I learned something today. The Australian women’s cricket team was, hitherto, not actually known as The Australian Women’s Cricket Team.
Was it just me? Sure, I knew of our world-conquering, willow-waving lasses as the Southern Stars, but I had simply presumed that, in the same way that the Australian women’s hockey team is known as the Hockeyroos, for example, and the Australian women’s basketball team is known as the Opals – and so on – that being the Australian Women’s Cricket team was the pre-existing starting point.
I thought the clever people in the marketing department at Jolimont had devised a catchy moniker to go with it that had then fallen into common usage.
Well, today has made apparent that was indeed not the case. Certainly if the rejoicing by greats such as Lisa Sthalekar and Alex Blackwell at today’s official announcement is anything to go by, it is, in fact, quite a big deal that the Southern Stars will henceforth be officially known and referred to as the Australian Women’s Cricket Team.
But here’s the thing. For mine, Australian women’s cricket missed an opportunity. They missed an opportunity to highlight that they were ahead of the men, that they were already ahead of the game, being the national cricket team that actually had a moniker.
Was there perhaps an opportunity for the girls to say ‘hey boys, catch up with us and get yourself a moniker!’?
Instead, it has been framed as the girls ‘catching up’ and now becoming ‘equal’.
At a time when women’s sport is at the forefront of our minds, I think it would have been a great opportunity to show how far the team has come.
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