Cricket Australia to focus on luring women, kids to Big Bash 20-20 cricket

SYDNEY - Behind the glare of glitz, gloss and glamour that will almost certainly characterize the cash-infused 2011-12 Big Bash League, the bean counters at Cricket Australia will be fixated on two demographics - women and children.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the real powerbrokers of Australian sports are mothers, and the wise heads across the sporting landscape know this.

Women are the decision-makers, the people who overwhelmingly determine which sports the children in the household play.

If mum thinks cricket’s kind of fun, exciting, fast-paced and won’t take up too much time on the weekend - and she doesn’t mind going to a game or two at the SCG each summer - maybe she won’t mind spending a few hundred dollars on a bat, pads and whites for little Johnny.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures from 2007 show that cricket had the greatest disparity of all major sports in Australia between male and female patronage.

Cricket was well over twice as strongly attended by males than females. Only motor sport was comparable in its male skew.

The realisation that cricket is losing the war over women has dawned at Cricket Australia’s Melbourne headquarters and they are determined to do something about it. (ANI)