The Australian ran another laudatory piece this morning about women’s cricket, namely about the final ODI between Australia and New Zealand. Australia won and thereby won the series. I saw the highlights on different news broadcasts. Keep in mind that the broadcaster always shows the best and most exciting action.

A highlight in yesterday’s final was Ellyse Perry’s maiden century in the one-day game which reporter Andrew Capel called ‘superb’. At least, he did not make the absurd comparison between Perry and one of the greats of the men’s game Keith Miller – as has been done. I made the following comment:

Let’s pretend that the standard of the final was above schoolboy 16-year-olds and add a whole lot of hyperbole about the performances.

It took 5 hours but The Australian did evenutally print my comment among unstinting praise for the girls and the game, one (a female) saying ‘Wish we had a bloke as good as her in the Aussie men’s team.’

Indeed, I’m all for giving Perry a run in the men’s test team to see how she would go against a Mitchell Starc 150 kph screamer swinging in the air and jagging off the pitch instead of the tame lot she batted to a shortened boundary. That would be a dose of reality. But with truly talented batsman Phil Hughes in mind, would they really risk it? Or would the postmodernist fantasy world we live in defeat the risk?

Feminists are unstoppable. They’ve captured the world of sport reducing former (male) champions to cringing superlatives about female performance. I’m interested to hear how much those lucky female cricketers who make it to ‘professional’ status are paid. That will give us a good idea of the dream time we’re in.