Who suddenly decided people are interested in Womens cricket?

some sociology degree-clutching tw@t at the BBC.

I am gonna watch at hove on friday (and perhaps sunday) if still going at five thirty, £5 for adults and kids free.  A few from my cricket team and hopefully my sis, her hubby and the three kids.  Just seems daft they didnt make it a day night match, will hopefully let us in free at that time if still playing.   What a great chance to get kids watching international cricket, live, on the cheap.  Will be £15 for three adults and three kids.  Would be something like three hundred quid for a mens one dayer.  I am all for the promotion of the womens game.

rob-dylan, you do realise that your local club side would thrash the pants off a womans internationl team don't you?

I dont play for a club side.  I play for a village, atbest, side.
 
Played against a girl for the firsttime last season she bowled spin and turned it and was accurate and got a few wickets(not mine) think she played for sussex but she was decent.  I dont care,cricket is a great sport for women and as I work in an office where I can see the Hove ground from my office seems madness not to go and watch.  And I would be reallyhappy if England won.  Give them hell girls.

Womenssports team not being as good as a mens sports team shocker.  Your post isnt exactly an eye opener tyco.

no argument with any of that rob. it's just them clogging up the telly/radio with stuff people aren't interested in because someone's decided they ought to be that's the issue for me.

My theory is that women should go and watch it.  They should go and support the game and spread the gospel to their kids, they shouldnt rely on men to do their work for them.  As it happens I am such a cricket fan I will watch this just to enjoy us beating the aussies.  And it appears a few of my teammates are of the same opinion.  But ultimately it is up to women to make the women's game bigger imo, not blokes.

ive absolutely no interest in it at all and I love my cricket - someone must have been takin the p!ss to give it live ball by ball coverage on 5 live sports extra - whats that all about

Hasn't one of the aussie birds brought their 9 month old kid with them to England - and they expect us to take them seriously

Who are you to decide that people are not interested ?  Have you actually watched any ? The T20 World Cup was excellent. Why do they have to be as good as men to be allowed on telly ? Have you ever watched womens tennis, or athletics ? They are rubbish compared to men; but they are not playing men, are they ? The Solheim Cup was excellent the other night. Also, if I had to watch football, (what a sh1t sport that has become) I would rather watch the women than the prima donna Premier League. Finally .....and this is my main point ..... I started watching womens cricket whenever Ellyse Perry is playing ... phhhwwooooaaarrrr !

Who are you to decide that people are not interested ? Me because I am a person


Have you actually watched any ?  yes, its sh!t with military medium bowling

The T20 World Cup was excellent. Why do they have to be as good as men to be allowed on telly ?  because men's cricket is a hell of a lot more popular

Have you ever watched womens tennis - yes, that is worse than sh!t and a fookin p!ss take that they get paid as much as the men - do you think you would be able to sell a pair of centre court tickets for more on mens finals day or womens ?

, or athletics ?  Half of them are men anyway aren't they ?


They are rubbish compared to men; but they are not playing men, are they ? The Solheim Cup was excellent the other night. Also, if I had to watch football, (what a sh1t sport that has become) I would rather watch the women than the prima donna Premier League.


Finally .....and this is my main point ..... I started watching womens cricket whenever Ellyse Perry is playing ... phhhwwooooaaarrrr

I love watching women's sport. Hockey and netball for example which are not played in any number by men.

Why would I want to watch inferior versions of popular sports shown all the time football, cricket, rugby etc.

The womens ashes is more important that the mens imo

I think it's fantastic that women's team sports are televised more now. The world needs plenty of female role models that are team players, not just solo acts like in tennis or athletics, for example.

In an era when female access to education, employment and indeed sport itself is pushing the boundaries and testing the tolerance of old farts and religious nuts, I applaud the media for the increased coverage of women's sport. As a society, we need all the inspiration we can get.

