By Andy Frombolton

Last week Will Macpherson broke the news in The Daily Telegraph about Project Darwin (the ECB’s plan for the women’s domestic game in 2025-29); the one-line summary being that counties will be invited to take over the running (and the partial funding) of the 8 regions from the ECB and rebrand them.

Project Darwin thus builds on the ECB’s 2019 Action Plan for Transforming Women’s and Girls’ Cricket which sought to develop an integrated pathway from club to country; core to which were 2 components: (i) raising standards in the girls’ County Age Group and (ii) the creation of eight senior regional teams along with their associated academies (Regional Development Centres, RDCs.)

Regarding that first goal, in reality, the elite tiers of the game have received virtually all the focus in the intervening years whilst County cricket has been starved of funds, competition and attention; surviving primarily through the determination, creativity and passion of some very committed individuals. Given this track record, the ECB’s vagueness about what will happen below Tier 1 and that, whatever form this takes, won’t be rolled out until a year later should sound alarm bells. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’

Regarding the proposals for the 8 Tier 1 teams, reaction so far has been largely positive. And the proposals are backed by serious amounts of money. But some obvious questions arise:

1. What are the benefits vs the cost implications of being a Tier 1 county? And what will happen if no suitable bids are received for some of the regions?
2. What happens to the RDC Academies?
3. The new structure risks reducing ‘depth’ of player participation within the host counties as well as ‘breadth’ of representation from across the country. Does the ECB deem this a price worth paying?
4. A truly-integrated. holistic strategy would be rolled-out simultaneously. Why roll out Tier 1 and Tier 2 strategies in different years?

Surrey and Lancashire have already expressed an interest in hosting one of the regions and probable bidders for several others have been mooted.

But, what’s in it for any bidder? For the foreseeable future International cricket and The Hundred will constitute the main stage for women’s cricket – and the hosting of England women’s and Hundred games is independent of, and totally regardless of, whether a county is one of the eight Tier 1 women’s counties.

What then are the other reasons to bid? To demonstrate a commitment to equality? Of course – although the corollary position would be that any county which doesn’t bid isn’t committed to equality (which would be both simplistic and a grossly unfair characterisation).

In Will Macpherson’s scoop he stated that host counties will be required to assume responsibility for a significant share of the running costs – initially around 400k but rising to 1.1m by 2029 as salaries and associated costs rise. These are significant sums in themselves, but need to be considered in the context of the women’s county game’s ability to generate additional revenue in this timeframe.

Consider for instance the 3 obvious candidates for the ‘Western Storm’ franchise: Gloucester, Somerset and Glamorgan. Both Gloucestershire and Somerset have proved themselves to be superb advocates of the women’s game over many years. Yet, Gloucestershire lost 570k last year, Glamorgan lost 39k and Somerset made a surplus of just 399k. None look well placed to take on a further 400k of costs in 2025.

Similar challenges face a bidder for the ‘Sunrisers’ franchise. MCC might be keen, but they’re not a county and have no infrastructure so would need Middlesex to partner any bid and provide all the resources. Middlesex’s finances are similarly precarious and would therefore require MCC to underwrite all costs.

Just as importantly, at a practical level, Middlesex currently produce the fewest ‘home grown’ players of any RDC, meaning that the issues cited at point 2 would be particularly germane for them.

Objectively, Essex might be a more logical host than Middlesex given its really strong support for girls and women’s cricket and also in terms of broadening the geographical spread of the Tier 1 counties, but it lost 32k last year which renders a bid unlikely.

What then happens if no county bids for e.g. the ‘Western Storm’ franchise? No one could expect a club to take on costs it can’t cover. And no one is going to think less of any club which is ‘only’ a Tier 2 county – provided they do everything for women’s cricket that’s expected of a Tier 2 club.

Or what happens e.g., if the Welsh Government partnered with Glamorgan to produce a winning bid? The players of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucester and Wiltshire would be excluded in any realistic sense from harbouring professional ambitions.

Based on the information in the public domain, what Project Darwin means for the RDC Academies is unclear. However, if the new Tier 1 counties are to assume responsibility for everything the regions currently do, then this must comprise not just the senior women’s teams but also the associated talent pathways which feed into the senior squads (i.e., the 8 RDCs and the 23 Emerging Player Programmes, EPPs).

A review of the 2023/24 intake for each of the RDCs shows how well represented the non-host partner counties are (a dramatic change from a few years ago).

