Cup final deserves to fill MCG
The path to Sunday’s final against India at the MCG by the Australian women’s cricket team has not been smooth. The team has shown resilience as well as talent, overcoming obstacles such as the loss of its opening game to India, rain and a run of injuries. Strike bowler Tayla Vlaeminck was ruled out for the tournament with stress fractures in her foot and Sophie Molineux missed the early rounds with an injured thigh. Then came star all-rounder Ellyse Perry’s serious hamstring injury, which surfaced after an adroit piece of fielding. It has put her out of the finals. But as captain Meg Lanning said: “You need a squad to win a World Cup … We’re going to have to use our depth … that’s just the reality of it.”
In December 2017, it was Perry who had the confidence to predict “the sky is the limit” for women’s cricket and that the national side was ready to make the turnstiles swing at the major grounds. How right she was. Cricket Australia has backed the Twenty20 women’s World Cup well, drawing a legion of new fans to the sport. With or without face masks and hand sanitiser, more than 75,000 have bought tickets for the MCG. We hope it’s a sellout, beating the world-record crowd for a women’s event, which sits at 90,185 for the World Cup soccer final in Los Angeles in 1999.
Women have played cricket in Australia since the 1890s, when the dress code was ankle-length white skirts and straw hats. The interest in Sunday’s final on International Women’s Day is emblematic of the significant progress of women in Australia and around the world in diverse fields in recent years. The positive effects have filtered across society, benefiting women and men, and improving equality of opportunities for the young. At its best, International Women’s Day is not about ideology, feminist theory or affirmative action at the expense of men. It is about marking achievement and looking to the future.
On Saturday, The Weekend Australian’s Women in Education supplement examines the case in favour of single-sex schools, encouraging female leadership from a young age, opportunities in science and technology, mature students, and the importance of lifelong learning. In The Weekend Australian Magazine, Christine Armstrong explores why the promise of flexible working hours has not delivered for time-poor parents. And Sandra Sully looks at the state of play for women across Australian society. As one of her interviewees, plastic and reconstructive surgeon Neela Janakiramanan, said, powerful women need to listen to men with relative disadvantage and powerful men need to listen to women. Society’s ground rules should be clear, she said: do not assault, harass, bully, rape or discriminate against people. That was not “political correctness” but making people feel comfortable.
It’s a good message for International Women’s Day. And to mark the occasion, we wish the women in green and gold big scores, good catches and the very best of luck in the final.