why is the BBC's sports coverage so crappy?

[realthog]

Today saw the finals at Lords, in London, of two major international cricket competitions: the World Twenty20 Women's Championship and the World Twenty20 Men's Championship. (Any US readers who feel cricket is merely a parochial interest should attend to the exciting footnote.*)

Although Twenty20, the shortest form of the game, is not a version of cricket I much admire, the importance of these two contests within the sport cannot be denied.

In the World Twenty20 Men's competition the final was between Sri Lanka and underdog Pakistan, with the latter winning quite convincingly. It's always nice when the underdog wins, but this match represented something more. Just a few months ago Pakistani terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore . . . which is one of the reasons why Pakistan were the underdogs here: since that attack their opportunities to play international cricket have been severely circumscribed while everyone waits for the Pakistani government to pull its finger out and restore some order to that nation. Thus the fact that the final should be between these two nations seems, in a way, a symbolic message to the terrorists that they should go stuff their heads where the sun don't shine.

So, yes, it was an important match. It's perfectly legitimate that stories about it should be plastered all over the BBC's website.

But what of the other World Championship final? This was between England and New Zealand, and was won in emphatic fashion by England; as more than one commentator has observed, it's as if the England team is in a different league from every other team in the world, with that symptomatic ability -- like Roger Federer used to have in the tennis world -- to step up a gear whenever the occasion demands. The English women now hold the World Twenty20 trophy, the World Cup (for 50-over matches) and the Ashes (the trophy hotly battled in both men's and women's cricket between England and Australia) -- in other words, every possible international award a women's cricket team could possess. Their captain, Charlotte Edwards, was quite rightly awarded an MBE a few weeks ago.

You can find an account of this match on the BBC website -- and for once without enormous difficulty, assuming you follow all the breathless headlines concerning the men's match. It doesn't deserve a headline of its own, of course, being beaten out in the sports-headlines stakes by someone winning a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Reality check: There are lots of Formula 1 Grand Prix races every year and the audience is strictly limited, but a World Twenty20 contest comes along only every few years.

Perhaps the Beeb is influenced in its thinking by the Formula 1 establishment's own estimate of the popularity of its sport, which is that it attracts some 40 billion television viewers per annum. This is a figure made all the more remarkable by the fact that there are fewer than eight billion people in the world.

This demotion to the sidelines is a consistent insult offered to women's cricket by the BBC. I have given up trying to find sensible cricket coverage on the Beeb and instead, for both divisions of the game, now turn to Cricinfo.com.

Probably, the Beeb feels that the relative obscurity it accords to stories related to women's cricket is merited in that, after all, women's cricket doesn't have all that much of a following. (Pass me another G&T, will you, Maurice? That's put the bloody gels in their place, eh, what?)

Well, there's a very good reason why women's cricket doesn't have a following to rank with the male equivalent, and this is that -- don't start trying to dodge the spotlight now! -- the one organization which might reasonably be expected to screen lots of women's cricket matches and thereby upwardly affect the sport's popularity, the BBC, steadfastly refuses to do so . . . because, after all, the sport doesn't have that huge a following, and . . .

The record's cracked from side to side.

The idea that women's cricket is inferior to men's is one that dates back to a generation that's now largely dead, at least outside the confines of Broadcasting House, where mummified hands still doubtless sign off on archaic decisions while their owners yearn wistfully for the days of Empire. It's a fact that female fast bowlers aren't (on average) as fast as male fast bowlers, and likewise that female batters don't (on average) hit the ball as hard or as far as their male counterparts. But some of the legends of male cricket haven't been hard hitters (Geoff Boycott, among batsmen) or fast bowlers (Shane Warne, Abdul Qadir, and a billion other wizardly spinners). What cricket is all about isn't brute force: it's about skill. It's about what in my own personal terminology of sport I call The Dance. And in skill the best of the female cricketers match, or arguably outmatch, the men.

Over the past couple of years I've become a huge fan of women's cricket. In part this is chauvinism: "my" team, the England men's team, is in desperate need to shake off the culture of arrogant stupidity that consistently makes it underestimate inferior opposition and thereby quite frequently lose to it. (They at last have a skipper for the Test side, Andrew Strauss, who seems adversarial to this idiocy, but he has yet to gain sufficient stature to throw out or re-educate some of the buttheads in his team.) You'll understand, then, the allure of finding another English cricket team that doesn't make me spend much of my time fantasizing about ramming their collective heads down the nearest toilet.

