A chapter in the story of women’s cricket ends on Saturday as the final game of the English domestic
structure established in 2020 takes place.
Women’s cricket looks very different now from how it looked at the end of the 2019 season, when counties and the Kia Super League were replaced by eight regional teams and The Hundred competition. Instead of 18 England players being the only contracted professionals in the game, the number of professional players increased to 58 in 2020, up to 98 in 2023, with the promise of 180 professional players playing for 12 counties by the end of the decade - a tenfold increase over the course of 10 years.
As one chapter ends, another begins. And it is worth reflecting on the health of the game at this
important moment of change. The Hundred has been marvellous for the women’s game, increasing
visibility through non-paying and terrestrial TV coverage, clever marketing and using the shortened
format well to facilitate fast-paced and engaging double-headers at the eight biggest cricket venues
in the country during the school holidays. The Hundred has gained a much more diverse following
than other forms of the game, bringing in people who have not previously engaged with cricket. And
part of the reason for that has been the equal coverage given to women and men. (For more details
on this, please see Bournemouth University’s research paper “Levelling the Playing field?” here )
International women’s cricket has also increased in profile and importance, in part due to the
Hundred. The parallel home Ashes series of 2023 were highly successful, with England’s men’s
games and women’s games being given equal levels of marketing and prominence in the media.
Women were given an unprecedented fifth day for the Ashes test match, a day which actually
proved pivotal in deciding the final destiny of the trophy. Attendances at England women’s games
have increased significantly because of this extra investment bringing about increased fandom for
the team and the players in the team. The promotion of women’s cricket through podcasts such as
No Balls on BBC Sounds has opened the door for women’s cricketers to be known and followed - and
this has undoubtedly had a positive impact on viewing figures and match attendances.
Internationally, the emergence of the WPL franchise league in India is allowing top English women
the chance to earn huge amounts of money for the first time in the history of the sport.
The next step is to somehow achieve this equality on the domestic front rather than in just a
franchise league. Last weekend the semi-finals of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy drew miniscule
crowds. At Beckenham, around a hundred people, a good proportion of whom were family and
friends of the players, watched an enthralling contest in which Alice Davidson-Richard’s unbeaten 90
got South East Stars over the line into this weekend’s Rachael Heyhoe Flint trophy final. As a result
this turned out to be the final game in the history of Southern Vipers, but barely anyone was there
to witness it, despite it being held on a beautiful sunny Saturday in South East London and admission
was free.
The plan from 2025 is for counties to oversee and promote the women’s domestic game. There is
commonality in the naming of the competitions - The Vitality Blast and the Metro Bank One Day Cup.
In the men’s game, Blast Finals day at Edgbaston is heavily marketed. It sells out before anyone even
knows who is in the final. It gets high profile radio and TV coverage, there is fancy dress and the
famous mascot race - in other words, things are done well. This year, the women’s equivalent finals
day - The Charlotte Edwards Cup (also sponsored by Vitality, but they don’t tell anyone about it for
reasons best known to themselves) took place at Derby in front of maybe 300 people - again, a good
proportion were family and friends of players. There were a couple of fire jets which shot up when
the players came onto the field, but no real razzmatazz or sense that the day was special, no proper
TV coverage and, worst of all, no proper catering for an event which went on for over nine hours.
People were calling Just Eat and Dominos to the ground to ward off starvation. Things will get better
in next year’s Women’s Blast Finals day simply because they can’t really get any worse.
One way of improving attendances at women’s games is asking counties to publish them. This will be
a good way of holding them accountable for how they are using their marketing budget. It also
means that targets for improvement can be established and this should lead to more outreach and
innovation. The counties already have a loyal fan base. This is an opportunity to mobilise them and
increase their numbers for both the men’s and the women’s game. What is good for one should be
designed to be good for the other. Double headers are another way of marketing the women’s
game, but again, this needs to be done imaginatively and recognising that a more diverse audience
for the women’s game may well be put off by some of the Blast traditions such as heavy drinking and
football chants.
According to the ECB, their key aims for the restructure involve: stronger accountability, to create
scale and visibility, to accelerate team and player fandom, to establish a more compelling platform,
to have aligned sponsorship to enhance the existing arrangements for first class counties and create
a deeper sense of belonging for women’s teams. These aims are noble, but left to their own devices,
one has to wonder how counties will deliver their parts: accelerating fandom of teams and players
plus creating a deeper sense of belonging for women’s teams.
All of this requires investment in the women’s game by the counties - a marketing team, a social
media team which gives equal profile to women’s cricket, imaginative and appealing match day
experiences, opening up of the same facilities on women’s match days which are open on men’s
match days, merchandising, magazines and publications which profile the players and tell fans who
they are and tell the story of women’s cricket in that county, or on an even more basic level, giving
women’s county cricket teams equal access to the facilities the men’s team have, publishing all the
fixtures and venues and names of the squad at the start of the season.
Counties also need to look at their membership model. A brief glance at counties’ plans for 2025
shows that only Somerset are offering a membership for women’s cricket only. For every other
county, the women are packaged in with the men’s games - this was already the case at (for
example) Warwickshire and Durham last year. However, if a fan wants to simply access the women’s
games, it will be much cheaper to pay at the gate rather than become a member, therefore
followers of women’s cricket will be less represented at a membership level and will have less say on
the running of the county.
So what needs to happen next?
● Accountability. The ECB needs to rigorously hold counties to account. Each county has made
promises in their bid to become a tier 1 county. The ECB needs to publish these bids for all
stakeholders to see and hold counties to account for the promises they have made. If a
county fails to follow up on what their bid promised, there need to be consequences such as
fines, points deduction and loss of tier 1 status.
● Improve attendance. Counties need to publish attendance figures for all men’s and
women’s fixtures. There needs to be a strategy to improve women’s attendances which
includes clear pricing, outreach to diverse communities and improved quality of match day
experience. Counties need to be accountable to the ECB for this.
● Merchandising. County merchandise needs to promote the women’s game as much as it
does the men’s game, including innovative ways to increase fandom amongst young people
and in particular girls.
● Media. Counties need to engage audiences in the stadium using traditional media such as
magazines and match day programmes and scorecards. They also need to make sure that
women’s games are broadcast and commentated upon with the same level of
professionalism and expertise as a men’s game.
● Joined up thinking. At the moment, thousands of people are accessing the women’s game
through The Hundred and through England internationals. Counties need to be reaching
those people whilst they are at these matches and persuading them to continue watching
women’s cricket after the Hundred match or the England match. Currently, there seems a
huge disconnect between these different parts of the game.
So farewell to regional cricket! Well done everyone for growing the game so much over the
last five years. It has given us joy and pain and agony and ecstasy in a way only sport can.
Let’s use this moment to launch something even better for the years to come.
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