2005: England’s men win the Ashes. They all get an MBE/OBE.
2005: England’s women win the Ashes. Claire Connor the captain gets an MBE.

2009: England’s women win the World Cup. Charlotte Edwards the captain gets an MBE.
2009: What’s betting that if England’s men win the Ashes that they all get an MBE/OBE?

Why can’t all of the members of the England women’s team get an MBE? Surely it’s setting a good example by showing a similar sort of equality between the teams? That and Claire Taylor became the first woman ever to be named one of Wisden’s Five, that deserves a higher accolade too.

Watching Sky Sports’s “Cricket Writers on TV” the presenter, Charles Colville, mentioned this too and one of the journalists said that it wasn’t a big enough sport to warrant it.

But if each member of the side had been given an MBE then it would have been a good piece of PR for both the ECB and the Government, something both need at this moment in time.

They shouldn’t follow the MCC who after 10 years of allowing women to join still only have 62 female members compared to the thousands of male members.

Cricket seems to be moving towards a sense of equality, the ICC World Twenty20 has shown this by having both the semi finals and the final being played on the same day and at the same ground as the men’s semi finals, giving the women’s game a higher amount of coverage compared to what they’re getting at the moment in their pool games at Taunton.

Lets hope that the ECB and the MCC can learn from the ICC in this case…

Is now the time for the IOC to add Sevens and Twenty20 cricket to the roster?

Sevens is already part of the Commonwealth Games and it has gone down well with the crowds, plus with the touring aspect of the Sevens and the subsequent world coverage, it’s already doing more than the likes of previous Olympic sports such as Softball.

Plus Sevens can be fitted into two highly charged days of any event, perhaps on days before the Athletics begins where the focus is normally on the swimming pool?

The current World Twenty20 event that is going on in England is set to last 16 days, which would fit in well with the Olympic schedule (based on the 2008 Olympics).

The only problem would be about the ground: The Olympic stadium or the football stadium could be used but a drop in pitch would have to be used in both instances unless they could have a specialist ground for the cricket to take place.

The IPL has helped increase world coverage and the Olympics would further that, especially into the difficult to break American market.

As last night at Lord’s, and Kenya’s defeat of England in the group stages in Edinburgh proved, there is no set in stone winner of either event, which is what makes them special, Olympic special.

So seeing as I’ve sort of abandoned this place I am going to write down all of my excuses, basically what I’ve been doing while I haven’t been blogging, other than Tweeting, which is a lot easier than blogging as I can do it from my phone on Dabr

Firstly I had my friend, Evie, come up to stay with me. She’s an Aussie who is doing a gap year placement in Oxford. We went to see Moseley vs Leeds in the rugby, indulged our sweet tooths on a trip to Cadbury World and took part in some music watching, courtesy of Josh Pyke.

We then met up a few days later in London where it was raining. We went to The British Museum which was great, have to go back there definitely. The cricket at Lords was planned for Saturday but there was no play. Instead we hung out with Daniel Radcliffe who is very cool and loves his cricket but I was more star struck around Michael Vaughan – sorry Dan. We ended up going to the cricket on Easter Sunday too, where we actually saw some play and giggled lots, have a look at my photos from it.

A week of doing not a lot, where I should have updated my blog but I forgot about it, I spent it watching Gilmore Girls instead, which Katie would highly approve of.

Another trip to London on the following Saturday, I now have an Oyster Card, to see Moseley vs Leeds, this time at Twickenham in the EDF Energy National Trophy Final. Moseley won which was all good. Ended up going for a Balti at the Kababish with Evie and my friend Janine.

The Sunday after that consisted of cricket and Warwickshire v Somerset, which Warwickshire lost but Ian Bell scored a century. I also did my first stint on commentary for my work experience which was extremely nerve-wracking.

I’ve improved a lot since then.

And then my break was over and it was time for uni.

So that’s why I haven’t updated my blog, are these excuses good enough or should I try harder?

The cricket team were outstanding in winning the ICC Women’s World Cup in the early hours of this morning – I didn’t stay up to watch it but I’ve just been watching the highlights.

I’m extremely excited about going to see them play on 11th June in the World Twenty20 in Taunton and at £6 to see the World Champions, it’s an absolute bargain.

The rugby team, despite not winning the Grand Slam after their loss to Wales, still retained their 6 Nations crown with a convincing win over their Scottish counterparts.

The future is bright in women’s sport for sure, whether it’s football, rugby, cricket, swimming or tennis, but without the growing interest in the media, would we have known about it anyway?

I’ve written this article a couple of times, each with a different focus, yet now I’ve finally decided what angle to take on this.

I started off with a sort of feminist rant about the inequalities in men’s and women’s sport, particularly in my favourite sports: cricket and rugby, but then whilst watching Total Rugby this morning, my view shifted.

It turned to Sky Sports, who showed the programme, which had highlights of the Women’s Six Nations games along with other features on rugby. Watching this prompted me to have a look at other women’s sports that their four channels were showing, and there’s a fair bit on show.

Particularly the interest in and coverage of the Women’s Cricket World Cup, where England Women play New Zealand Women in the final on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It has been publicised well and the coverage of it has been excellent.

The Guardian said yesterday that It [cricket] is one of the fastest growing sports in the UK. In 1996 there were 10,000 girls and women playing. Today there are close to one million.. It is due to the increasing wider coverage that Sky Sports, and previously Channel Four have provided, along with the charity Chance to Shine that has helped women’s and girls cricket grow as a sport by helping it being played at grassroots level in schools and local clubs.

