The first rule when comparing women’s sport to men’s sport is: don’t compare women’s sport to men’s sport. This is generally a pointless exercise, used more often to denigrate or shut down a discussion. More widely the men v women dynamic is one of those red flags, a sign in any social media debate that you’re drifting into the arena of the unwell.
It’s up there with having lots of letters and acronyms after a Twitter name or engaging in long, accusatory conversations about perceived bias against José Mourinho led by people whose internet avatar is the scowling, righteous face of Mourinho – the digital equivalent of plastering a piece of pink, sweating processed ham over your face, cutting out a set of eyeholes and then taking part in a live televised debate about the evils of vegetarianism. And yet sometimes it is necessary to compare men and women in sport. If only to emphasise the way two needlessly parallel codes may benefit from a little more joined-up theory and practice.
There was a moment of interest this week in the third Women’s Ashes T20 at Bristol. With seven overs gone, Tayla Vlaeminck came on to bowl. Vlaeminck is a 20-year-old from Bendigo, hailed cautiously as a skiddy, whippy bowler of genuine pace, albeit one who has already suffered two ACL injuries and a dislocated shoulder. And so all eyes turned, a little anxiously, to the speed gun. Her first ball was a dot. Her second was back of a length and drew a top-edged pull from Nat Sciver. She got one delivery up to 75mph. Her final ball was hooked for six, but even this felt “proper”, the extra pace, as ever, sharpening every detail.
Vlaeminck looks like the real thing. No doubt she will get quicker, source of the inevitable “Taylah swift” headlines the next time she wrecks a top order. But the rarity of her speed and the relief as that gun ticked up also raise other questions.
Women’s cricket is in an excellent place. This is a high-skill, high-growth sport. The divide between men and women remains, but it seems possible there may eventually be mixed teams at most levels and nobody will bat an eyelid.
There is one thing though. There aren’t enough Vlaemincks. Or rather, the gap between everyday male bowling speed and top female speeds is too large to make any real sense. There are structural reasons for this. Men’s cricket has more than 100 years of resources and tradition behind it. It has a much broader spread at every level. This gap is closing. Come back in 10 years and then have a look.
But this can’t be the only reason. It makes no sense that a male amateur, or indeed a 14-year-old boy, can bowl significantly quicker than a female professional. This is not the way it works in other sports. Athletics, for example, shows that women can run like lightning and hurl heavy objects miles. The fastest women run 100m 8.7% slower than the fastest men. In cricket, a top-level female fast bowler is 20-25% slower than her male equivalent.
I’m no fast bowling expert. But Steffan Jones is, a former Glamorgan quick turned professional coach and a deep thinker on these matters. Vlaeminck’s front-on action reminded me of a recent Jones social media post about the differences between male and female pace bowling. Jones believes the issue is coaching. From a young age women are taught to bowl in the same way as men, a method developed over many years to bring out a certain set of strengths. As he says: “If we continue to try and copy how male counterparts bowl then there will never be a genuine fast bowler in the female game. However, I believe if we begin coaching young female bowlers to all bowl front on, yes, I think they can.”
He goes on to talk about “rotational trunk power” and compares female javelin throwing techniques that accentuate a more linear set of movements. He concludes that women simply need better, more bespoke coaching from a very young age.
This feels as if it just has to be right on some level. It also touches on a wider issue, that most major sports are by their very nature sexist or at least biased against women in their basic modelling.
This is not a modern-day thing. In the years when our major sports were codified women were given little consideration as athletes. The association football we play is Charterhouse football. The rugby is Rugby football. These were not co-educational schools, just as the rules and techniques of the codes they produced tend to reward a distinct set of attributes.
Fast forward 150 years and if we were to design a new set of sports from scratch the qualities rewarded and the techniques encouraged may be very different. At which point we come full circle. What Jones says about coaching female fast bowlers is applicable to anyone. Why aren’t men bowling steadily faster over time? Why do we seem to have topped out at the low 90s? Why would you coach every person as though their physique is the same, rather than a distinct thing with its own angles and strengths? Opening the door for a more detailed sport science may just be a great leap forward for everyone.
Sound far-fetched? Well, it may have happened once already. There is evidence it was women who invented round-arm bowling in the first place, made necessary by the formal outfits 19th-century female cricketers had to wear and quickly adopted by their male underarm counterparts. Who knows, with a little care, and little less concern for the idea of one size fits all, something similar could even happen again.
• This article was amended on 5 August 2019. An earlier version, referring to Charterhouse and Rugby, said they “are not co-educational schools”. That reference should have been in the past tense.
