On Thursday, as the women's singles competition reaches its semi-final stage, the men who sell won't bother to come out. Right now, no one pays over the odds to watch the women at Wimbledon. And, though a British contender would help, it is not simply because there is no home interest.
It is the same at Roland Garros or Flushing Meadows: in the crude financial measure of the black market, women's tennis is barely worth the effort. Michael Stich's complaint that the only thing the women's game has to sell is the sex is proving a little wide of the mark: at the moment, no amount of seduction is shifting the units.There are as many reasons mooted for this as there are women pounding the Wimbledon courts whose surnames end in ova. The ugly grunting, the plethora of characterless eastern Europeans, the conveyor belt of clones emerging from the Bollettieri academy, with their sun visors and withering focus: all share blame for making the women's circuit about as compelling as the Annual General Meeting of the British Association of Actuaries.

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Taylor smashed her third ODI century, hammering a run-a-ball 120 as England racked up 259-6 from their 50 overs.
Australia got off to a good start with Shelley Nitschke and Lisa Sthalekar sharing 85 but England pegged them back with some fine fielding and bowling.
England bowled them out for 204 to go 2-0 up in the five-match series.
It was Taylor's day from the start as she continued her fabulous recent form, having struck 68 off 74 balls in the first match on Monday.
She put on 95 with Claire Taylor (42) and 86 with Beth Morgan as England reached 193-2, before she was eventually run out for 120, nine short of her previous best ODI score.

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Women's cricket has struggled for publicity and attention for years, but if England's world champions continue to produce performances like today's, they will have to get used to the limelight and subsequent accolades. Not even the absence of their inspirational captain Charlotte Edwards stuttered their stride at Chelmsford, as Sarah Taylor's 74-ball 68 led them to the most clinical of wins against a shell-shocked Australia in the first of five ODIs.

Impressive though Taylor was, it was England's bowlers who set up such a convincing win, dismissing Australia for just 133 - an outstanding display following their humbling in the Twenty20 last week. Then, Shelley Nitschke produced a fine allround performance to beat an England side who looked jaded and a little hungover from their ICC World Twenty triumph. Today, however, Nitschke fell first ball to the returning Katherine Brunt, and England's spearhead followed it up with the wicket of Lisa Sthalekar, edging a beautiful outswinger behind, and Taylor did the rest with a smart catch, low to her right. Right from the off, England were on the money.

The two early blows left England exuberant, Australia shocked. All eyes were on Karen Rolton, the former captain, as she tried to rebuild, but Isa Guha - recalled for the Twenty20 last week, but who looked short of form - gained encouraging movement through the air, and had Rolton edging behind for just a single. Nicky Shaw, the stand-in captain, rotated her bowlers regularly, and she herself was in metronomic form, conceding a remarkably miserly four runs in her first four overs, removing her opposite number, Fields, for a combative 15.

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Michelle Dykstra takes health care seriously. She just earned her nursing degree, and she had a gynecology exam every year while she was at Trinity Christian College.

But now that she’s graduated, Dykstra has had to forgo her annual check-up.She’s applied for 75 nursing positions, but to no avail. And without a job, she doesn’t have health insurance.

“I feel frustrated,” the Hammond native says as she searches for shoes at Glenbrook Square. “I did the right thing. I went to college, and I still can’t get a real job.”

Dykstra is one of thousands of women across the county who have had to compromise their health care because of the economy, according to a May Gallup poll conducted for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The poll, which surveyed 1,031 women ages 18 to 44, found that 14 percent of women had postponed an annual ob-gyn exam because of financial strain. Fourteen percent said that economic trends had influenced their decisions to increase the size of their family and 15 percent reported cutting back or no longer taking their medications.

Jenny Dougal, a perinatal nurse at Parkview Hospital, says local woman mirror the trend.

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On one sport's home page at the University of Florida's athletic Web site, there is a countdown clock, ticking off the hours, minutes and seconds to a highly anticipated season opener. The defending national champion football team? No. The men's basketball team, winners of two of the past four NCAA tournaments? Nope.

In 238 days, women's lacrosse, whose genesis in this country dates 83 years ago to the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, will make its varsity debut in a state where running backs and baseball players have long dominated the collegiate sporting landscape.The Gators will open at home against Jacksonville -- and a host of Washington and Baltimore area players are poised to form the nucleus of the Gators' inaugural team. Florida will jump directly to Division I and play in the American Lacrosse Conference, a league that includes five-time defending national champion Northwestern and Johns Hopkins; until now, the Gators only had a club lacrosse team.

