Women's World Cup Unheralded

The Southern Stars

Its January 28th and an online check of the major Sydney and Melbourne broad sheets this afternoon was revealing. Among nearly two hundred cricket stories listed on the websites, dating back to last Friday, of the three giants of Australian newsprint publishing, only three related to women's cricket.

This might well be a case of "so what" given the hurrah which player management has caused since December. Even just getting the terminology correct has been the subject of enough debate and comment alone. Considering the surfeit of cricket being played over the summer, with recently finished Test series and the usual January passing parade of short form, short on relevancy cricket, perhaps that inequity is understandable.

However, consider this: the Women's World Cup starts on Thursday. Is that a shock to anybody else?

Three days from the most important event in Women's cricket and apart from individual stories on the immensely talented and even more marketable Elyse Perry (Chip le Grand, Australian 26/1/13) and the effervescent Meg Lanning (Chloe Saltau, SMH 26/1/13) and a vague few paragraphs in the Age about the Australian squad, they may as well be invisible. These were the cricket pages of the sports section of course. On the main sports page, women's cricket doesn't exist.

Readers of thecricketragics will remember this writer taking Mark Nicholas to task about his Snidely Whiplash comment at the last Allan Border Medal and the odious media game of comparing the men's team with the women's ("No Comparisons Necessary" 9/10/12). I'm not going to cover the same ground again but its pretty sad statement to make about the male dominance of the coverage of sport, when three days away from the first game of the Women's World Cup, there is not even a mention of the Australian Women or the event on the front page of even Cricket Australia's website.

The Southern Stars are off to the sub-continent to win back the ICC World Cup, having failed to qualify for the final at home four years ago when India were twice their stumbling block. England beat New Zealand in the final and spoiled the party, despite the Kiwi's tailender Lucy Doolan scoring late runs and taking early wickets to nearly down the English.

With an epic T20 World Cup win against England - always their toughest rival - in the Caribbean last year, this Jodie Fields led team which has just the right mix of youth and experience and more than enough talent, is primed for a strong performance.

thecricketragics will follow the progress of the T20 World Cup closely and a preview will appear before the event begins.

Someone has to.

For really detailed coverage, got to ESPN Cricinfo, who are treating the event with the gravitas it deserves.