Last month, the Cricketer magazine published what it termed a power list of English cricket, as decided by its editorial team. In case youre curious and you missed it at the time, ECB chairman Colin Graves topped the list. Managing director Andrew Strauss came in at No. 2. Current players Joe Root and Alastair Cook both appeared in the top ten. Several commentators and cricket correspondents - Michael Vaughan (7), Mike Atherton (11), Jonathan Agnew (15) - also featured.How was such a list decided upon? The Cricketers editor, Simon Hughes, had this to say: We asked, who makes the decisions and drives initiatives and sways opinion? Who sets the agendas? Who persuades broadcasters and sponsors to part with their money? Which players, or ex-players, are the most important? Who really influences the publics view of the game?We took into account status, authority, credibility, reputation, skill and, where appropriate, social media reach.Essentially, then, this was a list of the top 50 movers and shakers in English cricket.Two women made the list. No. 23: Delia Bushell, head of BT Sport. No. 24: Clare Connor, ECB director of womens cricket.Of those in the country considered to have cricketing status, authority, credibility and skill, 48 are men; of those who make the key decisions in our sport, 96% are male. There were no current female players, no female coaches, umpires, journalists or editors on the list.None.Note: this was not a power list of English mens cricket. This was a power list of English cricket, full stop. One sport: mens and womens. One game, so says the ECB. One power list.One game, in fact, since 1998, when the ECB took over responsibility for womens cricket, and the Womens Cricket Association (WCA) - the governing body of the sport since 1926 - dissolved itself. Since that time, money and resources have gradually poured into the womens game as the ECB has come to appreciate its responsibilities to half the population. Women have access to top-quality pitches; the womens game gets TV coverage; there are even professional contracts for a lucky few.Women also now play a sport that is run by men.That was the trade-off, you see. Had I put together a power list of English womens cricket in 1996, it would have consisted entirely of women. Right up until the merger, the WCA remained an organisation in which no man was permitted to take office or become a full member. The WCAs executive director was a woman - Barbara Daniels; the WCAs chairman was a woman - Sharon Bayton; the WCA executive committee was made up exclusively of women.Those working as selectors, scorers and coaches were almost all women. In all womens Test matches up until 1996, the WCA insisted upon using female umpires. Any regular media coverage womens cricket received was generally due to dedicated female writers who had also played the sport - Rachael Heyhoe-Flint writing for the Telegraph in the 1960s and 70s; Sarah Potter and Carol Salmon penning reports for the Times, the Cricketer and Wisden in the 1980s.Then the merger happened and these women disappeared. Initially Bayton and Daniels had asked for a womens cricket seat on the ECB board; this never came into existence. A Womens Cricket Advisory Group was set up, but without access to the main ECB board, or indeed to the audit committee or the cricket committee (which were all staffed entirely by men), it lacked any kind of real influence. At a local level, the new county boards - led by men - were advised of their responsibilities with regard to womens cricket. Some embraced this. Many others did not. Other responsibilities formerly dominated by women, such as coaching and umpiring, were also taken over by the ECB. In practice, because this often required female officials to requalify, this meant that such duties became almost entirely undertaken by men. Thus former England cricketer Megan Lear was replaced as England coach by an ECB nominee, Paul Farbrace, and the umpires in womens internationals became male first-class ECB appointees. Umpiring and coaching within the womens game are still today overwhelmingly male activities. And the ECB management board, while it has had a womens game representative since 2010, is currently constituted of 11 men and two women.Make no mistake - the so-called merger (in reality more of a takeover) was always viewed as a trade-off. It is hard to disregard the enormous strides womens cricket has made in recent years thanks to proper funding by the ECB. This was the very reason for the merger in the first place: as a volunteer body, it was increasingly difficult for the WCA to both fund a game that was growing at the grassroots, and to continue to fund international tours.Yet the WCA had always highly prized its autonomy. In 1950, the executive committee agreed that of the fundamental principles on which the WCA was founded, one of the most important was that women should run every aspect of it. It was hard to contemplate sacrificing this.Thus during WCA discussions in 1996 and 1997, the fear was ever-present that were a merger to go ahead, the individuality, identity and most importantly its own control over the womens game would be lost, subsumed into the behemoth that was the mens game. It was eventually agreed that the benefits of a merger outweighed these fears. But have such fears really proved so unfounded?There are some who will be asking: does it matter? Should we care that womens cricket is now run by men? Think about it this way: if you are Colin Graves or Andrew Strauss, and you have spent your whole life playing mens cricket, deciding things within that context, then that is what you know. If you are a journalist and you have spent your entire broadcasting career commentating on the mens game, and suddenly you are given a womens match to cover, you are unlikely to be able to provide the same level of insight. Frankly, in both instances, it is fairly clear that the womens game is always going to be an afterthought. At an ECB level, the problem is not so much that decisions are being taken by men, but that they are often being made with exclusively mens cricket in mind.Womens cricket was always the priority of the WCA. Who prioritises it now?The really sad thing about the power list is that I dont really disagree with those who compiled it that those listed are the 50 most powerful people within English cricket. But it does highlight a fundamental problem. Of course, there were multitudinous benefits to that WCA-ECB merger, but something has been lost too - and that power list of English cricket shows just how much. Fred VanVleet Raptors Jersey . After Gasquet beat fifth-seeded Ivan Dodig of Croatia 7-5, 6-3, Tsonga followed up with a 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-2 win against sixth-seeded Edouard Roger-Vasselin in an all-French match. 