Joy the Australians’ secret weapon as women’s T20 World Cup final delivers a special sporting moment
The evolution of the Australian women’s cricket game is well and truly upon us, but even in change ‘the pure freedom and enjoyment in what the players are doing’ will not be lost.
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If the Australian women could bottle the joy they play with, the world is their oyster. If Australian cricket administrators can carry the momentum forward from the most successful World Cup in the history of the women’s game, then the transformational nature of the win on Sunday night will be cemented.
Some years ago, Alyssa Healy was asked if she was ever jealous of the recognition and remuneration her partner — now husband — Mitchell Starc got. She was firmly of the opinion she would not trade places with him.
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The wicketkeeper-batsman, who won player of the match in the final for her bold hitting and sharp keeping, believed the joy of essentially playing for fun was something she valued, whereas the men’s game was so professional it had lost some of that.
Healy is clinging to that belief despite playing in the biggest game in the history of women’s cricket and being part of the vanguard of professionalism.
“You cannot wipe the smile off my face,” she said from the boundary on Sunday night.
“I think even if we had lost the game tonight I still would have been smiling. I never thought that we would get an opportunity like this in my whole career.”
The numbers surrounding the game are unprecedented, with claims it reached 1.2 million Australians on television.
Elbowed off the Nine Network’s primary channel, it still managed 531,000 free-to-air viewers, but it created history as the most-watched women’s sport event ever for Fox Cricket.
“Last night’s match averaged 405,000 across Fox Cricket and Fox W, making it the most-watched women’s sports event ever on Foxtel, our sixth-highest-rating cricket match ever, men or women, and the No 1 program to date in 2020 — it is a fabulous result and especially for women’s sport in this country,” head of Fox Sports Peter Campbell said.
Former head of Ten Sports David Barham told The Australian the game would change the landscape for women’s cricket and cricketers.
“Such a showcase on such a big stage, played at really high quality, it just says everything about where women’s sport can be and I think cricket is ahead of everyone else, clearly ahead of everyone else and that is because they have had pathways in place for so long and people around like Belinda Clark and Mel Jones and Lisa Sthalekar. There’s a genuine history to women’s cricket; there’s a real depth to it.
“To me this is the proof of what you can achieve in women’s sport and an example to other sports.
“Everyone can see that this game is growing, it’s growing quickly. It appeals to an audience that is a hard audience to get to.
“A female audience, especially a young female audience is hard to get to for advertisers and you only had to look at the crowd, look at the young girls, look at the interest, if you’re an advertiser now and you want to reach young girls and young women, women’s cricket is right in the zone.”
Barham believes there is, as Healy demonstrates, something unique about the women’s game.
“The other part of it that was so great was that it was so enjoyable, when you watch it you feel good because they’re feeling good and they’re loving it so much, the advantage women’s sport is that they are smiling, they are loving it so much, even when they were in the huddle before they went out yesterday they were laughing with each other,” he said.
“That freedom and pure enjoyment in what you’re doing is lost a bit in men’s professional sport.”
Former player and current chief executive at the WACA, Christina Matthews, urged cricket to keep at the task, saying she had seen peaks of interest in the past that amounted to nothing.
“The cage-rattlers will have to keep rattling the cage, nothing ever changes of its own accord. People have to force change,” she said.
Matthews pointed out that the next Women’s Big Bash League will struggle for oxygen as it is pitted against the men’s T20 World Cup.
Another former player turned administrator, Belinda Clark, is clearly of the same mind. The executive general manager of Community Cricket invited Australia’s state and territory community cricket representatives to the match and met with them first thing this morning as part of a three-day conference.
Cricket Australia said she was keen to “leverage the momentum” of the event and the win to impress on community cricket managers the importance of growing female participation and establishing pathways for women cricketers.
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Originally published as Joy the Australians’ secret weapon as women’s T20 World Cup final delivers a special sporting moment
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