When Raf and I started our journeys in women’s cricket (“journeys” plural – we didn’t know each other back then) no one was being paid. A few of the top players were maybe covering their expenses, but even they were essentially paying to play. When the first England contracts came in, a well-known player (someone you’ve heard of) commented that she’d “earn more working in McDonalds”.
When the players flew to World Cups, they travelled economy and shared rooms in 3-star hotels… and even that was an upgrade on previous eras, where they’d had to pay for their own air-fares and were put up in student halls.
That’s all changed now – certainly for the top international players. They fly business class everywhere they go, stay in the very best 5-star hotels, and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
For the journalists covering them, things haven’t changed quite so much. There is (I believe) precisely one person in the West who makes a living as a journalist exclusively covering women’s cricket, and they are effectively paid by one of the boards.
Everyone else is flying economy, staying in cheaper hotels or Airbnbs, and still not making money – they are covering their costs via a day job, either covering other sports (including men’s cricket) or (in our cases) something completely different – Raf is a university lecturer, and I am a computer programmer.
On this Women’s Ashes tour there are 3 UK-based written journalists covering every match and only one will walk away from the exercise with more money in their bank account than they started with, because The Guardian (for the first time ever) are covering Raf’s full costs.
This isn’t intended to be a grocery-list of grievances – we get free entry to games, and we are well fed and watered; we are aware that this is a privilege. But it is important context for what follows.
Overnight it has emerged that Sophie Ecclestone refused to do a TV interview with Alex Hartley following comments Hartley made during the recent World Cup that a couple of the England players were unfit. (Note that Hartley did not originally say which players were unfit – but Ecclestone seems to have taken it personally, so… read into that what you will!)
If the England players don’t think they need broadcast media, you can probably imagine what they think of the written press – we are a chore at best (one of them is required to speak to us after every game) and “The Enemy” at worst – Ecclestone’s actions have just brought out into the open what everyone inside the circus already knew.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? It’s a question that has engaged philosophers for over 150 years, but perhaps it should be engaging certain cricketers too. If they hit a ball, and no one is around to write about it, has it actually happened?
Sophie Ecclestone’s exploits last summer for example will go down in history, in Wisden – cricket’s “publication of record” – only because I wrote about them, making far less money than it cost us in hotels and travel to see those games.
If the players think they don’t need us (and their actions here certainly suggest that is the case) then they are sorely mistaken – we are a crucial spoke in the wheels of this rollercoaster.
Whatever she thinks, Sophie Ecclestone isn’t actually paid for being good at tossing a cricket ball at another woman 22 yards away – she is paid to entertain the paying public, and without newspapers, and websites and YouTube channels like CRICKETher nurturing a hardcore fanbase, there is no wider fanbase and ultimately no business class flights, no 5-star hotels, and no hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
And as detailed above, we have little-to-no financial incentive to keep doing this – we do it because we love it – certainly not for the cash. If we stop, women’s cricket loses a crucial spoke in the wheel; and there would be consequences for that.
CRICKETher 
This freud needs to be put to bed asap before it becomes a war.
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It’s already all-out war!!! In the red corner…
Seriously though this is an unexpected twist, which brings some distraction (albeit with a slight sense of horror) to England fans desperate for a break from this gloom.
Nice article, Syd. You are correct in that England players and management would do well not to alienate the media. And Hartley is part of the media now, although it might not have sunk in for a few of the England players yet who may still consider her a former player / teammate.
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The ECB needs to come out and publicly apologies to Alex and make a firm statement in favour of Cricket media and the role that they play. Anything less and politicians need to get involved.
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Hi Syd,Thanks for this article- I totally agree with everything you have written.I
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What entitled behavior! Sophie Ecclestone needs to be aware of her status in the game, dismissing journalists because you take umbrage at comments made as part of an opinion piece is not a good look.
Good article Syd well written and thoughtful.
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This has been coming for some time.
The ECB has for ages been a self-interested organisation that spins and spins and spins (pardon the pun). As we have so recently seen with the Afghanistan issue; smoke, mirrors, no comment, react only when pushed etc. It’s a pretty poor media strategy for a sport that relies on the public to fund it.
Next step is to ensure every player is ECB media trained to the hilt – which means giving the most boring colourless interviews on the planet.
Having set up the barricades, the coaches and players are now safe …. that is until results are a concern and someone dares to fire some criticism at them. Its almost as though the afore-mentioned media strategy never considered the possibility of criticism and how to handle it.
Now, there is a nuance here. Calling out that someone can’t bat very well probably and understandably isn’t taken as personally as something such as “player X is unfit”. The latter is going to feel very personal, even intrusive.
