The Guardian (USA)

Durham selected ahead of Yorkshire to host profession­al women’s county team

- Raf Nicholson

Durham’s chief executive, Tim Bostock, said he was “delighted”with the ECB’s decision to award the county the right to host a profession­al women’s team, after they beat off strong competitio­n from neighbouri­ng Yorkshire.

The first-class counties have spent the past two and a half months competing for the right to host one of the eight new profession­al “Tier 1” women’s teams,and in March presented their bids to a panel which included Kelly Simmons, former director of the women’s profession­al game at the Football Associatio­n, and Maggie Murphy, the chief executive of Lewes FC. At an ECB board meeting on Wednesday, Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottingham­shire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshi­re were formally approved as the hosts.

Yorkshire have been the home of the Diamonds women’s team since 2016, but an impressive bid from Durham – supported by Ben Stokes and Paul Collingwoo­d – impressed the ECB enough to convince it that the northeast team should be based at Chesterle-Street.

The Guardian understand­s that Durham’s commitment to hosting every home match at the main Riverside ground was a key reason for the success of their bid. A number of other counties had planned for the women to play on club and school pitches.

“Giving the women the opportunit­y to play on an internatio­nal Test ground is a big thing,” Bostock said. “We want to take women’s cricket to the next level.

“Our growth in girls playing cricket over the last five years has been the highest in the country. Given our track record of producing England players, and our strong developmen­t pathways, we have every confidence we’ll be able to replicate that for girls moving into elite profession­al cricket.”

However, Yorkshire are set to join Durham in Tier 1 in 2027, alongside Glamorgan, after the ECB unexpected­ly unveiled plans to add four more women’s profession­al domestic teams by 2029. The original intention had been to continue with an eight-team top tier for at least the next four years, but the ECB director of the women’s profession­al game, Beth Barrett-Wild, said that the “quality and ambition of the bids” had convinced the ECB to accelerate the pace of profession­alism.

Other notable teams to miss out were Kent and Sussex, who between them won 14 out of 23 Women’s County Championsh­ip titles in the previous iteration of the competitio­n between 1997 and 2019. Middlesex, whose bid was backed by MCC, lost out to Essex, while Somerset beat both Glamorgan and Gloucester­shire in the race to host the south-west side. Unsuccessf­ul counties will now be invited to be involved in the compositio­n of Tiers 2 and 3, but with the added incentive of putting themselves forward to be one of the two teams added to Tier 1 in 2029.

The decision puts Somerset and Durham in pole position should the ECB go ahead with plans to expand The Hundred from eight to 10 teams in 2025. Bostock acknowledg­ed that this had been a key reason behind Durham’s bid.

“We absolutely have aspiration­s to be part of the expanded Hundred as and when that happens, and part of that process is that we need to demonstrat­e we can run a very successful women’s profession­al team,” he said.

He added that the Northern Diamonds head coach, Dani Hazell, who played for Durham between 2002 and 2007 before going on to represent England, was likely to play a key role in the new women’s setup. “She’ll be delighted tonight,” he said. “It would have been a dream for her, and I’m pretty certain she will be front and centre of Durham’s first profession­al team.”

 ?? Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images ?? Chester-le-Street will host all of Durham women’s fixtures.
Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images Chester-le-Street will host all of Durham women’s fixtures.

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