Cricket is the third most popular sport in this country, so your argument doesn't hold any water there.
As for football, we don't get anywhere near enough coverage IMO on free to air, but I tend to watch all of what we do get. As a keen follower of non-league football I personally would be interested in seeing that televised also, I'd like to see them scrap all coverage of women's football in order to better cover the leagues below the Premier League - because it's a far greater standard than women's football and there's far more interest in that than there is women's football anyway. So with supply and demand taken into consideration - what argument is there for televising/radio coverage of women's football?
Regarding other sports, I'm a big fan of Ice Hockey, the Beeb showed the Elite League Playoff Final online on Sunday, yet they've not covered any of the season before then. GB are playing in their World Championship next week, they'll cover the games on radio but not television. Yet I believe Ice Hockey is the fourth most watched sport in this country (if you put both rugby codes together - so in truth it's fifth).
I suppose the truth of it is that the BBC don't really care very much about sport, maybe that's forced upon them due to financial reasons, but when all the sport contracts are handed out, the Beeb don't ever seem anywhere near them.