The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has introduced the creation of a three-tiered home competition structure and a shift within the possession model underpinning the ladies’s skilled game.
As effectively as the brand new structure, the ECB will make investments an additional £4-5m per 12 months within the women’s skilled game from 2025-2028. This will take annual investment as much as £16m.
The plan will see the present eight women’s Regional groups evolve to grow to be ‘Tier 1 Clubs’ and every can be ‘owned, ruled, and operated by a person First Class County (FCC) or Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)’.
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Each of the 18 FCCs and MCC have acquired an invite to tender a bid to grow to be a women’s Tier 1 membership and have till March 10 to submit their software.
Under the present plans, for the length of the 2025-2028 seasons all three tiers can be ‘closed’, with no promotion or relegation.
These golf equipment will make up the highest tier of the brand new three-tier model and will take part within the ECB’s women’s skilled T20 and 50-over competitions from 2025 onwards.
Once this course of is accomplished, these FCCs not awarded Tier 1 standing and National Counties can be invited into the method to find out Tier 2 and Tier 3 golf equipment.
ECB chief govt Richard Gould stated: “Since 2020, by means of the arrival of the women’s regional model, we have now seen vital progress within the professionalisation of women’s cricket, however we’re nonetheless solely simply scratching the floor of its potential.
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“To continue moving forward, and to make cricket a gender-balanced sport, we need a change in the ownership model and governance structure underpinning the women’s professional game.
“This invitation to tender and the uplift in funding due to this fact represents our subsequent step: a step that may embed the possession of our eight women’s skilled groups throughout the game, drive accountability, and elevate the standing of women’s home cricket to allow it to go additional, develop sooner and attain its full potential.”
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ECB director of women’s skilled game, Beth Barrett-Wild, stated: “The pace and nature of change within the women’s cricket landscape over the last 10 years, but especially the last five, has been rapid and transformational.
“The variety of alternatives for ladies and ladies to entry the game has by no means been higher, and the variety of folks following and falling in love with the women’s game has by no means been larger.
“We believe that the next chapter is less about the separate transformation of women’s cricket and more about the whole game evolving together.
“The invitation to tender issued to all 18 of our FCCs and MCC at present to progress the possession and governance of our eight women’s skilled groups, alongside with the numerous growth of the women’s home competition structure from 2025 and uplift in funding, characterize essential subsequent steps in cricket evolving into the game we wish it to be.
“One with equality of opportunity for men and women, boys and girls, to feel like it is a game for them.”
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