.
Here’s an example: at a magnificently hosted and presented annual awards function at the weekend, national captain Dane van Niekerk was named SA Women’s Cricketer of the Year while Kagiso Rabada was named SA Cricketer of the Year.
The majority of male cricketers I have spoken to are of the opinion (when “safe” and among themselves) that women’s international cricket is of an equivalent standard to men’s club cricket.
They reckon the 1st XIs of any traditional cricket-playing school would beat the national women’s team. It is a typically banal argument — and irrelevant, by the way.
Although, come to think of it, I reckon a decent promoter could make quite a success of a Proteas vs KES 1st XI fixture — as Billy Jean King’s 1973 tennis match against Bobby Riggs was.
And the women would win, by the way.
If you think women can’t bowl at a decent pace or hit the ball for six you clearly haven’t seen Shabnim Ismail or Chloe Tryon in action.
Anyway, it’s irrelevant because: (a) half the world — and potential audience — is female, and (b) it requires no less skill for a woman to bowl a yorker than a man and no less commitment in spending many months away from home.
There is also a tactical dimension to the women’s game which is often at its sharpest when the result is on the line – women think more clearly than men when under pressure.
When Moroe advocated equal pay, it can be assumed he was not suggesting the men take a cut in order to meet the women further down the ladder. Including match fees and win bonuses, it would take between R35m and R40m over the next four years to reach equality. For all his good intentions, Moroe would struggle to get board approval for that.
The women’s game is growing rapidly and one day it may generate as much income from gate receipts and TV rights as the men’s game. It hasn’t yet happened in any of the other major team sports but parity has been reached in other “minor” sports and in individual sports such as tennis.
Another well-intended gesture at the dinner came during Cricket SA president Chris Nenzani’s welcome speech, in which he said he hoped to introduce an overall Cricketer of the Year in the very near future rather than separate categories for men and women. This might be the greatest disservice he could do for the women’s game and all the excellent professionals within it.
In many ways the women’s game is already way ahead of the men’s game in that it is focused almost exclusively around the two limited-overs formats. The women’s team has played 12 Test matches. Not this year or in the last three years, but overall — since 1960.
The most recent series (of just two matches) was in 2003, followed by one-off matches in 2007 and 2014.
Men and women alike concur that Test cricket is the purest and toughest form of the game, testing every aspect of physical skill and endurance. How can any cricketer who plays only 50- and 20-over cricket expect to compete for the highest individual recognition against another who has scored four of five Test centuries or taken 60 Test wickets in a calendar year?
As a member of the judging panel for the past three years, it would be akin to asking us to choose between a motorbike and a race horse. They’re just different. Women’s cricket is on the rise. It took Zelda Brits a decade to earn 69 ODI caps, whereas Mignon du Preez reached 112 in 10 years. Van Niekerk and the brilliant all-rounder Marizanne Kapp have reached 92 and 90 caps, respectively, in eight years whereas Lizelle Lee has 67 caps in only four years.
The very least we can do is to recognise that women’s cricket deserves to be recognised as independent and a product comfortably good enough and deserving to stand on its own.
Once we’ve done that we can do a great deal more to promote it and encourage more girls to start playing.
Equal pay and equal recognition will come, but it would be hard to sustain economically right now.