The Ledger of Silent Stands: How to Measure Women's Cricket's Broadcast Absence

The Ledger of Silent Stands

For the last three weeks I have kept a spreadsheet open. On one tab a match scorecard, on the other a broadcast-time ledger. Watching the two side by side, what struck me most was not an out that was given. It was an absence — a match being played, and the descriptive layer that should surround it simply not existing. This piece is the blockchain-style record of that absence. Because once a number is written into a ledger, it can no longer be waved away with "it felt like less."

In cricket we are trained to keep accounts of the men's game. Who scored how many, who took how many wickets, what happened in which over — all logged. But the second ledger, the one that should record how much airtime who received, how much analysis, how long the conversation lasted after an innings — that ledger we do not keep. In women's cricket that second ledger is the emptiest of all. And an empty ledger means an empty memory.

A match is played, finishes, is filed in a scorecard. Six months later, if someone asks what the best innings of that match was like, where is the answer? For a men's match the answer exists — highlights, podcasts, tactical reviews, fan threads, a dozen discussions. For a women's match the answer is often simply absent. The game happened, but nobody preserved the story of the game. I call this memory asymmetry: two games played under identical rules, one becoming memorable, the other not.

This is where the blockchain idea becomes useful, not merely as technology but as method. The central lesson of a blockchain is: what is not recorded cannot be proven; what cannot be proven cannot be claimed. Around coverage absence we have made claims for years — "coverage is low." But when the claim is converted into a ledger, it stops being a complaint and becomes evidence. And institutions have to stand in front of evidence.

I have split the ledger into three columns. First: time. What share of a tournament's total broadcast hours went to women's matches. Second: depth. Within the broadcast minutes, how much was analysis and how much was score-reading. Third: continuity — whether the coverage is tournament-dependent or a weekly habit. The third column is the most brutal, because it shows whether women's cricket survives as an event or merely as an annual occasion.

The problem is not only screen time; the problem is the layer inside screen time. Ten hours of broadcast where eight hours consist of score-reading is not coverage, it is results delivery. Real analysis requires someone to explain why a spinner was changed in the fourth over, why a captain set a field toward the wide, why the tempo of an innings suddenly dropped. Without those words the game becomes a list of results rather than a competition.

One thing needs stating plainly here. "Women's cricket gets less coverage" has been said for a long time, and for a long time it has been avoided in the same way. It is avoided because the claim is never converted into numbers. When someone says "coverage must increase," a decision-maker hears an opinion. When someone says "last season this percentage of total broadcast hours went to women's matches, and of that this percentage was analytical," that is no longer an opinion — it is a balance sheet. And it is difficult to stand in front of a balance sheet and say "we have given plenty."

I have seen this outside the field too. After a match I spoke with fifteen spectators who had watched it live. Almost all of them remembered a specific moment — a dropped catch, a run-out chance. But none had heard an explanation of it, because no explanation was ever produced. The viewer understood the game but was never given the game's language. That gap is the real loss. A viewer returns when they believe they learned something. Knowing only the result does not bring them back.

Women's sport analysis has an easy trap — folding everything into a single story. Women's cricket means women's cricket, everyone the same. In reality this absence is not distributed equally. A star of an elite side may get an interview; a player from a smaller side almost never will. Language, region, class — these layers deepen the void. So if a ledger is split only into two columns, women versus men, the ledger itself delivers an incomplete picture. A coverage analysis that does not measure its own internal inequality lies while measuring external inequality.

That is why I added a third column — who is being left out. Take a broadcast list, then ask who is outside the list. The returning injured player, the first-time squad member, the overseas recruit — their stories are usually cut first. Yet those are exactly the stories that can bind a new audience to the sport. Coverage's job is not only to display stars; coverage's job is to make new ones.

So what is the solution? In my view it does not start with broadcast discussion, it starts with broadcast contracts. When a league sells rights, that contract can state a minimum standard of coverage — how many hours, at what depth, in which languages. This is not fantasy; it is normal contract construction. Playing rules are written down; coverage conditions can be written down too. And if they are not in the contract, at minimum there should be a public accounting each season of who received how much coverage.

A counterargument arrives here, and it matters. Many say women's cricket has fewer viewers, so it gets less broadcast — a market-driven decision, not discrimination. The argument sounds reasonable but runs in a circle. Audiences are built by coverage, and coverage is granted on the basis of audiences. If you never give coverage, where will the audience come from? It is the question of the tree with no fruit when it was never watered. Men's cricket also had few viewers early on; viewers came through investment, marketing and continuity. Women's cricket does not operate under a different biological law; it operates in the same economy, with less investment.

A second counterargument is subtler. Some say forcing more broadcast will produce low-quality programming that damages women's cricket's image. That is a valid concern, but its solution is quality control, not quantity suppression. If quality is the issue, the answer is better analysts, better production, better technology — not fewer cameras. Reducing quantity under the pretext of quality is never constructive criticism; it is simply a way to avoid pressure.

There is another layer that stays almost entirely outside the conversation — statistical infrastructure. Shot maps, field-placement data, ball-by-ball labelling: these are routine in men's tournaments because investment exists. In women's tournaments they are frequently absent. So an analyst who wants to analyse lacks the raw material. This gap sits deeper than broadcast, because it builds the foundation of every future conversation. Without data there is no analysis; without analysis no story; without story no memory.

I have concluded that this is actually three separate problems that must be solved together. First, seeing — broadcast. Second, understanding — analysis. Third, remembering — archive. Without the first the other two are impossible, but the first alone is not enough. Many tournaments have been broadcast and still do not live in memory, because the second and third layers were never built. Broadcasting a match and switching off the channel means turning the game into a broadcast event rather than a cultural one.

Here the blockchain metaphor returns. The greatest property of a blockchain is that once written it cannot be erased, and anyone can verify it. If we build a public ledger for cricket coverage — who got how much broadcast, how much analysis, who was left out, each season — it sits within everyone's power to verify. And it is hard to stall on something verifiable. Institutions either produce the numbers or explain why they cannot.

From experience: I have seen many times that when someone raises the coverage question, the answer is "we support women's cricket." Support is not the question. The question is where the accounting is. Support is a feeling; accounting is an obligation. And in a game involving millions, obligation matters more than feeling.

I concede one thing. Building an archive will not solve the problem overnight. Viewers will not arrive at once. Advertisers will not suddenly step forward. But without an archive no other solution is durable, because the archive is memory, and memory is what turns a sport into a tradition. In football the biggest clubs' biggest asset is their archive — old matches, old stories, old stars. Women's cricket has not yet built that archive, and the longer it waits, the more matches vanish forever.

I write this from a simple realisation. The game does not happen only on the field. It happens a second time — in words, in analysis, in memory. A game that never happens a second time does not endure; it merely occurs. Women's cricket has for too long merely occurred. It is time for it to endure. And the first step in enduring is keeping accounts — who played, who watched, who spoke, and who was never allowed to speak.

I leave one question. If, at the end of this season, someone asks what the biggest moment in women's cricket this year was, how many of us will be ready with an answer? If we cannot answer, then the ledger stopped here — the match happened, but the story was never written. And a story unwritten leaves the game as a row in a scorecard. That is not any sport's fate; it is a choice — one we can change today.