With the England players now all together in their biosecure “training bubble” at Derby, the ECB have confirmed that the inter-squad warm-up fixtures which will begin on Thursday will be live-streamed on ecb.co.uk.

In a welcome move to acknowledge the long history of women’s cricket, the inter-squad teams will be named after two greats of the sport, Rachael Heyhoe Flint (1939-2017) and Janette Brittin (1959-2017).

Heyhoe Flint captained England for 10 years between 1966 and 1976 without losing a Test, later leading the charge for female membership of the MCC; while Brittin represented her country between 1979 and 1998, amassing 1,935 Test runs – still a record today.

The 24 England squad players currently at Derby will be aiming to emulate the feats of the pair over the coming days, as they seek to make a case for themselves in the forthcoming series against South Africa (fixtures TBC). The inter-squad match on Thursday will be the first time any of the squad have played since the Twenty20 World Cup back in March.

The ECB have also today confirmed that Tim Macdonald has been appointed as the new Senior Assistant Coach after taking the role on an interim basis earlier in the year.

ECB Director of Women’s Cricket Clare Connor has labelled Chance to Shine’s Secondary School Girls Programme, an initiative funding cricket coaching and leadership development for girls aged 11-16, as a “pioneering project”, which is “setting a beacon for girls to be able to aspire to [leadership] opportunities”.

Connor was speaking on the day Chance to Shine revealed that the Programme, which so far has reached 1,700 girls across the country, has had a significant impact on the confidence and leadership abilities of those enrolled in the programme.

Research conducted by the Centre for Sport, Physical Education & Activity Research at Canterbury Christ Church University found that by the end of the programme there was a ‘statistically significant’ increase in the number of girls who said they were active every day (from 34% to 39.6%). This was also reflected in changing the girls’ attitudes towards the sport, with just over three quarters (78%) saying that they ‘wanted to play more cricket than before’.

Young Leaders were first trained to take on coaching responsibilities in sessions and then supported to put those skills into practice in after-school clubs and organising and leading primary school cricket festivals. The research showed statistically significant growth in the following key leadership traits:

• Confidence – ‘I feel confident’ 39% -> 45%
• Resilience – ‘If I find something difficult, I keep trying until I can do it’ 50% -> 57%
• Creativity – ‘I come up with new ideas’ 31% -> 39%
• Adaptability – ‘I try to change activities so that everyone can take part’ 44% -> 56%

“It makes you quite emotional seeing girls thriving playing cricket,” Connor said. “Focusing the attention on girls developing their leadership skills, their self confidence, their ability to communicate and be role models is a really pioneering scheme.”

“This is about the next generation of female leaders. We want women and men to have equal opportunities in the workplace, and this scheme is setting a beacon for girls to be able to aspire to these kind of opportunities.”

“Sport historically has communicated with and catered to men and boys. What Chance to Shine is doing through this programme is redressing the balance.”

The hope is that Chance to Shine can now work alongside the ECB to deliver their new strategy for women’s and girls’ cricket, Inspiring Generations, by supporting as many girls to play the sport in secondary school as possible.

However, the current Secondary School programme is at threat from a significant decrease in fund-raised income due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and may not take place next year.

For more information about how you can help ensure that their work continues, please email info@chancetoshine.org.

Nervous Newbies

As England discovered in 2014, going pro doesn’t make you better overnight – all it does it place the spotlight firmly on your performances, and my goodness, do you feel it. It’s fair to say that Naomi Dattani’s first outing as a professional cricketer didn’t quite go to plan – caught behind for a four-ball duck as Rhianna Southby dived in one direction while Dattani’s bat went flying in another. Fellow pro Amara Carr also departed cheaply, while even Cordelia Griffith spent a couple of overs poking around before she finally found her mojo to top score for Middlesex. An inauspicious beginning for the new “domestic pro era”, perhaps, but there’ll be more – and better – to come.

