In some ways this has been a depressing week in sport. We’ve watched aghast as our beloved football codes have been stricken by claim and counter-claim that somebody at some point was almost certainly injecting someone else with something that might have been illegal.
And at this stage you kind of hope it was, because if people were going through this almighty rigmarole just to inject legal substances, you’ve got to think there are more efficient uses of the resources our sporting bodies have access to.
And as for the sport itself, it’s been a little bit dispiriting too.
Engagement with the summer of cricket waned as, after proving their ability to swat the West Indies out of the air like a frog’s tongue catching a fly, the Australian team chugged along moderately, keeping its palm on the Windies’ forehead so their swipes never quite reached the target, without ever really seeming to engage in much of an actual fight.
And as this strange little series, detached from any Test tour or broader context, continued, a drip feed of Aussies departed for Indian shores to prepare for some real stuff, progressively weakening the side right up until the season’s final Twenty20, in which a vaguely buoyant Windies team defeated a vaguely interested Australian team that lacked its biggest stars and a sense of purpose.
However, I have a secret to impart, which may come as quite a shock to anyone whose eyes have been fixated on the mainstream media and who has been unable to tear themselves away from the hypnotic effect of James Brayshaw’s gibberish.
The fact is, Australia is right now preparing for a World Cup final, in which they will start hot favourites, thanks to a line-up jam-packed with dazzling stars of the international firmament.
But here’s the twist: this Australian team is entirely made up of WOMEN!
I know, right? Here’s another twist – all the other teams they’ve been playing against are made up of women too!
“Now I know you’re crazy, Ben!” I hear you exclaim, but it’s actually true.
Women really and truly do play sports that don’t involve beaches or being verbally abused by a Williams sister.
And in the case of Australian women and cricket, they don’t just play it, they kick massive freighter-loads of arse all over the world.
In a couple of days they’ll more than likely carry off the World Cup, so if you’re yet to get on board, you better hurry. You won’t regret it.
Your favourite player will probably instantly be Lisa Sthalekar, the tiny all-rounder who boasts a Test century alongside a Test bowling average of 20.95, and bowls offspin of seemingly excessive innocuousness that somehow nobody can seem to hit off the square.
Or maybe it’ll be Ellyse Perry, who plays cricket for Australia during those times when she’s not playing soccer for Australia. Yes! The classic Australian multi-sporter still lives. Perry is a modern-day Keith Miller, the 21st-century Snowy Baker, the ponytailed Laurie Nash.
She’s a phenomenon.
Or perhaps your favourite will be the hard-as-nails street fighter Alex Blackwell, or the whippy teenage seaming prodigy Holly Ferling, or Meg Lanning, who a couple of months ago blunderbussed a century against New Zealand, off 45 balls. Forty. Five.
That is what we professional sports writers call “exciting”.
And it’s an exciting team, playing an exciting game. In a recent World Cup match the Southern Stars crumbled to 147 all out against England, only to rebound with a stirring display of Eureka spirit and win by two runs. It was breathtakingly tense, and put the male snorefest on the other channel to shame.
But the point isn’t to say “stop watching men, start watching women”. I love the men’s game too, and I’ll happily watch just about any cricket at all.
The point is, there’s a whole world of entertaining bat-and-ball that we so rarely pay attention to, and the fact is we’re cheating ourselves.
Our cricket-viewing lives could be so much richer and more fulfilling if we gave the women their due, and we’d have more options: when one gender’s side of the great game starts getting a little boring, we can immerse ourselves in the other.
This applies to plenty of other sports too, by the way. Soccer, basketball, rugby…if there’s a bunch of dudes sweating it out, there’s bound to be a bunch of lasses doing the same, just with fewer resources, more minuscule remuneration, and crappier TV deals.
But that surely, can be fixed.
On Sunday night, I’ll be throwing all my cricket tragic pride behind the Southern Stars, and I hope you’ll join me, both for the big game, and in seeking out more brilliant sportswomen to cheer on around the world.
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