In this week’s episode, we discuss:
- FICA’s Women’s Professional Cricket Global Employment Report
- Should we be pushing for equal pay in women’s cricket?
- England’s squad to tour New Zealand
- Tash Farrant’s recall
If you have any thoughts on the FICA report, we’d love to hear them! Leave your comments below.
CRICKETher 
I haven’t read the full Report yet, although I do intend to. However a few initial comments…
1. I like the idea behind the Report and I think it has a role to play in focusing minds. But if it is to really mean anything then it has to be more “current”. A player survey published in 2021 can’t be taken from views gathered in 2018/19. Other than the time taken to put together a glossy brochure, I can’t see any reason why that delay needs to have been so drawn out.
2. Should FICA be doing more to get responses to the survey from those countries who are not responding? Maybe the Player Associations are less active or have fewer personnel to worry about this sort of thing. Given the time-lag they have had plenty of time to explore other avenues to get feedback, and given the countries where responses have not been received these would be particularly worth chasing up..
3. Similarly to (1), a table showing England’s domestic stricture as comprising solely the now defunct KSL is too easy to dismiss as being out of date. The ECB (to use England as an obvious example) can easily – and with not a little justification – point to that and say they have already moved forward from that point in terms of the Hundred and the Regional Centres. It then enables them to downplay on the same basis any other ‘criticisms’ raised, such as the “fledgling professional” classification, or the comment that “the regional centres set to be introduced
in late 2020”.
3. Women’s cricket is hovering over a tipping point. We have got so far, but to go further the ICC as leaders, and certain national governing bodies, must make a concerted push. Bluntly, if they aren’t going to do that then we have to accept that this is as good as it gets and we will ONLY go backwards from here. And I don’t believe the ICC have come to this point only to lose their bottle, so to speak.
4. On the point of equal pay, I think that is a two-edged sword. It may be controversial, and it may be unlikely to ever happen, but I would like to see pay between male and female cricketers move closer to parity both by women’s pay increasing AND men’s pay decreasing. Whilst the top male cricketers are far from being as well rewarded as, say, Premier League footballers, tennis players, boxers or F1 drivers, they still get more than enough.
5. THERE NEEDS TO BE MORE INTERNATIONAL CRICKET.
6. On the question of Tests, I am bemused as to why this form of the game was not included in the survey. I wonder – being mischievous – whether FICA have been “leant on” not to rock the boat on this issue, because given free reign to express their opinions I am sure there would be a significant body of players – quite likely a majority – who would want to play more of it – or play it full stop!
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