Rusty Running

The theme of the day was, unsurprisingly given that most of these players have barely touched a cricket ball in anger in 10 months, rustiness. That largely manifested itself in some poorly-judged running between the wickets – including not seizing the day when runs were there for the taking. There was also a frankly bizarre turn of events whereby Middlesex’s Ollie Rae started to walk off the pitch, thinking she’d been caught out of her ground by Southby, but had to be summoned back after the umpire informed her that the bails had actually been dislodged by a rogue glove instead of the ball. Ah, cricket, how we’ve missed you.

Lower Order’s Time to Shine

Asked in the Zoom press conference about the most satisfying moment of today’s match, Surrey captain Hannah Jones pointed to the dismissal of Griffith in the ninth over.  “It’s been a long time [in lockdown] to think about setting fields, and to think about hypothetical situations,” she said. “So when it went down Amy Gordon’s throat at deep midwicket it was very nice for a plan to finally come together, not just be drawn on a whiteboard.”

If Surrey thought they’d done the hard yards by dismissing Griffith, though, they were in for a shock: it was number 6 Gayatri Gole who stole the show, finishing with a quick-fire 28* (24 balls) and taking the 15th and 19th overs for 13 and 11 runs respectively – you can see the impact in the innings “worm”.

Similarly, it was Surrey’s number 7 Kira Chathli (28* off 23) who rescued Surrey’s own worm, after the home side were left 60-5 in the 13th needing 8.5 runs an over for victory. To ramp Dattani over your head for four not once but twice in blasé fashion is one way of showing the big guns at the top of the order how it’s done. “Those are my shots. I’m pretty confident playing them. They didn’t change the field so it’s going straight in the same place!” Chathli told us after the match.

In our match preview video we speculated that Surrey would sorely miss their “big name” players – Nat Sciver, Bryony Smith and Sophia Dunkley – who are all elsewhere training in the “England bubble”. Apparently not!

We’re Back, Baby

Two years ago, on a sunny May evening at Guildford, Syd and I were pretty much the only non-parent spectators present at that year’s London Cup fixture. This time around the match may have been played “behind closed doors” but, incredibly, the Facebook and Surrey CCC live streams attracted over 1000 viewers. Kudos to Surrey, who not only made this match happen but also invested in a multi-camera streaming set-up which will have made a huge difference to the quality of the experience for those watching at home.

Women’s cricket is back, and we couldn’t be happier!

Jarrod Kimber discusses the benefits which having cricket in the Olympics could bring to women’s cricket.

(N.B. We’re very much in favour – Syd argues why here.)

So far, Richard Bedbrook’s new job hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Appointed as Regional Director of Women’s Cricket for the new London & the South East Region back in March, he had been in role less than a month before full lockdown was imposed across the UK. By now he should have been overseeing a full squad of players, and a full complement of coaching & support staff on top of that.

Instead, recruitment is on hold, and much uncertainty lies ahead for the 8 new Regions, which had been due to supersede women’s county cricket as the pinnacle of the domestic player pathway in England from 2020 onwards. No one knows for sure whether the September inter-regional fixtures will go ahead as planned, or what the route back to training and squad selection looks like from here.

Nonetheless, for Bedbrook – who has been head coach of Surrey’s county side since 2017, and seen first-hand the struggles which county players face when trying to juggle cricket with work and study – the overwhelming feeling remains one of excitement in being involved in a new era for the women’s game in England.

“The level of the game’s got to be taken forwards,” he says. “We don’t want that jump for players from domestic cricket into the internationals to be still too far apart. We’ve got to make this domestic structure as good as it possibly can be.”

Despite the delay to the 40 full-time professional domestic contracts, which were originally due to begin in April, there has been one important development: the ECB last week confirmed the allocation of 20 place-holder “retainer” contracts, split between the 8 regions. These represent the first step towards domestic professionalism in England. Representing London & the South East in the list are Tash Farrant, Alice Davidson-Richards, Sophia Dunkley and Bryony Smith (the latter three are all current holders of England “Rookie” contracts).

Bedbrook, who was in charge of the selection process, describes them as “the standout four players from our region”:

“Tash [Farrant] is a Kent girl at heart. When we initially chatted and there was a desire for her to come back this way,” (she has lived in Loughborough for the past 5 years), “it was a no brainer then that she’d be part of that group.”

