Tym Glaser

BELIEVE IT or not, no part of the sport landscape has changed as dramatically, and for the better, over the past quarter-century as the games that women play.

Yeah, cricket has undergone a paradigm shift with the increased emphasis on one-day cricket and the new arrival of the Twenty20 version but the game is still pretty much the same.

Fielding has improved and some may argue that faster Test run rates have been spawned by the abbreviated forms of the game. However, the game on the field where the men still wear whites has not improved much on how it was 25 years ago - and which West Indian wouldn't agree with me on that?

Improved training regimens, better equipment and even 'artificial' aids have made male athletes in other sports bigger, faster and stronger but team games like football, baseball, American football and basketball and individual pursuits such as golf and tennis remain much the same as well.

Game remains the same

You can point out individual giants like a Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and say they took their sports to different levels but every era has transcendental stars and when they head off into the sunset, the game remains brighter for their appearance but still, again, just the same.

Perhaps there's been more room or margin for change in women's sport because it was pushed on to the backburner for so long.

The legendary Billie-Jean King almost single-handedly shoved women's tennis into the spotlight in the '70s and, with help from Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, changed it from a dinky-dink game to an aggressive contest which directly spawned the power games of Steffi Graf and Monica Seles and today's ultimate power play exploited by Venus and Serena Willliams, Lindsay Davenport, Maria Sharapova and the Mighty Mouse, Justine Henin.

Other women's sports picked up on tennis' lead and are also now starting to reap the benefits.

Golf, through Latin star Nancy Lopez, glamour girl Jan Stephenson, Juli Inkster, Betsy King and Pat Bradley, began a concerted move forward in the early '80s which sparked the lucrative LPGA series and latter-day greats like Annika Sorenstam, Se Ri Pak and Karrie Webb.

Outside of netball and hockey, women's team sports have been slower to pick up the thread but serious strides are being made now.

The even-handed U.S. collegiate system has played a major part in the development in women's sport and, in particular, football and basketball.

Pro leagues

For many years, there was nowhere for these college stars to go, but as their skills became better and better and U.S. teams gained international acclaim, pro leagues - some successful and some not - were created and the cream of the world crop joined their U.S. sistren.

Now, top-flight women's basketball and football games are almost as compelling to watch as any men's game and more fundamentally sound.

While, men's hoops is all about highlight-reel dunks and ankle-breaking crossover dribbles, the women play good, hard team ball. They may not dunk but they sure can pass and shoot and isn't that what that game's all about?Of all the women's team games, football may be coming on the quickest. When I first saw women's football played at the amateur level back in Melbourne in the mid-'80s, it looked like 22 confused ponytails running around on a pitch.

Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up early (again!) and watch Marta's Brazil take on Germany in the women's World Cup final in China.

Marta is a football genius in the same vein as her compatriots Pele and Ronaldinho but while she's the star of the tournament, the game has won me over because these women are fit, fast and highly skilled and play the sport without all the brutal machismo now associated with the men's game where one crunching tackle follows another.

'Marta and the Brazils' and the other top sides play the beautiful game beautifully and may they never lose that innocence.

When that Cup is held up tomorrow morning, I'll raise my cup of lemon tea to the victors and also to Billie-Jean.

Later …

tym.glaser@gleanerjm.com