By SARAH NORTON
If Alex Blackwell was a man she’d probably be famous.
This week her name would’ve been strewn throughout the media, plastered across front pages and shared thousands of times online.
Alex Blackwell is an Australian cricketer who made sporting history last weekend, but you’ve probably never heard of her.
Instead, these were the headlines we saw this week:
How badly the men’s cricket team suck at the moment.
Again, the men and how crap they’re doing.
Even what colour ball the men are going to use in their cricket games…
But these were the headlines you probably didn’t see:
And… nothing else.
I couldn’t even find a headline announcing one of the most exciting things to happen in the sport last week – that veteran cricketer, Alex Blackwell became the second Australian female ever to make over 1000 runs in her twenty-twenty match career.
Blackwell had been stuck on 990 runs for a while, and during that time had made three ducks (zero runs). On Sunday, she managed to celebrate a dual milestone when she also took out the title for Australia’s most-capped woman’s cricketer during her 190th match for the Southern Stars.
A huge milestone for any cricketer – and you didn’t hear about it.
Blackwell became the second woman ever in Australian history to achieve a huge score on an international sporting field and the only woman to have capped 190 games for an Australian cricket team. Yet the media overlooked her achievements and ran headlines about what colour ball the men were going to play with.
Last weekend the Australian women’s cricket team had a comfortable win over their strong rivals the West Indies in a T20 cricket match. During the game cricketing veteran, Alex Blackwell hit her 1000th short game run and made sporting history.
Top Comments
To answer your question: most people don't care.
It's supply and demand, basic economics. The general audience for sports news are men, and men generally don't care about women's sport for various reasons.
Alex is phenomenal!