Sport

Medium: More Johns than women

Features, Print, Sport

There is a real lack of female representation in our sports coverage right now. And it’s a big problem.

Even when there is no sport. Indeed, especially because there is no sport. Because women are disproportionately affected.

Across the sports pages of last Sunday’s nationals, eight Johns wrote articles, as did four Neils(!), and a grand total of seven women.

Of 166 sports articles (I know…) just three were on women’s sport (<2%).

The full version of this thread first featured on Twitter, on 25 April 2020, and can be accessed  on Meidum here.

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The Guardian: T20 Blast Final – Ben Cox wallops Worcestershire past Sussex to T20 Blast glory

Features, Match Reports, Print, Sport, The Guardian, The Guardian / The Observer

• Rapids chase down Sharks’ 157 with nine balls to spare
• Cox smashes winning runs and finishes 46 not out

Given the day out had begun almost eight hours previously, it was a show of restraint that we were a full 15 minutes into the final before we saw the first conga line. A similarly disciplined Worcestershire bowling performance meant the Finals Day debutants were crowned champions of the Vitality Blast, chasing down Sussex’s 157 with nine balls to spare.

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The Guardian: T20 Blast Final – Gathering of the unfashionable proving more popular than ever

Features, Match Reports, Print, Sport, The Guardian, The Guardian / The Observer

Edgbaston will be full for a Finals Day that promises to show some of the game’s less heralded sides at their Twenty20 best

Surrey have already been crowned county champions, England have wrapped up a Test series victory over India and the football season is back in full flow. Now, three weeks after the Vitality Blast’s quarter-finals, Somerset, the Worcestershire Rapids, Lancashire Lightning and the Sussex Sharks descend on Birmingham on Saturday for Finals Day.

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The Guardian: Royal London final – Forty years of hurt, and Kent will still be dreaming

Features, Match Reports, Print, Sport, The Guardian, The Guardian / The Observer

• Hampshire 330-7; Kent 269. Hampshire win by 61 runs
• Sam Billings scores 75 off 60 but four run-outs cost Kent

Forty years of hurt, and Kent will still be dreaming. While England’s footballers look to rectify 52 years without a trophy, Kent’s last one-day triumph was in 1978 and the wait continues. A Rilee Rossouw century, four run-outs and an unbeaten 75 by their former captain Sam Northeast denied Kent a title once more, with Hampshire ultimately easing to a 61-run victory.

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The Roar: Taking the Mickey – Pakistan’s perennial plot twist

Features, Print, Sport, The Roar

A lot has been made of England’s transformation since their beleaguered 2015 World Cup campaign Down Under.

Back then, their 50-over tournament came to a fitting culmination as England scraped a win in a rain-ridden dead rubber against minnows Afghanistan. In effect, their revival started as all good English revivals do – drowning in a beer-swilled haze of good intentions.

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The Age: The win that must change a nation

Features, Miscellaneous, Print, Sport, The Age, The Age

Women excel in so many sports yet investment and belief in female athletes lags behind. Jockey Michelle Payne’s win should be a game changer.

She’s only gone and won it. In a paradox like no other, Australian racing’s greatest prize has been won by a person on the field that the whole sport has for years contrived to belittle and objectify. Michelle Payne’s unlikely victory in Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup fittingly caps a year of tremendous sporting achievement for Australia’s women. Now here’s to capitalising on it.

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Sports Integrity Initiative: Convicted Pakistani cricketers eligible to return to competitive cricket

Match-Fixing, Sports Law

Yesterday the International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed that sanctions against Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt will expire at midnight on 1 September 2015. The ICC announced that the two cricketers, who were convicted alongside their Pakistani team-mate Mohammad Amir for their roles in spot-fixing during the England vs. Pakistan Lord’s Test in August 2010, would be eligible to return to competitive cricket after ‘fulfilling the specific conditions’ laid down by the independent Anti-Corruption Tribunal in February 2011.

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BBC Sport: Women’s Ashes – ‘There’s a hubris about England’

BBC Sport, BBC Test Match Special - Women, Features, Radio, Sport

by Kalika Mehta, BBC Sport at Canterbury

A dismal display from England in the sole Test of the seven-match multi-format Women’s Ashes series has left them on the brink of relinquishing the Ashes to Australia for the first time in five years.

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Sports Integrity Initiative: Film Review – Death of a Gentleman – is cricket dying in more ways than one?

Governance, Sports Law

Cricket is unique. It is considered the world’s second most popular sport. Yet, unlike football, some of the biggest countries in the world – the USA, China, and Germany for instance – barely know it even exists. Earlier this summer the FIFA corruption scandal made headlines the world over and it was the US’s Department of Justice who were the instigators of legal action against those involved. In cricket, the actions of the game’s administrators are less obvious, less accountable. It is for this reason that the film, Death of a Gentleman, is so integral to drawing attention to the game’s administration. The film’s producers claim that ‘a lack of independent regulation means cricket is being run in a way that fans become chequebooks and players become pawns.’ The Sports Integrity Initiative, an independent sports law platform created to air key issues in sports integrity and to provide a platform for change, has reviewed the film to highlight the integrity and governance aspects of the sport.

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