The Spin | Going for gold? Why China’s female cricketers may benefit from Olympic aim

Going for gold? Why China’s female cricketers may benefit from Olympic aim The Cricket Research Network was told how the sport is perceived in China and why the women’s side is seen as the national team T he Cambridge wind had a February chill, and the trees at Fenner’s were still without any spring decoration, but the old bleachers to the side and the pavilion, largely unchanged since the 1980s, were reminders of a new season just a turn of the calendar away. Fenner’s cricket ground sits next door to Hughes Hall, where the Cricket Research Network held their third annual conference last week. The organisation, headed by Raf Nicholson, sometimes of this parish , is a place for cricket academics to exchange ideas, and the conference a chance for rest of us to put an ear to the door of data and detail. Of the many fascinating presentations, the most eye-popping, at least to someone untutored in Chinese sport, was from Max He, who had come all the way from Xi’an Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province, in the north-west of China. He told of a world turned upside down, where cricket is seen as a female sport and one that absorbs not only the resources, but also the glory and the story-telling – both anecdotally and officially. The women’s team play more games, have more staff, win more matches. They practise more frequently on turf wickets, train more abroad, have better experienced coaches. In reports, women are referred to as “the Chinese team,” while the men are defined by their sex and treated as something of a joke, the upended version of Len Hutton’s 1963 opinion on women’s cricket: “Absurd, like a man trying to knit.” State feminism in Chinese elite sport, said He, “is underpinned by the logic that medals are gender neutral units of political capital and the means for international recognition. Over time, this creates an instrumental equality, the promotion of women’s sport as an efficient pathway to maximise China’s performance in the global medal race.” The dir...