by Alison Mitchell
Thursday, January 31, 2002

If sportsmen and women were to appear on television's celebrity version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", the line-up would be unlikely to include any cricketers - and even less likely to feature any female cricketers. That would be as surprising as hearing that Jagmohan Dalmiya had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is not because cricketers don't want to be millionaires. Rather they're not seen to have the required celebrity status.

A celebrity means a person of fame. The England men recently got a taste of what this means - even if they had to go to cricket-mad India to truly experience it. Nasser Hussain and five of the touring squad found themselves in a mêlée of a hundred jostling journalists when they tried to make a low-key visit to an Indian orphanage.

In an era when England are continually recovering from their latest Ashes thumping, our international players, let alone our county cricketers, are not as widely known as league footballers. They are not exactly paid quite as much either.

It is easy to imagine Michael Owen giving the quiz-show host his final answer and quite happily handing over his prize to charity. It would be verging on cruelty to let a humble cricketer get his or her hands on a couple of hundred thousand pounds only to have to give it all away.

If it is cruel to the men, it would be torture for the women, who play for the pure love of the game and have to fit in other jobs around their cricket commitments.

These girls posses a skill more normally associated with clowns tossing clubs in a circus. Nottinghamshire and England offspinner Dawn Holden admits it is a challenge to juggle the time her cricket requires while still working to support herself.

"It's quite difficult to fit in full-time work and then training as well," she says. "Especially with the amount that they like you to fit in. Luckily, I'm in a position where I can afford to work part time and go off in the afternoon to train."

Strictly speaking, England captain Clare Connor earns nothing at all for the honour of leading out her country. The ECB provide funding through the National Lottery to meet the costs of training and medical support for example, and the sponsors Vodafone award £5000 to the Player of the Year and for the Performance of the Year.

Otherwise Connor makes her living teaching English and PE at Brighton College. Her vice-captain Clare Taylor has had to take extended leave from her job with the Royal Mail to go on this tour.

Women have historically been the underdogs in cricket's celebrity stakes, yet all it takes is a bit of heroism for names to start tumbling off excited lips. Mark Butcher's unbeaten, matchwinning 173 at Headingley this summer proved that.

And two of England's women have recently experienced the same attention. The record-breaking 200-run opening stand between Caroline Atkins and Arran Thompson in the Lucknow Test showed how publicity can come the way of cricketers - even when they're not winning.

Women might not be paid to play their cricket, and the men are hardly paid a fortune. But then fame does not always have to come through big bucks. Why not have some cricketers on celebrity "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"? But let them keep their winnings. It would only be fair.

Alison Mitchell is a broadcast journalist from Northamptonshire. She has previously worked in the marketing department at Trent Bridge.

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