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| James Sutherland |
Cricket Australia has "amped up its efforts to become the sport of choice for Australian women," with A$4M ($3M) over four years to be invested for the creation of new girls' competitions, according to Larissa Nicholson of THE AGE. Half the money will be "handed out in grants to clubs, schools and cricket associations that want to start dedicated girls' teams, the other half will pay full-time female sport participation specialists who will work to make the programme a success." CA CEO James Sutherland said that he "wanted to provide opportunities for girls to play in all-girl teams if they wished to do so, rather than being forced to play with boys." With the inaugural Australian Football League women's competition set to launch next year, he noted that cricket had been "running a national women's competition for decades." Sutherland, who has a daughter playing in a boys' side, said that "one of the key goals of the funding was to create more girls' teams." Sutherland: "It is an important point. ... Where we want to get to with women's cricket and girls' cricket is having opportunities where there are enough girls to make up a team and girls feel really comfortable in the cricket environment" (
THE AGE, 7/13). ABC's Brittany Carter reported A$1M ($760,000) a year "will be boosted into local associations, clubs and secondary schools across the country during a four-year period." Of that, A$50,000 ($38,058) will be "put aside to employ full-time female participation specialists, tasked with creating jobs and establishing alternative career pathways for women in cricket." Clubs and secondary schools "will be able to apply for grants" of A$2,000 ($1,522) per year, while some associations may receive up to A$10,000 ($7,611) over two years (
ABC, 7/12). In Melbourne, Greg Buckle reported Australian women's national team cricketers Holly Ferling and Alyssa Healy "joined a group of young female cricketers" at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the announcement. Healy "recalled her earlier years playing in boys' teams," and said, "I know from my own experience of coming through community cricket that dedicated competitions for girls to play against other girls of the same age will have a huge impact on the development of them as cricketers and female cricket in general" (
HERALD SUN, 7/12).
