On Saturday, John expressed a rather strong opinion regarding the fact that cricket commentators are now having to say ‘batter’ rather than ‘batsman’. Batter, he said, was what you used to make pancakes. The MCC, he added, are toadying to the masses by changing the laws of cricket to appease the PC crowd.
I responded by asking him, “Why not call them batters when we don’t call bowlers bowling-men?” He didn’t know. I then posited that, apart from batsman, cricketing positions appear to be gender-neutral. “Well, except for third man,” He added. “And nightwatchman and twelfth man.“
Ok, I conceded, there’s a few.
As far as ‘third man is concerned, simply calling the position ‘third’ has been suggested. Interestingly, the reason the MCC had to change the laws of the game is because the term ‘batsman’ was enshrined in law while ‘third man’ is not. It’s just a term that’s been used to indicate a position on the field and is the accepted nomenclature which means, it could be called anything. In fact, I’ve seen a lot of captains and bowlers just pointing to third man and yelling at a fielder, “STAND THERE!“
Oddly, there’s a third man position in women’s lacrosse as well.
I’m going to forget about nightwatchman because I think it’s a stupid and outdated strategy that increasingly fails. If anything, changing it to Night Watch would give it a much cooler sound while maintaining the stupidity of its use.
So, ignoring batsman and third man, and the other few, the rest are gender-neutral. And, so it is with other sports. Football, for instance, has strikers, forwards, wingers, sweepers, goalkeepers, defenders. Horse racing has jockeys, car racing has drivers, rugby has full back, scrum half, hooker.
It made me wonder why the person with the bat gets a gender while everyone else doesn’t. Sadly, I can’t find out why.
Apparently, a lot of so-called cricket purists have erupted out of the social media woodwork to condemn the MCC for this move. Here’s one of the milder ones:
I suppose they are the same ‘purists’ who hated reducing overs from eight to six balls. I can hear them moaning about the mandatory use of helmets a well.
It makes me wonder why men feel so threatened by women because I feel certain that’s what this is about. Deep down. After all, words evolve as we do and as circumstances require it. There are plenty of words that are deemed as archaic, which people don’t seem bothered about.
Why, for instance, did we stop calling booksellers, bibliopoles? Or teenagers, dandiprats? Actually, I reckon I’m going to try using that last one.
But the complaints invariably come from men and, really, those men need to get over themselves. It’s a word and it will not emasculate you, fellas.
On a personal note, I’ve always wondered why on earth we had to have actors and actresses when the term ‘actor’ was perfectly gender-neutral to start with. That’s another deep hole of faux controversy online, if you dare head down there.
Actually, I found a blog where the actor/actress thing was discussed and there was a pop-up ad from the writer asking if I wanted a copy editor. The blog post was littered with errors so, politely, I chose no.
.