I went to watch the last day of the test match at Wormsley. The standard wasn't bad ,the ground is beautiful and the people wanted to actually watch the cricket. I know I'd rather pay £15 (plus £5 parking)to watch this than c £70 to possibly be surrounded by a load of morons in fancy dress who are more interested in being seen on Sky and making beer glass snakes than watching the cricket. And no spotty 17 year old 'security people', many of whom can hardly put a proper sentence together in English,  telling you what you can and cannot do.

The ECB are close to killing the goose that laid the golden egg with their pricing and general marketing policies

Interest grew exponentially in Australia when the new uniform was introduced. Beach Volleyball style

Of course womens sports should be promoted. But why do the media seem to devote attention to women's cricket and football. There will never be the same interest in these as in the men's games and there is more than enough coverage of men's football and cricket on TV.

Why not promote women's hockey or netball more?

Netball. Now ya talkin!!

I went to watch the last day of the test match at Wormsley. The standard wasn't bad ,the ground is beautiful and the people wanted to actually watch the cricket. I know I'd rather pay £15 (plus £5 parking)to watch this than c £70 to possibly be surrounded by a load of morons in fancy dress who are more interested in being seen on Sky and making beer glass snakes than watching the cricket. And no spotty 17 year old 'security people', many of whom can hardly put a proper sentence together in English,  telling you what you can and cannot do.

why don't you watch county cricket then ?

Its 10 times the standard of women's cricket and sounds like its a lot cheaper - £15 sounds a lot for Women's cricket

I do, £15-£20 generally

I think it would have been £10 anywhere other than Getty's ground

Who are you to decide that people are not interested ?

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if people were interested, they'd go and watch it. if they went and watched it, I'd have no problem with it being covered.

It was bad enough when British people pretended to be interested in the Paralympics and Disability Sport, but this is just bizarre.

County cricket is a far better product for the casual spectator to enjoy on their occasional visits to cricket grounds.

To be fair, it's not like they're showing the women's cricket in place of something that would be any better. I'd far rather watch some live action than some 10 year old replay or WWE Wrestling...

Women competitors playing traditional mens sports are incredibly lucky to be given funding to be full time.

It's all about 'equality' but pretty patronising to women imo. They may not see it that way.

Women cricket lovers follow mens' cricket cos it's better. More women follow mens football and rugby cos it's better.

Women excel, truly excel at netball, a womens sport. I watched Eng v Aus. 5k in the crowd, mostly women. Amazing atmosphere and we won!

Why shouldn't the ladies, have some coverage and there are a few decent lady cricketers that play in League sides around Sussex.

More channels, more cameras, more airtime.  The sports broadcasters obviously have to explore more minority sport and obscure leagues of main sports.
As well as women's sports, I notice they're showing a lot more U21 and U19 stuff too.
All fine by me and it's a bonus if you can bet on it.

do they wear a box?


avoid lost ball?

This test match on the radio they've been interrupting it and including long stretches about the women's game including interviews.  Maybe that's a reflection on how interesting the men's match is but it doesn't seem the right thing to do on a programme advertised to be about "The Ashes" even when rain stops play.

Even so the women's game, like women's golf, is interesting and entertaining - enough to be covered and who knows maybe even have its own channel

Aug 23, 2013 -- 1:14PM, betchat wrote:

This test match on the radio they've been interrupting it and including long stretches about the women's game including interviews.  Maybe that's a reflection on how interesting the men's match is but it doesn't seem the right thing to do on a programme advertised to be about "The Ashes" even when rain stops play.Even so the women's game, like women's golf, is interesting and entertaining - enough to be covered and who knows maybe even have its own channel

a channel dedicated to women's sport - that would be absolutely fantastic

it would allow the 3 people who want to watch it the chance to do so and would give the rest of us some respite from having it rammed down our throat at every available opportunity

that's the thing bc: the coverage is disproportionate to the amount of interest there is in it.

the BBC's attitude is that if people aren't interested in something they "ought" to be interested in, it must be because they haven't had it rammed far enough down their throats.

the bbc should remember that if everyone cancelled their licence fee there wouldn't be a bbc

"Rammed down our throat"

Hardly.  TMS spends longer talking about buses, pigeons and cakes than they do about the women's game.  I suspect wondersobright, that you don't object so strongly about county match updates.

