The battle of the ***es....is there a place for women in men's cricket?

[cnerd123]

Cricinfo chimes in through Raf Nicholson:

Guest Column : Why mixed cricket will not help develop the women's game | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Personally, I disagree with most of that.

Sure Women's cricket relies less on power and intimidation and more on skill and technique, but that doesn't directly mean women can't play with men. I mean, bowlers like Praveen Kumar and batsmen like Mushfiqur Rahim aren't intimidating anyone, but if they can play and compete and do well with big tall fast bowlers and dangerous hard hitting batsmen, why can't equally skilful women do so too?

I actually played cricket with the Singapore U-19 women's wicket-keeper batsman in an inter-University cricket match. It was a small ground, 35 overs a side game, and she managed to score 20 odd opening the batting and even hit our opening bowler for a six (well timed pull shot). And she did a pretty good job behind the stumps.

She wasn't as powerful or intimidating as the other batsmen, but did a good job by just playing the right shots to the right ball, timing them well, and running between the wickets. She then had no troubles keeping to their quick bowlers (who, to be fair, were probably just under 120 kmph at best).


I've thought the same as someone mentioned above, about why can't women play with men when it comes to sports such as Golf, Snooker, darts, etc. Even Ten-pin bowling. I worked at the Asian TenPin bowling championships, and saw how women bowling on the same lanes as the men managed to occasionally outscore their male counterparts. There was no difference in the playing conditions between men and women bowlers. Yet they were separated by gender, and there are no big mixed-bowling competitions around the world; always a men's and a women's division.

When I asked about this, the players told me that the reason this is done is because if they were mixed, you might get 3 or 4 women who end up in the top 10 of the competition, but overall if you rank the best 100, you'd only get around 30 women and 70 men. It's just too uneven that way. And it is very, very rare that the overall best bowler in these competitions is ever a women - 99% of the time the best bowler overall average-wise is a man. If the competition is mixed, not enough women would be qualifying and would be playing. By splitting by gender, you allow more women to participate.

This, I think, would be very true for cricket. Women would have to compete with men for the niche role of slow-but-accurate medium pacer, or small-but-skilful batsmen, slow-and-loopy-but-cunning spinner. Very few, if any, women would be able to make the cut as a quick bowler, or a big hitting batsmen. Even stuff like fielding at the boundary requires speed and a good throwing arm, and men are likely to be superior at that.

Still, I do think it should be allowed that if a woman wants to play grade/club and even domestic cricket with men, they should be allowed to try out, and if good enough, should be selected. Maybe allowed women to play with men domestically parallel to their own women's international and domestic cricket.

 

[Daemon]

Was her name Carolyn Singham?

 

[Гурин]

Cricinfo chimes in through Raf Nicholson:

Guest Column : Why mixed cricket will not help develop the women's game | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

This is a piece that doesn't even deserve an answer.

I've thought the same as someone mentioned above, about why can't women play with men when it comes to sports such as Golf, Snooker, darts, etc. Even Ten-pin bowling. I worked at the Asian TenPin bowling championships, and saw how women bowling on the same lanes as the men managed to occasionally outscore their male counterparts. There was no difference in the playing conditions between men and women bowlers. Yet they were separated by gender, and there are no big mixed-bowling competitions around the world; always a men's and a women's division.

When I asked about this, the players told me that the reason this is done is because if they were mixed, you might get 3 or 4 women who end up in the top 10 of the competition, but overall if you rank the best 100, you'd only get around 30 women and 70 men. It's just too uneven that way. And it is very, very rare that the overall best bowler in these competitions is ever a women - 99% of the time the best bowler overall average-wise is a man. If the competition is mixed, not enough women would be qualifying and would be playing. By splitting by gender, you allow more women to participate.

Of all the sports you named, snooker is about the only one where you cannot have a clear advantage by having a superior strenght, even in darts it helps to retain accuracy when you throw 23gr darts for 3 hours.

Let me bring out again the Polgar experiment. For decades there was this misconception in chess that women were mentally inferior to men (Bobby Fisher always refused to play against women. And against jews. But in his defence, must be said that he was an idiot). Then, Judith Polgar becomes a top 10 player, beating Kasparov (in a game where Kasparov used the Berlin defence) and a couple of years later she even qualified for the Candidates' Tournament. Yes, it could still be argued that she is the only woman in the top 100 of chess players, but the reason now seems to be more than the global ratio of male players to female players in chess is around 100 to 1 than 'they are mentally less equipped than men'.