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Recent successes in cricket, the international homeless football tournament, and the country's first Olympic medal in Beijing, helped inspire many to explore both traditional and new sports.Shahrinav Park in central Kabul is a world apart from the Afghan capital's noisy streets. It's a quiet, leafy corner, where children are enjoying hours of cricket or football. "My favourite player is Ronaldino," says 13-year-old Muhammad Orif. His friend declares noisily that he is a Manchester United fan.Sport has made a comeback in Afghanistan, where groups of football-crazy children or teenagers playing in almost every village. Many of them are boys, but not all.

Pule Khush in eastern Kabul is a predominantly Shia district. Millions of Shia Hazaras fled to Iran during the years of conflict. Now the returnees are emerging as one the of the most progressive communities in the country.

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The Queen’s women’s hockey program has adopted a strategy similar to another team in the hockey world.

Like the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, they’ve enlisted the services of twins.

Brittany and Morgan McHaffie from the Provincial Women’s Hockey League’s Cambridge Fury will attend Queen’s next fall. The sisters combined for 76 points last season with the Fury and split the honour of the team’s most valuable player.

The Gaels’ contact with the McHaffies spanned two years after the pair decided to take a gap year after high school. Morgan, who was the Fury’s captain, said they postponed commitment to allow all of their offers to fully develop.

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While the public stands were only sparsely occupied for the women’s ICC World Twenty20 Final, the Pavilion End was packed. Admittedly this was mostly because seating for MCC Members and their friends is unreserved so those wanting a good viewing spot for the afternoon’s proceedings were obliged to turn up early, but the prospect of seeing an England team in a final they were actually expected to win made this far less of an inconvenience.

I had not realised how much I cared about it until the national anthems. I had stood for them before the men’s games at Lord's, respectful but unmoved – except when the Pakistan and Sri Lanka teams stood interleaved with one another in solidarity before their group game – but as the British dirge struck up for the women, I felt the tears welling. Not that I hadn’t been paying attention to the women’s progress: when those headlines about Edwards being a doubt for the semi-final appeared on Cricinfo mid-week, my first reaction to was to panic about Charlotte’s availability for England rather than be concerned about Fidel’s for WI.

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Few women's basketball players are able to even think about what Epiphanny Prince did this past week. That much, Phyllis Mangina knows.

So when Prince decided to leave Rutgers before her senior year to play professionally abroad, Mangina, the women's basketball coach at Seton Hall, was completely aware of how unusual that chosen path is in her sport.

"Not everybody's Epiphanny Prince," Mangina said. "So if a young person like that is going to do it, you know what? Probably she's going to be really successful because she has that kind of ability."

But even though her planned move overseas has been viewed as a watershed decision for female basketball players -- Prince will join a recent stream of male players using Europe to launch their pro careers -- it likely won't spark a grand exodus from the women's collegiate game. Prince's exception is not expected to become the rule, say coaches, former players and women's basketball officials.

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For years, Iranian women have been active in regional and international sports competitions, but religious laws in Iran prevent women from being seen on television without an Islamic hijab. While Iranian women play sports dressed in the traditional hijab, their international competitors do not -- and therefore cannot be shown in Iranian broadcasts.For this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, however, Iranian authorities might allow state television to broadcast the women's events. Ali Asghar Purmohammadi, who is responsible for broadcasting sports programs for Iran's state-run television, has said he is pressing Iranian authorities to give special permission to show women competing in the Olympic Games next month.

There are just three women among the 53 Iranian athletes who will compete in the Beijing Olympics from August 8-24, with one woman each competing in rowing, archery, and tae kwon do.Millions of Iranian viewers would no doubt like to cheer on their female athletes in Beijing. But few Iranians expect their religious leaders to allow state television to air footage of women who do not obey Iran's Islamic dress code, which requires women to cover their heads and hair, and to disguise the shape of their bodies. Iranian television and print media largely avoid broadcasting or publishing pictures of female athletes because of the dress code violations by their international opponents.Fatemeh Sepanji, a Tehran-based sports commentator, tells RFE/RL's Radio Farda that the Iranian media are forced to pretend that women athletes in Iran do not exist.

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