“Alice [Davidson-Richards] and Bryony [Smith], being home grown girls from their respective two counties and on the rookie scheme at the moment, those players were nailed on as first choice because of that reason. They’ve both got ambitions to progress out of that Rookie system into the England setup.”

“There’s been a relationship between Surrey and Sophia [Dunkley] for a couple of years through the KSL. We’ve got to know each other as coach and player, and then when she joined Surrey this year, it was a fairly obvious question to ask, would she be interested in coming to this region? Again, it’s another player in the Rookie system who’s got big England ambitions.”

While the official line from the ECB was that retainers should be allocated on the basis of future potential to play for England, the Regional Directors have clearly been given the scope to mould the core of their new squads according to their own preference. Bedbrook is clear how he sees his role:

“We’re having to work through that right from the outset, what is the aim of this regional programme? And I think probably one of the bigger drivers is the player development aspect. The winning of the competition is actually probably a secondary aim behind that.”

One of the difficulties going forward will be juggling the needs of the professionals in the squad with those of their teammates, who will remain largely amateur, though they will have the capacity to earn match fees of circa £200 for each regional fixture they are selected for. Bedbrook acknowledges this will be a challenge, but argues that the new professional domestic contracts will play a positive role in increasing the drive and motivation of players to showcase their skills in the domestic set-up.

“The players who aren’t professionals are going to want one of those [paid] spots,” he says. “Offering them the ability to train as much as they can, within the programmes that we can set up, will clearly show those that are massively keen to make the next step, out of that amateur status into semi professional / professional.”

“Those players are going to have to really, really take a step forwards with their outlook to cricket, their outlook to their own training. Because when you’ve got players such as these four [Farrant, ADR, Smith and Dunkley] who have got high standards, who have got ambition to be better, they don’t want to be held back by others.”

He is also keen to emphasise that the 5 professional contracts per region are only the first step on a path to full domestic professionalism: “I think we’re going to be a little bit led by by how the programme itself can develop in time – i.e. how long are we only going to have five professionals within each region? When potentially is the stage when it can increase?”

He emphasises, too, that in this new era for the women’s game, his role is not only to support those with England ambitions. “It’s really important for us to set our stall out – we want to help players make the next step up, realise the ambitions that they might have, which might be to play for England, but equally it might be to be a professional cricketer for as long as they can.”

Last week the London & South East Region announced that their team name would be the “South East Stars”, a clear carry-over from the KSL, confirming CRICKETher’s theory that the regional sides represent the KSL Mark Two. The decision, says Bedbrook (who coached Surrey Stars in all 4 seasons of the KSL), was made back in January by a joint Surrey-Kent Working Group, who felt it was right to “keep that brand going”.

“I think there’s elements to it clearly that are going to have been ear marked in the KSL,” he adds. “But I think the biggest link from the visibility of the KSL will be to The Hundred – that’s going to be a game changer for women’s cricket.”

Is the main marketing focus going to be on The Hundred, rather than promoting the regional Centres of Excellence, in that case? “Primarily at the moment the marketing is being pushed into The Hundred. But we clearly want to have people coming to watch [the regional competition], and we clearly want to make it visible where we can”, says Bedbrook.

“Ultimately, there is still that strap line of, ‘you need to see it to be it’. And that’s hugely relevant for the women’s game at this point still. We’ve obviously seen some massive strides taken over the last few years, not just with our domestic competition, but obviously the KSL. And then clearly, we’ve just had the Women’s World Cup, which put it into a new realm. And that’s why it’s so disappointing that this pandemic’s come at the worst possible time, I think.”

“But that’s not to say that that momentum will be lost – that momentum’s just paused. And we’ve got to make sure that we do make these players on the call now visible to young girls in the region and nationally. We want to make these four, but all the other players involved, as visible to as many people as possible.”

Now all they need is the chance to get out there on the field and play some cricket.

The ECB have announced the 20 players who have been awarded regional “retainers” ahead of the 40 domestic contracts which will now kick in later in the year.