A second chauvinism: I gotta confess that, all other things being equal, given a choice I would, to paraphrase with quite extraordinary looseness the great 19th-century cricketer W.G. Grace, far rather spend a few hours watching Isa Guha bowl than Geoff Boycott bat.

Ignoring that last paragraph, which pds_lit undoubtedly won't, the point remains: women's cricket is hugely growing in popularity despite the fact that atavistic broadcasting organizations like the BBC are doing their doughtiest to make sure it doesn't. What the Beeb don't seem to realize is that, by ignoring one particular sport, they're effectively making the whole of their sports coverage crappy. It's as if the organization were trying to sell an encyclopedia with one of the volumes missing: "Hey, no one's much interested in topics that begin with 'R', and we aim to keep it that way. Your encyclopedia's every bit as good without them."

And, of course, the BBC, an organization that very much vaunts itself as one that rejects sexual discrimination (and every other form of personal discrimination), is here guilty of the most egregious sexism.

Shame on them!

============================

That footnote:

* The most popular sports in the world, ordered by numbers of fans (according to WikiAnswers.com):

1) Soccer. 3.3-3.5 Billion Fans. (Europe, Africa, Asia, Americas,etc)
2) Cricket 2-3 Billion Fans. (India,U.K,Pakistan,Asia,Australia,etc)
3) Field Hockey. 2-2.2 Bilion Fans. (Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia)
4) Tennis. Around 1 Billion Fans. (Europe, Americas, Asia)
5) Volleyball Around 900 Million Fans. (Asia, Erope, Americas, Australia)
6) Table Tennis Around 900 Million Fans. (Asia, Europe, Africa, Americas)
7) Baseball Around 500 Million Fans. (U.S, Japan, Cuba, Dom rep)
8) Golf Around 400 Million Fans. (U.S, Canada, Europe)
9) Gridiron (american football) 390-410 Million Fans. (U.S mainly)
10) Basketball Not more than 400M Fans. (U.S, Canada mainly)

Comments

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

It's sad, but women's cricket, like women's football - women's sport in general, really, with the exception of tennis - remains a second-division sport as far as broadcasters are concerned. Although to be fair to the BBC, the women's final did feature quite heavily on the News 24 bulletins and on Sky News - more heavily, at one point, than the rather lacklustre and Brit victory-less British Grand Prix.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"women's sport in general, really, with the exception of tennis - remains a second-division sport as far as broadcasters are concerned"

They should be absolutely ashamed of themselves that this is so -- hence the rant I've posted.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

PS: Of course, if it were nude mud-wrestling, you can bet the broadcasting organizations' gender biases would shift a bit bloody swiftish . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

For nude male mud-wrestling?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Women's sports are treated shamefully all over the world. This is something that gets a lot of people's goats. And when something gets done about it, some men whine like a bunch of babies.

The flip side to this, by the bye, is that sports that men play which have come come to be identified with women, are underserved. This is the case with field hockey. You will admit that it is a noble game, but because it is seen as "something for the girls" it is remarkably undersupported in the United States. Of course, this has been merely my experience. Every time I mention it as a men's sport I am met with incredulity.

(Also by the bye, I chaired a panel at a conference last autumn at which one of the presenters was a young man named Khachaturian. Alas, he disclaimed any kinship to the composer.)

[realthog.livejournal.com]

You will admit that it is a noble game, but because it is seen as "something for the girls" it is remarkably undersupported in the United States.

I have to admit that, on occasion when American friends have been extolling the virtues of basketball, I've murmured that in the UK it's called netball and largely the province of schoolgirls.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I've been known to say something similar in regard to baseball and rounders.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And when something gets done about it, some men whine like a bunch of babies.

Oh, yes, isn't that too damn' well true!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

This is the case with field hockey. You will admit that it is a noble game, but because it is seen as "something for the girls" it is remarkably undersupported in the United States.

Despite its being, as we see in the table above, the third most popular sport in the world with approx four times as many fans as baseball and five times as many fans as either American football or basketball.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

But you see, the world outside the US does not count. Just ask Bill O'Reilly.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"But you see, the world outside the US does not count. Just ask Bill O'Reilly."

I would very significantly prefer not to speak to him at all. If ever a figure stood in the way of legitimate human aspirations . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Sadly, he's not the only one.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

This appears to be a problem everywhere.

I am driven crazy by this, and also sports in college: there is no equivalent to an American football scholarship for women.

I'm not particularly a cricket fan, but it's difficult to be one and live in, you know, Cleveland. Curling, on the other hand . . . I loves me some Men or Women with Brooms.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Curling, on the other hand"

That's the point. I can forgive (just) people who're not absolutely besotted by cricket, but what I'm really getting at is the astonishing sexism of sports broadcasters.

