Girls Cricket high on NCB Agenda

A pioneering scheme to promote women and girls cricket has been launched in Norfolk.

The Norfolk Cricket Board (NCB) has been working with the county's senior women's captain, Kerry Holl, to encourage more players to take part in the rapidly expanding sport.

With England recently winning the Women's World Cup and a summer schedule which includes the World Twenty20 and an Ashes Test match, women's cricket has probably never been higher on the agenda.

And that enthusiasm is now being harnessed in the NCB's scheme to kick-start participation at youth level in Norfolk.

The board's cricket development manager, Kieron Tuck, said: “Quite a lot of clubs have got four or five girls attached to their membership, but not enough to have girls-only training sessions or their own teams, so what we've done is pulled them together in little geographical areas.

“We have several clubs in a cluster, with ideally 16 to 20 girls and they'll attend one of the clubs once a week for a girls-only coaching session. The evidence shows that is absolutely vital for keeping them involved in the game - if they just get involved in the boys' sessions and it is all mixed up, they can lose interest, because the boys tend to dominate.

“The hope is towards the end of the summer they will form a team from those clusters which can then have competitions with the other four or five clusters around the county.

“It's something we've drawn up ourselves. There are a couple of counties trying something similar but not quite the same, so it's something we think is quite unique to us.

“In terms of girls cricket we are a little way behind a lot of other counties, but we are actually quite a long way ahead in terms of the intensity of what is going on and how quickly things are moving. We hope to be up on a par with some of the bigger counties within three or four years.”

There are initially four clusters - Cromer, Bradfield and Sheringham; West Norfolk Ladies; Old Buckenham, Bunwell, Great Melton and Garboldisham; and Vauxhall Mallards, Swardeston, Norwich and Horsford. In addition, Swanton Morley are running their own junior girls section.

There are also four senior women's teams currently operating in Norfolk - Swardeston, East Harling, Norwich and West Norfolk Ladies.

Tuck added: “We want the clubs involved with the clusters to ultimately have their own girls sections and if, in three or four years' time, we could have half of them with a senior team as well, it would be an amazing achievement. I don't think that's unrealistic because it's something the ECB are pushing very hard and if the national women's side keep winning things, there could be some spin-offs in terms of participation.”

Norfolk's senior women's side have been relatively successful in recent times, having secured promotion from Division Five London & East of the LV County Championship last season. Former Norfolk men's captain David Thomas has been appointed as their coach and has made a big difference according to Holl, whose father, Morris, is the team manager: “We're definitely taking positive steps forward,” she added. “We've got a squad of 16 or 17 players and we're getting some youngsters through into the side. We're trying to feed the younger ones through because it's been shown in the past that they rise to the challenge.”

In order to maintain the current level of success, attempts are now being made to strengthen the youth structures below that senior tier.

An Under-13s county side has been formed in addition to the existing U15 team and the NCB is aiming to replicate the stages of development in the boys' county set-up.

“Ultimately, with the way the U15s are feeding through now, we'll look to introduce an U17s team if we can as a stepping stone into the seniors,” said Tuck. “Maybe we can look at U11s as well, but at the moment we need to take small steps and concentrate on the U13s and U15s, get that working and get the clubs working and hopefully then we can expand.

“I think we've shown that the demand is there this year, we've just got to make sure we've got the right structures in place, which hopefully we now have.”

For more information on women's and girls cricket in your area, email Kerry Holl.