The silly fight we shouldn’t be having

CHANGING “man of the match” to “player of the match” is no reason to get your cricket whites in a knot, writes Selina Steele. It just reminds girls that this is a game for them too.

THANK bloody goodness.

Seriously Collingwood v West Coast ... bummer of an AFL grand final but summer officially starts on Saturday with the Southern Stars getting top billing for the start of the international season.

We don’t like cricket — oh no, we love it!

Nothing says summer more than the smell of freshly cut grass, chasing the cool side of the pillow, and cricket.

Saturday’s match against New Zealand marks the first international cricket televised under Cricket Australia’s new $1.2 billion broadcast rights deal with live coverage on Foxtel and Seven.

The match will be played under lights at North Sydney Oval but there’s been a been of a brouhaha bubbling away over the off-season with social media getting their whites in a knot over the term “man of the match” being changed to “player of the match”.

In particular, former English captain Michael Vaughan slammed the move claiming “the world is officially going bloody nuts”.

So we now have ‘player of the match’ in cricket rather than ‘man of the match’ even when 22 Men are playing !!!! The world is officially going bloody nuts ..... #OnOn

— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) August 24, 2018

But is it?

Cricket, like language, has evolved.

From eight-ball overs to six, from Tests to T20s.

And the role of women, once treated with tokenism, has also evolved.

From players, to administrators, to coaches and media commentators, women are now central to the sport.

Which is why the time is right for cricket, and the people who love the game, to embrace the language glass as half full.

Because Mr Vaughan, language does matter.

It shapes our world.

The perception of our world is not a passive process — our brains constantly make predictions based on our perceptions and our perceptions are more about what our brains expect to encounter.

And language, as the experts have proven again and again, creates a habit of mind.

Michael Vaughan doesn’t want men to be called “players”. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

To this point, we have grown up on a diet of cricket being a man’s game.

This was the case when I played, and it was certainly was the case when I first started sports reporting.

But now cricket has the chance to lead the sporting world and be gender neutral ... like the English language itself ... and if we can speak of this great game without a gender then it becomes a game for all.

What is staggering is the outrage that the change to “player of the match” created.

Mostly from men.

If something so simple can help create an all inclusive environment, why the opposition?

Men’s sport is so often considered the default.

We have football. And then we have women’s football.

We have golf and we have women’s golf.

Such great strides have been made in some sports — like tennis offering equal prize money — why should be not expect the same with language?

And if one little girl listening on radio or watching TV, understands — through language — that this is a game that welcomes her, how can this be a bad thing?

Selina Steele is former Sports Editor of The Sunday Mail in Brisbane, Sports Editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin, has covered Olympic and Commonwealth Games and is the current News Corp Deputy Editor of National News.

@SelinaSteele

Originally published as The silly fight we shouldn’t be having