ESPN goes woke, to include gender-neutral cricket terms ‘batter’ instead of ‘batsman’ and ‘Player of The Match’

Sreshth Shah, a writer and correspondent for ESPN Cricinfo has announced that the portal will henceforth use only gender neutral terms in cricket matches, on-site coverage and during their coverage too.

For example, the term ‘Batsman’ will be replaced with ‘Batter’, and ‘Man of the Match’ will now be ‘Player of The Match’.

Starting today, @ESPNcricinfo takes one more step towards embracing gender neutrality.

On the site, and in our coverage, the term ‘batsman’ will be ‘batter’ from now on, ‘Man of the Match’ will be ‘Player of the Match.’

We hope more organisations join us in normalising it.

— Sreshth Shah (@sreshthx) April 14, 2021

Twitter users, however, responded in kind to the woke, gender-neutral announcement with very creative suggestions.

A Twitter handle named ikjasho asked why ESPN is offending bats by using the term ‘Batter’. Indeed, cricketing terms and tools should not be offensive to specific animals, especially the ones that are connected with the Wuhan.., sorry, city/country-unspecific Coronavirus.

Bats should also be called wooden clubs so as to not offend bats pic.twitter.com/k8eiJleNnk

— Ikjasho (@ikjasho) April 14, 2021

Twitter users are so woke that no amount of wokeness displayed by ESPN can out-woke them. ‘Eminent Intellectual’ condemned the half-woke decision and demanded that cricket can not be fully gender neutral until they change the highly toxic shape of bats, stumps and balls, all asserting toxic masculinity and inspired by male genitalia.

This is just cosmetic without changing the highly toxic shapes of bats, stumps and balls, all inspired by male genetalia.

Sorry but #Cricket remains cancelled @ESPNcricinfo https://t.co/Gth7AIh8SU

— Eminent Intellectual (@totalwoke) April 15, 2021

‘Netaji’ pointed out how most cricketing terms are toxic and un-woke. He suggested a few more changes, like changing ‘Straight Drive’ (highly toxic, homophobic term) to ‘Non-binary Pansexual Drive’.

GREAT INITIATIVE!👏

Also pls change Straight Drive too as it’s outright homophobic🏳️‍🌈, call it Non-binary Pansexual Drive.

Sweeper – to Rajnigandha, (discriminatory agnst oppressed class)

Fine Leg – to Big Leg, (too hateful towards fat ppl)

And obvsly – 3rd Man, to 3rd Neutral https://t.co/TPmRpmx6mN

— Neta Ji (@AapGhumaKeLeLo_) April 15, 2021

There are Twitter users pointing out that there are different teams for women and men, and women’s cricket already uses terms like ‘Woman of The Match’ and ‘Batswoman’, but true wokeness dictates that women-specific terms are as toxic as men-specific terms. Only Gender-neutrality can save this toxic, heterosexual world.