The "minority interest" argument the Beeb offers just doesn't work. One of the most popular televised "sports" in the UK is currently snooker.* A couple of decades ago it was with a vengeance a "minority sport" . . . but then the Beeb started to televise it.

Meanwhile, the non-Beeb UK channels took up another "minority sport", darts, and found enormous ratings were there for the having.

So what the Beeb (and the other UK broadcasters) are doing is, effectively, saying: "We wish this sport to stay a minority interest because, well, after all, who can take it seriously, I mean, well, they're gels, aren't they, what?"

* The quote-marks aren't derogatory -- I'm a big snooker fan, having wasted too much of my university career on it. I'm just not convinced it's a sport.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

(The funny part is, as far as I can tell, on the Ceeb (heh), men's and women's curling is broadcast fairly close to the same frequency. I always managed to see more of the Tournament of Hearts than anything else.)

But anyway, yes. There's something that is said routinely about women's basketball in the US about how men don't want to watch women being better at a sport than they are, and my first comment is "£$%^&*&^%$£"*. My second comment is, you do realize that slightly over 50% of the population is female, don't you?

And of course they don't care, because the entirety of television, EVER, is based around the male 18-35 demographic. Which is how we end up with G4 and Spike** and other random cable channels screaming, WE DON'T CARE ABOUT WOMEN EVER. (Like SciFi actually thinking that "Eureka" is only watched by men. Suuuure.)

I tried to play snooker once, although we didn't know it was snooker -- we just thought it was a really big pool table with some weird combination of balls. I spent nearly 50% of my honeymoon playing pool (American-style 8-ball, apparently), mostly with a Red Stripe in hand.

*I have a British keyboard, so I apparently curse in British punctuation.
**I actually like Spike, sometimes. They run James Bond movies and Star Trek frequently.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Although when the British (Scottish) women's curling team were doing well at the Winter Olympics a few years ago, the British media suddenly discovered the sport and it got blanket coverage. Then it vanished again.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Coverage of women's athletics and swimming on the Beeb is generally about on a par with the male equivalents, to be fair. I suspect this may be because they offer the sight of lots of lithe young females running/swimming around in their skimpies -- a suspicion reinforced by the fact that in gymnastics the Beeb's coverage seems certainly to favour the women's events.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

There are sort of classic `core' events which have always been co-ed, like swimming and gymnastics, and have always been well-covered by the media. Tennis, in particular, as the next two weeks of the Wimbledon yawn-fest will no doubt testify.
It's when there have been more recent women's `versions' of `male' sports that the problem crops up. I know women's cricket has a long and noble tradition, but women's snooker barely gets a look-in, as does women's football.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"women's snooker barely gets a look-in, as does women's football"

In the US, oddly, football (soccer) is considered, when played by grownups rather than kids, primarily a women's sport.

"sort of classic `core' events"

In general I'd say you're right, but even with these there are exceptions. I have once seen a women's hockey match on UK television (although of course you don't see the men's game on TV much either) and I don't think I ever noticed a televised netball match.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

When World Of Sport was on ITV you used to get a whole slew of `minority' sports because the BBC had bought up all the big ones. I saw a netball match there once, but it was only highlights to fill in the space before the wrestling started.
If football's considered a women's sport over there, it can only be to the good of the sport. It is taken very seriously over here, but not by the media, to our perpetual shame.
Generally, the sports we tend to see are the `core' ones like football and cricket, and then the ones we're doing well in at the time. As I said, curling might as well have ceased to exist these days, but there was a time when you couldn't open a paper or put on the news without seeing the British (Scottish) women's team.
I note with some optimism that one of the few sports where women seem to compete as equals against men is Indy racing in the States. If you put a woman in an F1 car the entire board of the FIA would suffer a collective conniption fit, but in Indy drivers like Danica Patrick seem hardly to raise comment - they're just drivers.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"If you put a woman in an F1 car the entire board of the FIA would suffer a collective conniption fit, but in Indy drivers like Danica Patrick seem hardly to raise comment"

True. And, on the international stage, there are some highly successful female rally drivers, I've heard -- again, they're "just drivers". And, though I may be wrong, I believe there's the same attitude here in the US towards female jockeys.

You can guess these are sports I know little about, can't you?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

It doesn't show. Honest.

[pds-lit.livejournal.com]

Heck its Father's Day, I'll let the comment slide.