Chris Waters: Crossing the sexual divide, but Taylor will hurt women’s game

“The surprise, in fact, is that it has taken so long for a county to sign up a top woman player,” observed the Guardian, hailing the idea as “a ground-breaking move for women’s cricket”.

The Daily Telegraph insisted that “England’s Sarah Taylor can inspire a generation of girls by playing cricket with the boys,” while The Times declared that “Sussex have taken an enlightened view of women’s cricket”.

If a deal can be finalised, Taylor, 23, would become the first woman to play county second team cricket and, theoretically, pave the way for women to play County Championship cricket too, thereby breaking with decades of tradition and unleashing an era of mixed-gender cricket.

Although I have much admiration for Taylor and the women’s game in general, I cannot share in the prevailing enthusiasm that has greeted this development.

Far from seeing it as “a ground-breaking move for women’s cricket”, I believe it would be detrimental to both the men’s and women’s games.

In my view, such a move would merely reinforce the perception that the men’s game is “real cricket” and the women’s version its lesser cousin.

Far from improving the lot of women’s cricket and women cricketers, it could devalue matters by taking away the best female players from a sport that needs all the stars it can get.

Of course, the counter-argument is that if you’re good enough, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female.

The only thing that matters is whether you can play.

In Taylor’s case, the argument goes that not only is she good enough (of which I have no doubt) but that she needs to test herself against better opponents.

However, that merely reinforces the notion that women’s cricket is inferior.

Clare Connor, the head of England women’s cricket, and, significantly, a board member at Sussex, believes Taylor would only benefit from challenging herself in a male environment.

“Any opportunity for our players to be challenged and for their development to be accelerated beyond the norm would be welcomed, so long as those opportunities tallied with the player’s stage of development,” she said.

“There is no getting away from the fact that this dialogue with Sussex is a hugely positive step for the game and our players; it is indicative of how the women’s game has progressed in recent years if players are turning heads in this way, and I think it is also fantastic to know that first-class counties are open to such possibilities.

“As a board member of Sussex, it is pleasing that the club is demonstrating an open-minded and innovative outlook to the game. Everyone at Sussex is a champion of the women’s game.”

Those in favour of Taylor challenging herself in men’s cricket could point to other sports to support their stance.

Horse racing, for instance, is very much mixed gender.

Amy Ryan, the Yorkshire jockey, capped a 2012 to remember by becoming the first woman to win the apprentice title and then immediately declared it would only be a matter of time before a woman won a British flat racing classic.

Lucy Alexander, the Scottish jockey attached to Ferdy Murphy’s stable at West Witton in North Yorkshire, could well become the first female winner of the conditional jockey’s title, although her hopes recently suffered a setback when she fractured her collarbone at Musselburgh.

Women have also long flourished in the mixed environments of show jumping and equestrian.

However, there are also examples where they haven’t flourished.

Reanne Evans, the Dudley-born snooker star who has won the women’s world title eight years in a row, was given a wild card on the men’s professional main tour in 2010-11, which enabled her to enter at the qualifying stage for all ranking events.

However, she flopped badly and finished bottom of the professional rankings.

Michelle Wie, the highly successful women’s golfer, failed to pull up trees on the PGA tour, as did Annika Sorenstam, the former women’s No 1.

The most common reason advanced as to why men are apparently superior to women in many sports is the physical difference between the sexes.

A man can more often than not hit a cricket ball further than a woman, or run faster, swim quicker, and so on.

But even in sports demanding little physical effort there exists a disparity. Why should a woman, for instance, not be as good as a man at snooker, darts or chess?

Yet how many could stand shoulder to shoulder with the men in those sports?

Perhaps scientists rather than sports writers are best qualified to explain.

In my view, women have worked hard to make their sports popular and competitive.

Men may have many physical advantages, but that does not make women’s sport any less worthwhile. On the contrary; one has only to consider the stunning success of Yorkshire’s Jessica Ennis and Lizzie Armitstead to know that women’s sport – at its best – is as good as men’s.

The achievements of such as Ennis and Armitstead will inspire a generation, encouraging more and more women to take up competition.

But let us celebrate those women for what they are – women competing at the pinnacle of their sport.

Mixed sports may work in certain cases, but, by and large, sportsmen and women should be equal but separate, and we should not be afraid of offending the PC brigade by saying so.

Clare Connor’s contention that “any opportunity for our players to be challenged and for their development to be accelerated beyond the norm would be welcomed” is understandable but flawed.

After all, was not the greatest men’s cricketer of them all, Sir Donald Bradman, statistically around 33 per cent better than any other batsman to have played the game? Yet there was never any wish on Bradman’s part to pit himself against better players, assuming they existed, and the Australian was simply celebrated for the genius that he was.

Finally, and without wishing to debase the argument, there is another consideration re Sarah Taylor.

For where exactly would she get changed and showered?

After a long, hard day in the field with the Sussex second team she will, by necessity, need to be treated as an individual. Seclusion amid integration.

and another thing...

TO borrow the words of Sir Alex Ferguson: “He could have been killed”.

Okay, so perhaps not, but to judge by some of the hyperbole that surrounded the incident when Chelsea’s Eden Hazard appeared to kick a ball boy during the League Cup semi-final against Swansea City, you could have been forgiven for thinking so.

When Charlie Morgan, the ball boy in question, refused to return the ball after it had gone out of play at the Liberty Stadium, Hazard seemed to kick Morgan in the ribs.

The Belgian claimed he thought he “kicked the ball and not the boy”, but the furore that followed was quite absurd.

Although I accept Hazard was in the wrong and deserved to be shown a red card for his actions, my own view is that he did not kick Morgan hard enough.

After all, this was a 17-year-old - not a boy - who wilfully dived over the ball to stop Hazard retrieving it.

It was an attention-seeker who, prior to the match, bragged to his handful of Twitter followers: “The king of all ball boys is back and making his final appearance # needed #for #timewasting”.

Of course, it almost goes without saying that Morgan now has more than 100,000 Twitter followers.