The recruitment of the 20 players – who will be the first ever domestic female professionals in England, earning £1000 a month – has been driven by the Regional Directors of Women’s Cricket, with selections made on the basis of likelihood of representing England in the near future.

While Kathryn and Sarah Bryce are currently Scotland players, this suggests that either or both might hope to one day follow Kirstie Gordon in qualifying for England. Additionally, Beth Langston, Alex Hartley and Tash Farrant – who all previously represented England – are clearly still in contention for future selection.

The 5 holders of England “Rookie” contracts have also been allocated to regions but will remain on their England contracts until the 40 full-time contracts begin later in the year.

The 25 players allocated to a particular region are as follows:

North East:

• Hollie Armitage
• Beth Langston
• Linsey Smith (EW Rookie)

North West:

• Georgie Boyce
• Alex Hartley
• Emma Lamb (EW Rookie)
• Ellie Threlkeld

West Midlands:

• Eve Jones
• Marie Kelly
• Issy Wong

East Midlands:

• Kathryn Bryce
• Sarah Bryce

South West and Wales:

• Dani Gibson
• Sophie Luff
• Fi Morris

South Central:

• Georgia Adams
• Tara Norris
• Paige Scholfield

London and South East:

• Alice Davidson-Richards (EW Rookie)
• Sophia Dunkley (EW Rookie)
• Tash Farrant
• Bryony Smith (EW Rookie)

London and East:

• Amara Carr
• Naomi Dattani
• Cordelia Griffith

The ECB have announced that 24 players will return to training on Monday 22 June in preparation for the proposed tri-series between England, India and South Africa in September, with uncapped fast bowlers Lauren Bell and Issy Wong amongst their number.

The announcement suggests that both Bell and Wong, who impressed for Southern Vipers in the KSL last season, could be in line to make their international debuts in September, should the proposed tri-series take place as intended.

With all 22 contracted England players also returning to training, it looks likely that the ECB are expecting the tri-series to consist of a high number of compressed fixtures, meaning that there will be more players in line for international duty than usual this summer.

The training sessions will take place under the same medical guidelines and bio-secure conditions as have been in place for England Men. The 24 players will initially train on their own before progressing to small group training, and they will be based across six different venues: the National Performance Centre, Loughborough; Emerald Headingley, Yorkshire; The Kia Oval, London; Bristol County Ground, Bristol; Chester Boughton Hall CC, Lancashire Cheshire; and the 1st Central County Ground, Hove.

Full squads for the series and a list of fixtures will be announced in due course.

The full list of 24 players returning to training is as follows:

• Tammy Beaumont (Kent)
• Lauren Bell (Berkshire / Middlesex)
• Katherine Brunt (Yorkshire)
• Kate Cross (Lancashire)
• Alice Davidson-Richards (Kent)
• Freya Davies (Sussex)
• Sophia Dunkley (Surrey)
• Sophie Ecclestone (Lancashire)
• Georgia Elwiss (Sussex)
• Katie George (Hampshire)
• Sarah Glenn (Worcestershire)
• Kirstie Gordon (Kent)
• Amy Jones (Warwickshire)
• Heather Knight (Berkshire)
• Emma Lamb (Lancashire)
• Nat Sciver (Surrey)
• Anya Shrubsole (Berkshire)
• Bryony Smith (Surrey)
• Linsey Smith (Sussex)
• Mady Villiers (Essex)
• Fran Wilson (Kent)
• Lauren Winfield (Yorkshire)
• Issy Wong (Warwickshire)
• Danni Wyatt (Sussex)

The ECB’s new retainers, which will be awarded to 24 domestic players and will begin on 1 June, will be worth £1,000 a month; while the 40 new full-time domestic professionals – whose contracts will commence later in the summer – will earn £18,000 a year, CRICKETher has learned.

All of those awarded retainers will subsequently be upgraded to a full-time domestic contract once these kick in later in the summer.

The remaining contracts will be confirmed after the Centre of Excellence fixtures have been played in September, presumably based on player performances during the competition.

