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Crickets culture wars can call a truce. There is something traditionalists and progressives agree on, and rather surprisingly its about the Hundred. Now the all-important final scores are in and were talking bums-on-seats and eyes-on-screen, not who hit most sixes or which weird-named franchise triumphed there is consensus on a single, indisputable fact. The tournament was A Good Thing for womens cricket.

For the hardcore sceptics, the grudging concession that the Hundred has been a gamechanger for women will not outweigh the collective trauma the competition has cost them. The undeniable benefits the womens game has derived from the format the increase in viewership, prestige, standards of pay and quality of play are all very well, but theyve still come at the cost of the future doom of the real game. What matters for the men matters most, because theirs is the Test arena, and theirs are the broadcasting millions, and theirs is the glory, for ever and ever, amen.

Still, back to the Good Thing: the womens side of the Hundred saw record attendances, unprecedented ticket sales and viewing figures in the millions. And one of its most successful elements, the double-header format, was simply a happy accident: a shrinking of logistics and ambitions caused by Covid protocols and shortfalls.

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Had a global pandemic not intervened, the womens and mens matches would have been staged separately, rather than played one after the other with a single ticket buying a seat to both. We cant be sure that the womens tournament would have enjoyed the same popularity if their matches had been relegated to other lets face it, smaller grounds. But we can be pretty certain there would have been a different atmosphere at the mens games.

There were clear indications of that in the first mens match at the Oval, the only one staged as a stand-alone. Far from being a family-friendly environment, that game was played against a beery, blokey backdrop recognisable to anyone whos been to a T20 finals day: the kind that numerous fans have shied from taking their kids to; the kind that the Hundred was, indeed, created to combat.

As it was, one of the most revealing outcomes as the tournament progressed was that the increased female presence at matches had a real and pleasurable impact on the fans experience. It would come up repeatedly in peoples conversations, an encouraging thing to hear: encouraging, moving and a little amusing, the kind of mix you feel when your friend finally discovers Parks and Recreation on Netflix and messages you how awesome it is a decade after you first told them to give it a try.

It turns out that transforming a sports stadium from a mostly male environment into a genuinely mixed one really can improve your day. That lowering the average testosterone level of a crowd will lessen its tendency towards antisocial behaviour, will reduce its inclination to drink too much and get a bit lairy and yell stupid, off-colour things that seem hilariously funny at the time. That it keeps at bay primal bursts of tribalistic aggression that we wouldnt allow anywhere else but find acceptable and even faintly praiseworthy when theyre construed as sporting passion or team loyalty.

This isnt news, of course, not really. Plenty of us knew that gender-balanced crowds dont ruin a sporting atmosphere by making it generally, you know, nicer. Anyone whos been to the tennis, or scored tickets to the London Olympics. All those whove attended womens football matches, or womens rugby games, or professional netball. The 24,000 people who went to the 2017 Womens World Cup final at Lords, and came away saying it was the best atmosphere they had encountered at a cricket match.

And yet its fair to say that until recently the presence of more women in cricket grounds or indeed any stadiums has rarely been a priority. On the sporting hierarchy of needs, its always been up at the esoteric top end, along with self-actualisation and human transcendence. Even we women who followed sport long before the men who ran it bothered to add us to the Venn diagrams in their marketing presentations accepted that we were entering a mans world. And if we didnt like the way some men behaved, we knew where we could go.

Macho posturing and a faintly edgy atmosphere have been endemic to the stadium experience for decades. Fans have kidded themselves that it simply goes with the territory. Most accept it as the price they pay for following the teams they love. Some those who like the idea of war minus the shooting will argue that its part of the purpose of spectator sport, an outlet for men and women (but primarily men) to express the full range of their emotions and work out their anger issues.

I know a number of devoted football fans male and female who gave up going to games because they couldnt bear the oppressive and often hostile environment of the walk to the station afterwards, the train rides home. The thought of that used to make me sad and furious but I could not see it changing.

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the more fans experience what its like to watch sport in a more gender-equal environment, the higher it will appear on their wishlist. Perhaps well learn that a positive outcome for women players, supporters, or newcomers can be the best thing for everyone in the long run. Perhaps well allow that it might even be worth some momentary rearrangement and experimentation in the mens game. After all, weve long put up with our own discomfort.

More:
The summer of cricket proved mixed crowds can improve the fan experience - The Guardian