 | | Role model: England's Isa Guha |
Women's cricket has been on the rise in recent years with the national side reaching the semi-finals of the 2005 World Cup and recording an Ashes series win over Australia, the same as the men achieved so famously last year. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) reports that there has been a 33 per cent increase in new women's cricket sides since 2003 and there are now more than two million girls actively participating in the game nationwide. But can the same be said for girls and women in the Huddersfield area, though? "Well, we haven't really had many girl cricketers at Golcar," notes David Thorpe, a junior coach at Golcar Cricket Club. "We had one girl who played a couple of years ago as her elder brother played, but she's given up now because she's moved through and out of the age groups. She concentrates on swimming now."
 | | Stumped: Where to go? |
There is also another girl who has been playing over the last two seasons, but David says: "They find it very hard, because they're on their own. It's not to say the other kids don't treat them well, because they do. I know the one who was playing last year was trying to get a couple of her mates to play, but they weren't really interested." In Yorkshire as a whole, various coaching and training initiatives have been set up. One such recent example is the start of a series of girls' coaching sessions that are taking place in Bradford at the Bradford and Bingley Cricket Centre. Running throughout the winter up until April, the training is aimed at girls aged from eight to eleven years of age for a fee of a pound per session. What's available, though, to those girls who can't make it to Bradford every week? David Thorpe says that local sides like Golcar do offer the chance for girls to play, although there aren't any adverts directly targeted at girls: "We don't go out deliberately to try and get more girls but we don't discourage them. All of the recruitment publicity we put out to schools or in the local paper says 'girls welcome'." One particular area where there appears to be a problem is the progression into the girls' county side. While there's a girls' club at Denby Dale, there's no actual 'Huddersfield Girls' Team', leaving a massive jump from village side to county side. So should a team for the town itself be set up as an extra step between the two ability levels that currently exist? | "It looks like it's going to slowly evolve. It may be another couple of generations before there's anything substantial..." | | David Thorpe |
It seems to be a welcome idea, but there are a few problems admits David: "I think it'd be a really good idea if anybody was willing to sort it out. It would help to progress things because it would be something to aim for. Whether there are enough people to help is another matter though. You would probably find the players, but you need administrators and they'd have to be volunteers really." The main difference between men and women's cricket is the difference in strength between the two sexes. In women's cricket the fastest ball will be about 65-70 miles per hour – equivalent to a medium pacer in the men's game, whilst sixes are a very rare occurrence. Test matches are only played over four days and one-day run rates are typically about four an over as opposed to the men's version where run rates can be as high as six or seven an over throughout an innings. In light of this, are the girls taught any differently, and what is the best way of integrating girls and boys at the under nine and under eleven levels of junior cricket? One method that's been debated is that of a staggered system between the ages of girls and boys on the same team. "A few years ago," David Thorpe says, "there was a suggestion from Broad Oak that the Huddersfield Junior League should change the age group if you were a girl. For example, if it was an under 15s league, Broad Oak's suggestion was that if you were a girl, you could play in that age group until you were 16." As for coaching, David believes there isn't much, if any, difference in how girls and boys are taught. "I think that technically girls can be just as good as boys at the same age certainly, it's just the lack of strength. They'll be fine for singles, and twos, but boundaries and quick scoring are just much harder to come by. You can't exactly teach strength."
 | | Heroes: England's women cricketers |
Perhaps the biggest obstacle in creating a system of development for girls' cricket is that of travel. "For boys, it's easy" says David, "if they want to join a boys' football team, a boys' cricket team, a boys' rugby league team, there are immediately clubs to play for. With girls, however, if we were to set up a Golcar girls' cricket team, the problem would be with fixtures. The nearest fixture would probably be Denby Dale or Lepton and after that it could be as far away as York!" So it would appear there's no quick fix to the problem of girls' cricket. There is still a lack of players, although this is improving, but money is a major factor in all of this. Unless money is awarded via a Lottery grant, there just aren't enough volunteers to make a local league work, regardless of the effort they put in. As David points out, "It looks like it's going to slowly evolve. It may be another couple of generations before there's anything substantial..." | 