All CoE players, meanwhile – assuming at least some fixtures go ahead this season – will be paid a match fee of approximately £200 per game.

From 2021, the £18,000 will be supplemented by payments for The Hundred (Women’s Competition), which for domestic female players will likely range between £3,600 and £9,000.

This would still, however, mean that all domestic players would earn less than the PCA’s mandated minimum wage for full-time professional cricketers in England, which last June was set at £27,500.

The ECB have confirmed the hosts for the 8 new Regional Centres of Excellence which will form the backbone of the new domestic structure in England and Wales.

As mooted by CRICKETher last October, the new teams will largely correspond to the previous 6 Kia Super League regions – with Surrey, Hampshire, Loughborough University, Lancashire and Yorkshire all acting as CoE “hosts”; while both Western Storm and Southern Vipers live on in an alternative guise. Both Storm (a partnership of Glamorgan CCC, Gloucestershire CCC and Somerset CCC) and Vipers have also registered as limited companies, reflecting the greater amount of autonomy granted to the CoEs compared to the KSL hosts.

Meanwhile the two “new” regional teams – London & East and West Midlands – will be hosted by Middlesex CCC and a partnership between Warwickshire & Worcestershire CCC respectively.

It is expected that the players selected for the new Centres will train and play at least some of their fixtures at the home grounds of the regional hosts, with the new domestic calendar therefore centring around Headingley, Old Trafford, New Road, Loughborough University, Taunton / Bristol, the Ageas Bowl, the Oval and Lord’s.

All 8 Regional Directors of Women’s Cricket are also now in place, with familiar faces Danni Warren (London & East), Richard Bedbrook (London & South East), Laura MacLeod (West Midlands) and Lisa Pagett (South West & Wales) joined by James Carr (North East), David Thorley (North West), Ian Read (East Midlands), and Adam Carty (South Central).

Carr previously worked at Cricket Scotland, while Carty had headed up Hampshire’s Boys’ Player Pathway; Thorley joins from England Boxing, and Read is the former Performance Programme Manager for Loughborough Sport.

The full list of hosts is as follows:

• North East – Yorkshire CCC
• North West – Lancashire CCC
• West Midlands – Warwickshire & Worcestershire CCC
• East Midlands – Loughborough University
• South West & Wales – Glamorgan CCC, Gloucestershire CCC and Somerset CCC (aka Western Storm Ltd)
• South Central – Hampshire CCC (aka Southern Vipers Ltd)
• London & South East – Surrey CCC
• London & East – Middlesex CCC

Last week Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde’s Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution was deservedly named Wisden’s Book of the Year. The book provides a forensic examination of the multiple ways in which T20 has changed cricket, both for the better and for the worse, and features interviews with more than fifty players and coaches in the men’s game.

I began reading it while out in Australia for the T20 World Cup, and almost immediately happened upon the following, in the Authors’ Note: “This book is solely on men’s T20 cricket. T20 has transformed women’s cricket too – quite possibly even more so – but that story deserves its own full telling, and there are others better qualified than us to do it justice.”

That quickly became the lens through which I consumed the rest of the book. How far can Wigmore and Wilde’s analysis be extended to the women’s game? Is men’s T20 cricket a vision for our future?

I’ve noted some of my musings below. I’d be interested to hear your own views in the comments.