With no discredit to the men either, it was shown after the Rugby World Cup win in 2003 that despite it being the men that had won, it helped increase awareness in the sport and participation for both girls and boys.

So perhaps “the Ashes effect” has continued a lot more strongly in cricket than “the World Cup effect” had in rugby?

Sky Sports is also showing sports such as women’s golf, netball and badminton, the latter two being traditionally seen as “girly” sports.

People may see Sky Sports as being bad for the growth and development of sport by buying events from the free to air channels but in the case of women’s cricket and rugby, I can see it being a good thing as it’s helping the sport.

At the end of the day it’s what matters to me most as a sporting consumer, the change to see the improvement and heightened publicity in variations on the sports I’ve been following for the past few years.

350 Gram Plain flour (12 oz)
1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
3 Teaspoon Ground ginger
1 Teaspoon Ground cinnamon
110 Gram Butter, diced (4 oz)
175 Gram Soft light brown sugar (6 oz)
5 Tablespoon Golden syrup
1 Egg, beaten
Smarties and icing, to decorate

Pre-heat oven to 190 °C / 375 °F / Gas 5.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon into a mixing bowl.
Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar.
Beat the syrup into the egg, then stir into the flour mixture.
Mix together to make a smooth dough (I found mine wasn’t that smooth but just continue to the next step anyway).
Knead the dough until smooth, then divide in half.
Roll out, half at a time, on a floured surface until about 5 mm ( 1/4 inch) thick.
Using a gingerbread man cutter, cut out gingerbread men until all the dough has been used up, re-rolling and cutting the trimmings.
Repeat with the second half of the dough. Spread them out as they expand in the oven!
Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
Leave on the baking trays to cool slightly, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Make a little bit of icing (icing sugar and you need to add the water drop by drop!) and dip the Smarties into them before putting them on the gingerbread men.
Allow to dry.
Store in an airtight container.

And as for the results:

As someone who only knows of the Albatross previously as a golf score I had no idea that they were under threat.

Thankfully Kunal Dutta’s article on them has highlighted this to me, and looking at pictures of them, they’re magnificent birds.

Lets hope that the project in South Africa concerning warding these beautiful birds away from fishermen’s hooks work so that we don’t lose them too.

To find out more about this project, check out the Save The Albatross website.

Instead I’m going to tell you about my history with Twitter.

I’ve had my Twitter account a bit longer than the rest of my Online Journalism Module colleagues so have had more time to get used to it. I was very sporadic with my “twittering” at first, forgetting about it in parts, thankfully my friend @sophietonks kept pestering me to update it.

She then went on about @stephenfry having it, so that prompted me to “rediscover” Twitter.

My parents, technophobes the pair of them, heard about Twitter through The One Show on BBC One in which my Mother, and I quote, said “I’d follow Phillip Schofield anywhere”.

Thankfully they haven’t proceeded to get Twitter accounts, I have enough of my Dad on Facebook.

Tangent aside, I use Twitter for both social networking and microblogging. I chose to follow every single person on the 10 people every journalism student should follow on Twitter list and I’ve made contacts either through them or via them, it’s been fun.

My favourite part though is microblogging, especially liveblogging. As you know from my About Me page, I’m sports obsessed, so I chose to liveblog the cricket and parts of the rugby one weekend, which was so much fun. I made lots of new contacts/friends/people who share the same interest as me as a result of it. Plus it got me a packet of Pickled Onion Monster Munch in the following workshop/lecture.

I’ve been using Twitter to do something I love: talking about sport, I’ve been using it to acquire contacts in the media industry, to read and find out about different people. And then there’s the mundane stuff that I update about such as me cooking curry or losing the TV to Mum and her habit for watching Lipstick Jungle.

It’s a 140 character social network that you can use however you want, and I really like it. In fact I’m opening Twitter before Facebook, surely that’s a sign of the change in times?

#1 Journalism at Uni
- I am currently typing this in my Online Journalism lecture, taught by the wonderful Paul Bradshaw who writes an equally wonderful Online Journalism Blog. I’ve been given a task to explore Twitter. This sounds like a good idea to pimp my own Twitter profile: rachel_simmo

I’m going to be using Twitter in the capacity of social networking as well as microblogging, which I’m finding really interesting. Also as part of my university work I’m going to be contributing to an environmental website, focussing on conservation.

#2 My own personal interests and what I like to talk about

- One of the first things new people find out about me is my obsession with sport, I blame my Dad for that, in a loving way of course. I’m addicted to rugby and cricket but I also follow football, tennis and loads of other sports. I’m handy on a pub quiz team for sure.

I’m also quite creative and arty, I sing in the City of Birmingham Young Voices, and when in the mood I can be a right culture vulture. I don’t go anywhere without my iPod or a book and I love it when people recommend me to new bands or books or arty stuff.

I love photography too and this enables me to combine it with my love of sport, I’m the official photographer for Birmingham’s top women’s rugby team: Camp Hill WRFC.

Along with this I’m well versed in politics, tv, current affairs and tons of other subjects. There’s a reason why my Dad’s friends call me “the oracle”.

#3 My future in journalism
- I’m one of those people who can’t make up their own minds, I’m loving this module and I’m starting to want to go into this form of journalism more than print, especially as online and twitter etc is becoming more and more popular and common.

Ideally I’d love the job of someone like Eddie Butler or Christopher Martin-Jenkins but my idols are Sue Mott and Eleanor Oldroyd.

Sports journalism, that sounds perfect.