This is not about size and shape though. Geoff Capes could run 100m in about 11 seconds (thus probably breaking the world record for kinetic energy generated by a human being) proving size doesn’t prevent mobility. The fitness issue is about their fielding – not batting, not bowling. The optics of England dropping catches and letting balls through whilst Australia do precisely the opposite is not good. The optics of Australia having 11 Danni Wyatts in the field whilst England have, er, one, is not good. Solve the fielding issues and I suspect the fitness concerns will dissipate (possibly because getting fit means one fields better).
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From what Alex Hartley has said it is clear that a bunker mentality has set in at the England camp which is not good at all.
This priggish behaviour displayed by Sophie Ecclestone reminds me of someone who has become rather coddled. She’s a great player with excellent international and franchise contracts, I’m sure, but she needs to show humility, a freak injury and loss of form could see her tumbling down needing help from anybody and everybody connected to the sport.
But what infuriates me is that, as a senior professional, an excellent opportunity to publicly address the problems this team has, and possible solutions, was spurned. All she could offer was a metaphorical FU.
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Great article. Well said. Yours and Raf’s coverage of this Ashes has been brilliant.
It was brave of Alex Hartley to set that all out publicly. My first thought was there had been some crossed wires somewhere and it wasn’t that Sophie Ecclestone had refused to do an interview but e.g. some sort of scheduling issue; but the silence from the England camp in the days afterwards would suggest otherwise. It’s just what they did not need after a poor performance on the pitch- to have controversy off it.
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Not saying it’s a particularly smart or proper thing to do but is entirely understandable and really not a big deal in my opinion that Ecclestone swerves one pre match interview with Hartley on the boundary.
Parts of the story just feel kinda gossipy too. Not interested in whether her “friendships remain” and England players are talking to her in the street, on the plane or wherever. Not why I tune into TMS.
Ecclestone spent an entire innings fielding dull questions (imo) with a mic pinned to her chest (I may be alone in really not liking those mid match player mic conversations 😖 ) for this apparent thrilling innovation and insight for the Australian channel, in a game that did not end well for England of course; maybe she was all chatted out for the week. At any rate she’s clearly pitching in to do SOME media. Whatever the reason, I’ve no issue with her setting boundaries for herself (no pun intended) mid Ashes. Save urself for when HK invariably calls on you to bowl 40 overs next weekend!
At the time of T20WC I didn’t think Hartley’s comments were very well expressed, im probably in a minority; but agree she had every right to say them. But in team sports we always hear how sides say they win and lose together, as a team. So if your ex team-mate turned pundit is declaring how 20% of the team “let the side down” (Hartley’s words) in a woeful World Cup game and you take that to be a barb singling out in blame you and/or a couple of ur best mates on your team for crashing out of the comp based on ‘fitness’ (and boy it really was a FULL TEAM disaster, ‘fit’ or not), I can understand that you might not fancy a chat on camera with said pundit in the middle of the next huge series that is going badly. Learning curve for both parties imo, & neither’s finest hour.
Anyway, England have to start performing well against top sides under pressure if they want these dins to go away, I reckon on that anyone can agree.
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Thanks for this. An interesting piece and some interesting context for understanding the women’s cricket media ecosystem.
I’m conflicted on the Hartley incident. I think Ecclestone has to recognise her responsibilities as a professional athlete but I also can’t help but admire her spikiness. This England team can seem passive and indifferent at times, all positive-thinking mantras and bland press conferences. It’s good to know they care.
For Hartley it’s probably an important lesson that her words have consequences. She’s an entertaining and likable presence on broadcasts but does come across as a little naive and self-absorbed. The fallout from her ‘cold shoulder’ comments has been predictably awful online, with misogynists and fat-shamers drawn to it like flies to shit. I’m sure she didn’t intend that but I also suspect such consequences never occurred to her. I will also say that while her critique is in one sense correct, England are well behind Australia in athleticism and maybe fitness (tbh fitness is hard to judge from the outside), it was a bizarre and muddled analysis of England’s World Cup exit.
More broadly though, it’s an incident that points to the dilemmas facing coverage of women’s cricket, perhaps women’s sport more broadly. Are the media promoters and cheerleaders for the women’s game or are they there to scrutinise and ask the tough questions? The answer of course is both but perhaps the balance needs to shift going forward.
There is a conversation to be had about what is fair game (should weight issues be off-limits for public discussion, for example) but in general both sides, media and players, should probably be more candid. Anyone who has followed England and Australia recently, who knows anything about the players contesting this series, will not be hugely surprised by the way things have gone. England have been under-par, yes, but much in the same way Australia were under-par in 2023. The fact that Australia escaped from that series with 8 points and England may yet score 0 is an indication of the underlying gulf between the two teams. I don’t think the media coverage was sufficiently honest about this in advance and neither were England. There are so many incentives to raise false expectations but it helps no-one in the long run.
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