• Increased use of data is at the heart of this book, and is one aspect of what Wilde and Wigmore label a “paradigm shift” in cricket in the past 10 years (see especially ch.2). Here is one area where women’s cricket is lagging behind. Matthew Mott is the first coach I’ve heard who regularly uses the term “match-ups” in press conferences; Australia are the first international side who actually have the resources at their disposal (i.e. analysts) to use data to the extent that it’s been used in men’s cricket. This was much discussed during the recent T20 World Cup, when Australia came under the spotlight for becoming obsessed with a numbers-based approach to questions like whether Ash Gardner or Meg Lanning should bat at 3. Overall, use of data is one area where I’d suggest women’s T20 cricket will begin to look much more “Cricket 2.0” in the next few years, as teams become better resourced around the world.
• Commercial forces have shaped men’s T20 cricket to a much greater extent than in the women’s game. Men’s T20 franchise leagues have created a free market whereby mercenaries like Chris Gayle (ch.3) can make millions of dollars without wearing their national shirt. No one chooses the freelance life in women’s cricket: it’s hard work – see for example Rachel Priest, who snapped up a New Zealand contract as soon as she could, after moonlighting in the KSL and WBBL for a couple of years.
• That means that some of the positives which T20 cricket has brought to the men’s game, like the “democratisation” process amongst players from non-Test playing nations (ch.13), have not yet arrived in women’s cricket. On the other hand, you might argue that the players remain much less motivated by money – they are grateful for the chance to make a living playing cricket, but they don’t turn into the kind of person who gives themselves the nickname “Universe Boss”, which is a plus point as far as I’m concerned.
• Men’s T20 cricket has brought spin bowling to the fore (ch.4) – an interesting contrast with the women’s game, where spinners have generally been more dominant. I might even hesitantly say that, in a reversal of the trend Wilde and Wigmore identify, T20 cricket has made pace bowling more important in women’s cricket. If the best T20 pace bowling is about mastering variations (ch.7), might that gives seamers in women’s cricket an advantage, because variations (not sheer pace) have traditionally been the tools of their trade?
• In chapter 8, Wilde and Wigmore outline the gradual unravelling of the ECB’s initial opposition to the IPL from 2015 onwards, which they attribute to England Men’s poor performance in the 2015 World Cup. I am intrigued by this timeline. It was in June 2015 that Clare Connor first unveiled plans for a new women’s “Super League”, which was to be a franchise T20 tournament – the first of its kind in England. Perhaps the success of the KSL, as it became, helped erode the ECB’s opposition to these kind of leagues?
• Something we have seen a lot less of in women’s T20 cricket is the struggle for peaceful co-existence between domestic T20 leagues and international cricket (ch.9). WBBL and KSL have both been part-funded and fully supported by their national boards. Nonetheless, an integral part of the story of the WBBL’s origins is the rebel-league-that-wasn’t, Shaun Martyn’s Women’s International Cricket League (WICL). This initiative pushed Cricket Australia, who were terrified that they might lose control of their players, into launching WBBL – and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s going to be interesting to see if the launch of a Women’s IPL eventually takes us to another showdown between the boards and the franchises.
• Chapter 12, “Why CSK Win and Why RCB Lose”, could equally well be entitled “Why Western Storm Win and Why Lancashire Thunder Lose”. Western Storm, the only team to feature in all 4 KSL Finals Days, realised early on (as did CSK in the men’s IPL) that a strong core of domestic players was the way to achieve success.
• However, one key difference between women’s and men’s T20 franchise leagues has been the lack of a player draft in the women’s game. There is no “science of a good auction” (ch.2) in women’s T20 cricket – in the KSL, England players were “allocated” centrally by the ECB, while for the overseas players, all the negotiations were done behind the scenes. These negotiations, which have generally been top-secret, would certainly be a fascinating process to research!
• On that note, Wigmore and Wilde’s “Epilogue” is devoted to 32 Predictions For The Future Of T20 Cricket. (Many of these provide a compelling vision for the future of the women’s game, which is one reason why I’d recommend this book to Cher readers.) One prediction is that: “The system of drafts and auctions will evolve”, with at least some of the allocation process moving to direct negotiations with players, in order to create more continuity in teams and eliminate the upheaval currently experienced in the men’s IPL when contracts come up for renewal. I wonder whether women’s cricket might learn from the men’s game and actually bypass the draft system completely, given its many disadvantages?

A final point: Wigmore and Wilde’s “Author’s Note” might well be interpreted as a “call to arms” for some future author to write their own version of this book, but centring on the women’s game. My feeling is that it would be a very different book. The forensic level of statistical analysis which Wilde and Wigmore adopt, based on extensive use of CricVizz’s stats database, would be much harder to achieve – there is no equivalently sized database for the women’s game (as far as I’m aware). As it stands, an author would have to rely far more heavily on anecdotal information provided at a team level.

I’d still read it, though!