Quite a bit of self-congratulatory misogyny on here imo.

"self-congratulatory misogyny"?

the issue isn't women playing the sport, or even bbc covering women's team sport. it's them covering things that just objectively don't merit them spending resources on them, at the expense of other things that do.

5-live had live coverage of the women's test match, ffs. I wonder how much per listener that cost them?

The answer was the 2nd post:

"some sociology degree-clutching tw@t at the BBC. "

Since they have no need to worry about people not subscribing they can show whatever they want.  Abolish the licence fee.

Loving the people on here who are actually trying to argue that loads of people are genuinely interested in it. 

People are already getting bored on men's 50 overs cricket, so why should they suddenly become interesting in women's cricket? Even less action. When women can play T20 and hit boundaries galore, then it may be worthwhile.

I think it is fairly telling that when they have an international double header of women's 20/20 followed by men's 20/20 the ground is less than 5% full despite the women's game being free to get into if you have bought a ticket to the men's game

Another point - why do sky feel the need to keep giving us updates on the women's score ? I'd prefer county updates if they are going to be giving scores out

I could see the point in all this rage if BBC or SKY were showing the women's Ashes instead of the men's but complaining because of regular updates on the score does sound pretty pathetic. If you're a hardcore county cricket fan I guess you would be more interested in county scores but I suspect most people would be more interested in who was winning in an England Australia clash.

England cricket team doing their best to make womens cricket the next big thing.  Men take 120 overs to score less than the women in 50 overs.

Food for thought.

I went yesterday, fifteen quid for four adults and three kids.  And england won, what is not to like.

Would you take your family to see a higher standard of mens' Sussex Prem league cricket Rob? For free?

Not having a pop, just interested. I know yesterday was an international match but most women cricket followers choose mens club, county and international cricket to see and get involved with than womens' cricket.

I was umpiring in a Sunday friendly a few weeks ago between my club and another local team with which we are on good terms.

I paid my usual scant attention to what was going on before the game started, and took up my place at square leg for the first over. So far so normal. As the first ball is bowled, the fielder at square leg, whom I haven't seen in the preliminaries, walks in as the chap is bowling and I notice a long blond ponytail protruding from the back of their baseball cap.

"O tempera O mores - get your hair cut!" I think, until I notice that right under the ponytail, there is a girl's bottom. So now I realise that I have volunteered to umpire in what has now become a parody of a game of cricket.

As a few overs pass, my discombobulation subsides, and then after about eight overs, horror of horrors, the captain says to me "new bowler umpire, same action" and lobs the ball to this girl. I now start having nightmares about the next over never ending as this girl bowls wide after wide or has to retrieve the ball from halfway down the track, since everyone knows that girls just do not play cricket. Anyway, in she comes, the first ball describes a perfect outswinger's parabola and thuds into the keeper's gloves at a fair pace. Our guy batting has scored 139no the day before in a League game of decent standard, and lasts precisely four balls, when he nicks another away-nipper behind.

Not content with blowing away my prejudices with her bowling, this young girl later chases a ball down to prevent a four and hurls the ball over the top of the stumps from 60 yards away. Her father is their captain, and when I express my stunned admiration for his daughter at the tea interval, he says, "yeah, she's not bad, but we've got a couple better."

So we play them again a couple of weeks later, and they have indeed got another couple of girls just as good, both bowlers, and the original girl, now with a shoulder injury and unable to bowl, scores a well-constructed 30-odd.

All three of them play for Essex Under-19, and having not visited the County Ground since Richard and Haynes took Lever and Co apart in about 1980, I'm going to go and watch them play for the county first chance I get.

Great stuff Jed.

Enjoyed the story

good story

what is the point of women's 20/20 ?

Surely the whole point of 20/20 is to see the ball being carted over the ropes and flying into the crowd

I'm not sure if many of them can hit it off the square

The other point of 20/20 was that it was a short 3 hour game so people who could/did not want to spend their whole day at the cricket could go and see a whole match.

Now we have back to back games just to give women a crowd they would never otherwise get