• Blaze: Derby (2); Essex (1); Leicester (4); Lincs (1); Notts (5); Staffordshire (1)
• Central Sparks: Staffordshire (5); Shropshire (2); Worcester (2); Wales (1)
• Northern Diamonds: Yorkshire (8); Northumbria (4); Durham (3)
• South East Stars: Kent (5); Surrey (9)
• Southern Vipers: Berkshire (3); Hants (5); Kent (1); Oxford (1); Sussex (2)
• Sunrisers: Cambridge (1); Essex (5); Hertfordshire (2); Kent (1); Middlesex (4); Norfolk (2)
• Thunder: Cheshire (3); Cumbria (1): Lancashire (11).
• Western Storm: Devon (2): Exeter (1); Gloucester (5); Somerset (3); Wales (1); Wilts (3)

So, what is proposed to replace the RDCs under Project Darwin? County Under 19 teams? County U21 teams? This won’t work since, as these figures clearly show, no county has enough indigenous talent to organically underpin its senior women’s team.

Hence Tier 1 counties will still need to draw upon talent from adjoining counties – meaning they would need to: (1) continue to fund and support EPPs in contingent counties to identify and nurture the best regional talent; and (2) create replacements for the inter-RDC matches and tournaments to allow each Tier 1 county’s best non-contracted players plus affiliated EPP players play against similar squads from other Tier 1 counties.

For the majority of players across the country playing for their County is the pinnacle of their ambitions (whether capped by ability or other factors) and such a goal should be attainable wherever a player lives.

Currently, this is the case even when your county is also a regional host i.e., a player can play for Hampshire without being in the Southern Vipers squad or for Middlesex without being a Sunriser. (Although the distinction between regional squads and county teams is somewhat blurred at some counties.).

However, with the abolition of the regions if a county becomes a Tier 1 county this bifurcation will end. Suddenly there’ll be no place for the non-professional – however talented – at Tier 1 counties meaning players who don’t seek or don’t have the skills to be professional player will have only 2 choices: play for an adjacent Tier 2 county (if that’s viable) or accept that the highest standard they can play at will be premier league cricket.

This is unfair and discriminates against a Tier 1 county’s entire non-professional pool. In addition, it means that there’d be no structure to nurture a Tier 1 county’s late developing talent – after CAG U17, any player not in the county squad would have no support and hence no chance to improve.

I’ve written several times before about the folly of effectively closing the women’s talent pool at such a young age when evidence from the men’s game suggests there is barely no correlation between performance at age 19 and long-term success. (No one has yet countered with any argument why the women’s game would be different if similar support existed for late developers.)

This proposal risks significantly reducing the breadth of the talent pool by (i) the abandonment of the RDC level and (ii) the proposal that all other counties play Tier 2 cricket. A primary argument for the creation of the regions was that the standard of county cricket was too low. What chance has a talented cricketer in e.g., Cornwall or Cumbria of a professional career if the nearest host county is 2 hours’ drive away, their local coaching is limited to whatever a Tier 2 county can provide, who plays in matches against other Tier 2 sides (meaning no coach or scout from Tier 1 will ever see them play and any reports of good performances will invariably be dismissed as having ‘only’ been made at Tier 2)?

And even this pessimistic scenario requires that the ECB shows considerably more interest (and puts money) in the game beneath the professional level than they’ve done since the creation of the regional structure.

Finally, a staggered roll-out of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 structures suggests that the ECB hasn’t solidified its plans re the future structure of the Tier 2 game (other than issuing some ‘holding’ language that it will act as a level between the recreational game and Tier 1). What, like the counties were expected to do under the current regional set up? Can we expect another begrudgingly-endorsed regional county T20 tournament running the whole month of May? This would not be good enough.

I don’t propose to have all the answers, but here are a few suggestions to start the ball rolling.

1. All Tier 1 counties should be obliged to fund, support and deliver EPPs in a designated number of contingent partner Tier 2 counties. This will ensure that talent isn’t squandered simply because a promising player happens to live in a non-host county.
2. Tier 1 host counties should be required to fund and support a separate, entirely non-professional ‘A’ team (playing under the same county name) which would compete in Tier 2 competitions. This would ensure that all amateur players have the same opportunity to play for their county if their county is a Tier 1 county. Players on EPPs who haven’t secured regional contracts could play in the A team – which would be the next highest level of competition beneath Tier 1 in the absence of RDC games. This would help raise the standard of Tier 2 games and provide a stage on which Tier 2 players could showcase their skills – with the realistic expectation that good performances would be noted by Tier 1 coaches and talent scouts.
3. The ECB needs to launch properly-funded T20 and 50 over competitions for Tier 2 counties (and Tier 1 ‘A’ teams) which run the whole season and culminate in proper quarter-, semis and national finals.
4. Implementation of the new Tier 1 and Tier 2 structure should be on the same year.