Exciting Times Ahead for Women’s Cricket We have had much to celebrate in women’s cricket after a year of ‘firsts’ in 2014. We introduced the first instalment of professional contracts for 18 players, we signed our first stand-alone commercial deal with Kia Motors and we secured Sky Sports’ commitment to covering the entire multi-format Women’s Ashes in July and August this year. That will be the first time that Sky have covered an entire women’s international summer and the first time they have broadcast a women’s Test match. Not only has there been a chain of good news stories at the professional end of the game, but last year we also celebrated one million girls going through the Chance to Shine programme. Through Chance to Shine, the sport has become more accessible to girls than ever before and there are now more opportunities for girls to play cricket at school and in clubs. With eight members of the contracted England women’s team still working as coaching ambassadors with Chance to Shine, that is something of which we are particularly proud. We are really pleased with what we achieved last year but this has also been a time for us to take stock and assess what our ambitions are for the future of women’s cricket in England and Wales. This year we will be focussing on women’s domestic cricket – the club and County games, and the potential development of an elite competition that sits above women’s County cricket. The Counties have made significant progress with women’s and girls’ cricket in recent years and we have a vibrant County game in many areas. However, the women’s County game remains an amateur sport so it is unsurprisingly a mixed landscape in terms of playing and coaching standards and mixed levels of support and investment across the country. Looking from the grassroots up, we want to raise the aspiration of talented players in club cricket. Our ambition going forward must be to have a robust club landscape for women and girls as it is such an important stage of the player pathway. We have had a range of conversations with counties, other sports and the players themselves to ask what the competitive environment should look like underneath a fully professional England set-up. We are now pulling together all those responses and findings to ensure we provide a competition structure which challenges our 18 contracted players to be even better prepared for international cricket, and which gives our most talented players who aspire to play for England a platform whereby they can showcase their abilities against the very best players. With real support and momentum behind women’s sport at the moment, women’s cricket is in an exciting place. {{ak_sharing}}
