Queens of the Kitsch Age?

It's quite telling that while the Women's World Cup is going on in Australia (and crying out for publicity), the Age has decided to invest in a couple of generic female bloggers who apparently go by Kiki and Sassy, to provide their supposed tongue-in-cheek spin on the ongoing Australian (men's) tour of South Africa. Upon reading their initial post, where they themselves admit "we don't quite know what we're doing here", it all feels a bit calculated on the part of the Age; indeed, they make no bones about which "important parts of the community" they are reaching out to. The duo apparently do have some sports cred going for them, having garnered a cult following with their blog on rugby.

Naturally, I'm inclined to dismiss it as lowest-common-denominator stuff, and in doing so I'm probably representative of the stuffiness that the cricketing world finds a burden in this day and age. This gimmick has its parallels with Sony TV's move of bringing in Mandira Bedi as a World Cup anchor in 2003, which as we know increased their ratings tremendously. Mandira has since reportedly come a long way from the cheerleading and the spaghetti straps, and can talk a decent game of cricket today. Full credit to her, but are viewers now willing to take her more seriously? The impact of those two months in 2003 has been far-reaching, with just about every channel roping in a female celebrity of some sort in order to keep up with the trend - remember Roshni Chopra on Doordarshan's Fourth Umpire? "Nobody's complaining" seems to be the verdict. Fair enough. A pretty face provides ample distraction when the game gets boring, and the inane discussions make for a round of laughs when the game is dissected later on.

All this, I imagine, breeds a patronising attitude which is a disservice to the genuinely interested female fan. For every Mandira or Kiki there is a Sharda Ugra or Jenny Roesler; but, as Cricinfo's Dileep Premachandran said in an article on this very subject, the latter kind "don't always get the respect they deserve because some thickos assume that they don't know as much as the men." In the recent past, the population explosion on blogosphere has meant that I've discovered a number of highly readable cricket blogs; among them, Maidenbowling, Miss Field and The Nightwatchgirl aptly hold up the mirror to the Age's venture on behalf of generation Z. Each one is worth reading in its own right.

The Age's rationale is that by having a relatively detached duo at the helm, they'll win over the similar-minded fan, who like the duo will get 'converted' as they go along. They could probably do worse than consider the case of Kit and Sash (sound very similar to Kiki and Sassy, don't they?), the Australian siblings who turned an obsession with Dion Nash and otherwise little knowledge of the game to begin with, into an extremely creative fan-site on New Zealand cricket, complete with player profiles and insightful articles. You really don't need a couple of greenhorns who claim "I HEART cricket" for reassurance as you take your first steps towards falling in love with the game; the events on the field, and the players themselves, are supposed to take you there.