The Independent Equality Commission in Cricket (ICEC) report, published in June 2023, was shocking for its detail: The devil of institutional sexism in cricket is, as they say, in the detail. The report condemned the culture of the premier boroughs and described “instances of violent and degrading behavior” towards female staff. One witness reported that she was forced to lock herself in her office to avoid sexual harassment by the club’s male cricketers; another was called “an impressive man” by a colleague for raising the issue of gender equality in a meeting.
Relating to: Women’s cricket to undergo domestic reorganization with county-owned teams
Such is the case in county cricket in the 21st century. In light of this comes the decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to take control of women’s cricket away from independent territories and hand it back to women, in a radical change to the domestic system announced last week. districts may seem suspicious.
It makes more sense to turn this thinking around and understand that this plan is as much about men’s cricket as it is about the women’s game. “Basically this is a growth plan for cricket,” said Beth Barrett-Wild, the European Central Bank’s director of professional women’s football. “By making this transition, we have an opportunity to truly catalyze cultural change through play.”
Another clue is in the title of the tender document sent to the MCC and the 18 top-tier counties invited to tender to host one of the eight professional women’s teams: “Thriving Together”. Winning bids will need to demonstrate a commitment to embedding equal opportunities at all levels of the club: Is there a better way to weed out toxic masculinity?
The ECB appears to have learned something from the ICEC’s criticism of the lack of women’s representation in cricket’s decision-making structures: Plans for the women’s professional game brand II have put female cricketers’ voices front and center in cricket’s decision-making structures. Women’s players committee of the Professional Cricketers’ Association.
Northern Diamonds player Katie Levick, a member of that committee, says this change is very different from the move to the new regional structure in 2020: [Yorkshire] The season ended and we had no idea what happened. Over the years we have always wondered who made these choices for us; so it was great to sit down and give direct feedback at every stage of the process.”
Clearly there are still details to iron out. Facilities will be a particularly thorny issue. Current county grounds are already at capacity and the women’s game will rightly demand visibility on the sport’s biggest stages. A source close to the women’s regional game summed it up this way: “Unless there is money to build another facility, we will have to share a lot.” Men in cricket haven’t always been very good at this.
Lancashire Thunder’s Phoebe Graham, another member of the PCA women’s committee, agrees. “We don’t want to train from nine to five,” she says. “We don’t want the cemetery changed at a gym because that’s where the districts can fit us. We are not at this point anymore. “We need to be a higher priority.”
Graham cites Lancashire as an example of good practice in this regard: by treating North-West Thunder as if they were already Lancashire Women, they created a sense of belonging that did not exist elsewhere. “Both the men and women train at Emirates Old Trafford as our home ground,” says Graham. “By promoting the club as a single team, they have been able to create joint commercial opportunities through Hilton and Sportsbreaks.”
He adds: “In fact, Lancashire has probably forced the ECB’s hand by showing how well this model works.”
But cultural change is not easy. There must be a risk that some counties will pay lip service to developing women’s cricket, win the right to host a first-tier team and then use the £1.3 million annual ECB investment to fund men’s teams.
Last year’s Karen Carney review found the practice of diverting money intended for women’s football back to men’s football was widespread. The ECB says robust processes will be in place to ensure this does not happen within cricket, but details are still scant.
First of all, the new model must be successful. The handling of three major upheavals in women’s cricket in eight years has already undermined the ECB’s credibility: failure is simply not an option this time.