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Also Wednesday, Gilles Simon (6) of France beat Donald Young of the United States 6-4, 6-3, Ukraines Alexandr Dolgopolov downed Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-3, 6-4 and Croatias Ivo Karlovic defeated Dudi Sela of Israel 7-6 (4), 6-2.Wimbledon, England (Sports Network) - Former champion Novak Djokovic and last years runner-up Andy Murray secured berths in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. The world No. 1 Djokovic reached his fifth straight and sixth overall Wimbledon quarterfinal by topping 13th-seeded resurgent German Tommy Haas 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), while the second-seeded Murray landed in his sixth straight Wimbledon quarter by handling 20th-seeded Russian veteran Mikhail Youzhny 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), 6-1 on the famed Centre Court. Djokovic lost his serve for the first time of the fortnight when Haas turned the trick en route to 4-2 lead in the second set, but the super Serb got the break back to level the set at 4-all, and would hold on from there. Djokovic held his serve for his first 48 service games of the 2013 tournament. Haas broke Djokovic for a second time and then held for a 5-5 score in the third set and eventually forced a tiebreak, but Djokovic jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the extra session and ultimately closed out his German counterpart on a fourth match point, a forehand winner after 2 hours, 12 minutes of tennis. Djokovic served for the match at 5-3 in the stanza, but blew a match point in the ninth game. The 35-year-old Haas had been 2-0 against Djokovic on grass, including a quarterfinal victory here at Wimbledon four years ago. Djokovic is now 6-3 lifetime versus the one-time world No. 2 Haas after smacking 13 aces and piling up six service breaks. The six-time major champion Djokovic, who beat Murray in this years Australian Open final and lost to Murray in last years U.S. Open title tilt, captured his lone Wimbledon championship two years ago. Djokovic will play in his 17th straight Grand Slam quarterfinal against former Wimbledon runner-up Tomas Berdych on Wednesday. The high-flying Serbs quarterfinal streak is the third-longest all-time behind Roger Federers 36 and Jimmy Connors 27 straight appearances. Federers streak came to a close last week when he was shocked by Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky. Meanwhile, the capable Youzhny, who has reached at least the fourth round at Wimbledon on eight occasions, had a 5-2 lead against Murray in the second set on Monday, but he ultimately lost the stanza via tiebreak and would then succumb to the Scot aftter that.dddddddddddd Murray lost to Federer in last years Wimbledon final and then beat Federer in the Olympic gold-medal match a month later here on the hallowed lawns at the All England Club. The 26-year-old Murray will appear in his 10th straight Grand Slam quarterfinal. He captured his first-ever major title by beating Djokovic in last years U.S. Open finale. Murray, whos currently riding a 15-match winning streak on grass, is trying to give Britain its first male Wimbledon singles champion in 77 years. His quarterfinal opponent on Wednesday will be Spanish veteran Fernando Verdasco. After showing up 10 minutes late on court, fourth-seeded French Open runner-up David Ferrer reached his second straight Wimbledon quarterfinal by overcoming capable Croat Ivan Dodig 6-7 (3-7), 7-6 (8-6), 6-1, 6-1; the seventh-seeded 2010 Wimbledon runner-up Berdych topped young Aussie Bernard Tomic 7-6 (7-4), 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 6-4; and eighth-seeded former U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro doused 23rd-seeded Italian Andreas Seppi 6-4, 7-6 (7-2), 6-3 to reach his first-ever Wimbledon quarter. The gritty Spaniard Ferrer and formidable 6-foot-7 Argentine del Potro will lock horns in a marquee quarterfinal on Wednesday. "I need to play my best tennis to beat del Potro," Ferrer said. A pair of Poles landed in the round of eight, as 24th-seeded Jerzy Janowicz outlasted veteran Austrian left-hander Jurgen Melzer 3-6, 7-6 (7-1), 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 and Lukasz Kubot went the distance to beat Frances Adrian Mannarino 4-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. The 6-foot-8 Janowicz and the 130th-ranked Kubot will meet on Wednesday in the first-ever all-Polish Grand Slam quarterfinal, with the winner giving Poland its first-ever male Grand Slam semifinalist. The last Polish man to reach a Grand Slam quarter was Wojtek Fibak in 1980. Also reaching his first-ever Wimbledon quarterfinal was the aforementioned southpaw and former top-10 star Verdasco, who handled Frenchman Kenny De Schepper 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 on "Manic Monday," when all of the remaining singles players are on the schedule at the AEC. For the second time in three days, there will be no mens singles action on Tuesday. The middle Sunday marked the traditional day off at Wimbledon. ' ' '