This, I think, would be very true for cricket. Women would have to compete with men for the niche role of slow-but-accurate medium pacer, or small-but-skilful batsmen, slow-and-loopy-but-cunning spinner. Very few, if any, women would be able to make the cut as a quick bowler, or a big hitting batsmen. Even stuff like fielding at the boundary requires speed and a good throwing arm, and men are likely to be superior at that.

Still, I do think it should be allowed that if a woman wants to play grade/club and even domestic cricket with men, they should be allowed to try out, and if good enough, should be selected. Maybe allowed women to play with men domestically parallel to their own women's international and domestic cricket.

I absolutely agree and that's the main point about Sarah Taylor playing for Sussex, women should be allowed to play both forms of the game, like U19 players. Yes, the vast majority will be able only to compete for those roles you mention (but then remember the Williams sisters serving at 210ks), but if they eventually outperforms men, why not? And given that they're usually more agile they might hold a natural edge in keeping or fielding in close catching positions (just like quite a few women play goalie in hockey).

I'd love to know the global difference in playing numbers between male and female cricketers (then, there is also HOW and WHY do you play, not only HOW MANY do play). I'm convinced that, altough not the only one, the biggest reason women are less competitive than men is because they are a lot less interested in the sport(s), so there's a much, much, much shallower pool of talent.

Then, if we go beyond that we might find the social (some might argue sociobiological) reasons and the relative pressures that by average make them less interested, but I don't think this is the place for a sociological lecture of a few thousand words to demontrate something that'll look obvious to lot of people.

 

[r3alist]

i think there has to be a reality check and we need to accept womens cricket for what it is - it will never be as powerful or as fast as mens cricket, that gap will always be there, so why are we trying to fit a circle into a square?

 

[wellAlbidarned]

Top cricketing women can definitely compete in mid-upper level mens club stuff, but it's just not going to happen at FC level.

 

[Prince EWS]

Top cricketing women can definitely compete in mid-upper level mens club stuff, but it's just not going to happen at FC level.

I don't think we're anywhere close to having someone being able to go from international women's cricket straight to First Class cricket, and we may never get there. However, I see that as being a bit like how there are no First Class standard cricketers playing fourth grade for Mosman. It's just too big a jump to cope with immediately, but it doesn't mean no-one will ever climb up the ranks one by one from fourth grade and break into First Class cricket from the Futures League down the track.

What I'm interested in is the possibility of an outstanding female cricketer putting women's cricket on the backburner and earning her way up through the grades as a youth cricketer playing men's cricket as much as possible. While there are obviously physical handicaps involved, I don't think it's out of the realms of possibility that a woman could make it to First Class level through that path, learning and developing her game like any other player would.

 

[uvelocity]

what about trannys

 

[BackFootPunch]

Something that's always interested me is the impact women playing women's cricket has on their development. Where I grew up the few girls who played had to play in the boys grade. In my regional team at the major South Island primary schools tournament (basically 12 and 13 year olds) we had a girl playing for us who more than held her own. She wasn't too different from us physically at the age, her fielding was fine and she was one of our best bowlers.

Then we all went off to high school and started playing for school teams while she, being pretty damn good for her age, traveled at weekends to play in a women's comp in the city. She played a couple of games for the 1st XI at her school but largely stuck to playing cricket with other females.

I've always wondered whether she would have developed differently as a cricketer if she'd kept playing in boys then men's grades as she grew up. Obviously that wouldn't have helped her physical development but it definitely would have helped how she approached and played the game.

 

[Son Of Coco]

what about trannys

 

[vic_orthdox]

Might see Meg Lanning doing some stuff against the men at some stage.

 

[Strike!]

This video comes to mind.

Brian Lara dismissed by a Woman - YouTube

 

[Himannv]

Might see Meg Lanning doing some stuff against the men at some stage.

 

[Prince EWS]

So bad, but I still laughed.

 

[tooextracool]

Personally, I've never quite understood the obsession with mixing men and women in all forms of sport. The reason why genders are separated in sport is for the very reason that we have separate bathrooms - men and women are built differently.