With the start of a new county season last weekend, I took a look at the national press to see how they are covering domestic women's cricket.
(NB Recycling the ECB's Super 3s Press Release doesn't count as "coverage"!)
BBC Web Site: Nothing.
Sky Sports Web Site: Nothing.
The Guardian: Nothing.
The Daily Mail: Nothing
The Telegraph: (Go on - guess!) That's right - nothing!
Now... it could be just me reading too much into the data, but... I'm sensing some kind of pattern here!
To be fair, there has been some coverage in the local press - rounds of applause go to (for example) The Leicester Mercury and The North Devon Journal. (Oddly, lower-division sides seem to be better-served by the local press than the top-tier teams.)
But in the nationals... for all their self-congratulatory articles about how women's cricket is 'on the up'... the actual coverage of anything below international level is basically non-existent.
It might help if there was a more systematic way of finding out what the results are. Supposedly, Play-Cricket and Cricket Archive are the answer .... well these methods didn't work very well with the first 2 rounds of matches. The Nottinghamshire match results remained well concealed for several days after they took place. I had to resort to surfing various player's Twitter accounts to get an idea of the results if not the detail. The Press are hardly likely to be so determined. Some of the players might be pros but I'd wager the scorers are doing it for the love of it so I can't complain.
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