Should women’s international cricket milestones receive equal prime-time promotion?

Here is the trap inside the mandate. If networks are forced to put women's cricket milestones in prime time and the ratings disappoint, those numbers become a weapon. Every executive who never wanted the slot will wave the overnights as proof the sport does not rate, and the next rights negotiation gets worse, not better. Television runs on ratings, and ratings set the ad rates that fund everything downstream. ESPNcricinfo A mandate that manufactures a public failure metric does not help women's cricket. It hands its skeptics a chart. Let the audience growth, which is real, earn the slots. Forced parity that flops is the cruelest outcome of all.