In June, the England & Wales Cricket Board revealed plans for the Women’s Cricket Super League, set to be launched next year. The six-team competition will begin with the Twenty20 format with plans to incorporate the 50-over format beginning in '17. The tournament, which will receive a $4.6M investment from the ECB over the next four years, has already received 28 expressions of interests from potential host cities throughout the U.K. ECB Dir of England Women’s Cricket CLARE CONNOR spoke with SBD Global about the need for this competition, player selection and the importance of equal standing in men’s and women’s cricket tournaments.
On the origin of the WCSL ...
Clare Connor: The competition has come about following a review of our domestic competitions, i.e. women’s county cricket, which is our highest level of domestic cricket -- the level underneath the international game. We had a thorough review during the winter of our county competition and without going into broad detail, the outcome of that review was that we needed a competition which bridges the gap between county cricket and the international stage -- a competition which involves fewer players. At the moment, there are about 300 players playing women’s county cricket in the county competition. So, one of the outcomes was that we needed a competition that involves fewer players to achieve a best vs. best competitive environment where our best players were more frequently playing each other to intensify the competition and to intensify the talent pool.
On goals for the WCSL ...
Connor: We wanted a competition that would excite and engage new players and new fans that would be a good shop window for women’s domestic cricket in this country. A competition that could eventually drive commercial income through TV and sponsorship revenues and a competition that would give us another platform other than international women’s cricket to grow the profile of the game. Women’s domestic cricket doesn’t achieve that. The quality really isn’t good enough, enough of the time. When you’ve got over 30 teams up and down the country playing in a domestic competition, you can’t really focus your resources specifically enough to really drive the profile of the competition like that.
On the criteria for host locations ...
Connor: We’re looking for three main areas. We’re looking for entities or organizations who can deliver high performance, essentially. So this is about competitive sport or high-performance sport. We want environments and organizations who can deliver high-performance sport, coaching, science and medicine, facilities and so on. We want Super League teams to be able to engage with their communities, to attracting players and participants, fans and followers of the game. We want all six to be able to have plans around marketing and communications and commercial and sustainability plans. Obviously, the ECB, England & Wales Cricket Board, is going to be helping with grants for all six, certainly in the first four years, which will be the hosting agreement the first time around. It will be a four-year agreement. We want them to show that they have got some creative thinking around other income streams, other than the ECB grants. I suppose we want them to be creative and innovative in everything that they’re going to do. Whether it’s around their high performance areas, or around their plans to engage and attract and be ambitious in the sport.
On player selection ...
Connor: We already have the England women’s performance squad of 22 players. So they will immediately all be involved. We then, underpinning that, have an academy squad of 13 players and then we will be looking for in the region of 12 overseas players. That gives us about 60 percent of the players we need. And the rest will come from the highest performers in women’s county cricket. And then what we’ll do is work collaboratively once we know who the six hosts are going to be. We’ll work collaboratively with them to ensure a fair spread of the talent. We considered a lot of things like an auction or a complete free market from looking at other sports and other models. One of the most important things for us is making sure that we do have that best of the best experience. So we want to make sure that the talent is spread as evenly as possible across the six teams.
On the growth of women’s cricket ...
Connor: It’s growing very quickly. You have countries like China and Papua New Guinea and countries in the subcontinent which are growing their numbers really quickly. I chair the ICC [Int'l Cricket Council] women’s committee and the statistics we get around numbers of new teams and participants globally is really encouraging. There are two big markets, probably one of the biggest target markets for women’s cricket is China. We’re seeing great numbers playing on the subcontinent now, with virtually all teams in the top eight offering some form of professional contract to their players. India are just embarking on that. Sri Lanka have had professional contracts, as have Bangladesh and Pakistan for a little while. We’ve got regional tournaments taking place all over the world, with really strong meritocratic pathways now whereby each team such as New Guinea, Nepal, or whatever the team or region of the globe, if they win a regional tournament, then they’ve got the opportunity to go through into qualifying tournaments. ... Those kind of opportunities are what normalize sport. For other countries around the world, who maybe haven’t quite latched on to or harnessed women’s cricket yet, I think those tournaments where the men and women are given equal standing, live on TV around the world, being played on the same ticket at the same venue, those are really significant steps for the sport. The growth we’ve seen in the last four or five years, certainly since I’ve been involved at that level of the ICC, has been staggering.
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