England women's cricket team could be sacrificed as potential £380m loss looms
The England women’s cricket team could in effect be sacrificed this summer as the England and Wales Cricket Board seeks to mitigate a potential £380m loss caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
England’s women were due to face India across June and July, but that series has been postponed with a view to staging it later in the summer. South Africa are scheduled to visit in September for a white-ball series but there is a risk neither set of fixtures will happen.
The ECB accepts the far more lucrative men’s game may be prioritised if any top-level matches are to take place in the coming months, with the sport’s future potentially at stake if they are cancelled.
“We have to be completely realistic,” Clare Connor, the ECB’s managing director of women’s cricket, said. “If the international women’s schedule can’t be fulfilled in full but a large amount of the men’s programme can this summer, which is going to reduce that £380m hole, we have to be realistic about that.
“We’ve got long-term ambitions for the game that extend beyond this summer, and trying to protect as much investment as possible over the next five years. That is largely going to come down to how much international men’s cricket can be staged this summer. That’s not to say we won’t be fighting hard to play against India and South Africa as best we can.”
Women’s cricket finds itself at the back of a queue to use what are – if the ECB’s plan to get the sport moving this summer comes off – understood to be two biosecure venues, the Ageas Bowl and Old Trafford, maintained for Tests. Connor admitted there were “only a certain number of days to try and cram everything into” and that Lisa
Keightley’s players may have to stay sidelined for the greater good.
“I would be devastated if there was no international women’s cricket this summer,” she said. “No one would be more disappointed, but we’ve got this period to get through and we’ve all got to come out of it as healthy as possible. If we have to play less international women’s cricket this summer to safeguard the longer-term future, investment and building the infrastructure for a more stable and sustainable women’s game then that is probably a hit we might have to take.”
Asked what message an absence of international women’s cricket would send, Connor said: “It would be disappointing. We have to communicate really well and honestly about what we are doing and why. I don’t think you can argue with the rationale and, in order for the whole game to survive, the financial necessity rests on many of these international men’s matches being fulfilled.”
The stakes are particularly high given the ECB launched its action plan to transform women’s and girls’ cricket last October. “If the worst-case scenario financial loss becomes a reality then there are obviously going to be big swaths of the game that can’t continue or be developed as we would have liked,” she said. “I think the advantage we have is that the action plan is a living plan – it is launched. We started to build the infrastructure around that.”
Connor added that discussions are under way about how to help players who may have expected to sign a professional contract in the new domestic women’s structure on 1 May.