Failure not an option for the ECB as women’s cricket faces yet more upheaval

The report of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) released last June was shocking for its minutiae: the devil of institutional sexism in cricket is, as they say, in the detail. The report was damning about the culture of the first-class counties, describing “instances of violent and degrading behaviour” towards female staff. One witness reported being forced to lock herself in her office to avoid sexual harassment by the club’s male cricketers; another, being called “an ’effing butch” by a colleague after she raised the issue of gender equity in a meeting.

Related: Women’s cricket to undergo domestic shake-up with teams owned by counties

So goes county cricket in the 21st century. In the light of this, the decision of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) – in a radical shake-up of the domestic system announced this week– to hand over control of women’s cricket away from the independent regions back to the counties may seem questionable.

It makes more sense to turn such thinking on its head and realise that this plan is as much about men’s cricket as it is about the women. “Fundamentally this is a growth plan for cricket,” Beth Barrett‑Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, said. “By making this transition, we have an opportunity to really galvanise cultural change through the game.”

Another clue is in the title of the bid document – “Evolving Together” – that has been sent to the 18 first-class counties and the MCC, who are being invited to submit tenders to host one of the eight professional women’s teams. Winning bids will need to demonstrate a commitment to embedding equal opportunity at all levels of the club: what better way to weed out toxic masculinity?

The ECB appears to have learned something from the ICEC’s criticism of the lack of representation of women within cricket’s decision-making structures: the voices of female cricketers have been front and centre while plans for the women’s professional game mark II were made, via consultation with the women’s player committee of the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA).

One member of that committee, the Northern Diamonds’ Katie Levick, says this change feels very different from the transition into the new regional structure in 2020: “In 2019 our [Yorkshire] season finished and we had no idea what was happening. Over the years, we’ve always wondered who is making these choices for us, so to be sat at the table and directly feeding back at every stage of the process was amazing.”

Clearly there are details still to be ironed out. Facilities will be an especially thorny issue. County grounds are at capacity and the women’s game will – quite rightly – demand visibility on the sport’s biggest stages. One source close to the women’s regional game summed up the issue: “Unless there’s money to build another facility, we’re going to have to do a lot of sharing.” Men in cricket have not always been very good at that.

Lancashire Thunder’s Phoebe Graham, another member of the PCA women’s committee, agrees. “We don’t want to be training outside the hours of nine to five,” she says. “We don’t want the graveyard shift in a sports hall because that’s where the counties can fit us in. That’s not where we’re at any more. We need to be more of a priority.”

Graham cites Lancashire as an example of good practice in this regard: by treating the NorthWest Thunder as if they were Lancashire Women, they have generated the kind of belonging lacking elsewhere. “The men and the women train at Emirates Old Trafford as our main ground,” Graham says. “They have been able to create joint commercial opportunities through Hilton and through Sportsbreaks, by promoting the club as one team.

“If anything, Lancashire has probably forced the ECB’s hand by showing how well this model does work.”

But cultural change is not easy. There must be a risk that some counties pay lip service to developing women’s cricket, win the right to host a tier one side and then use the £1.3m annual ECB investment to fund their men’s teams.

Last year’s Karen Carney review found that the practice of diverting money that was meant to be ringfenced for women’s football back into the men’s game was widespread. The ECB says there will be robust processes in place to ensure that does not occur within cricket, but details are as yet thin on the ground.

Above all, the new model needs to be a success. Undertaking three major upheavals of women’s cricket in eight years has already undermined the ECB’s credibility: failure is simply not an option this time around.