During 2015 women’s cricket saw a number of promising young players coming through to the senior ranks, and not just the select few who make their way onto the international team. The overall standard is improving and in particular the quality of the fielding. But the numbers playing are still very low and the gap between the national team and the ‘test’ nations is not closing and may even be getting wider. Some heartening performances against the world champions point to what is possible but there are still major challenges ahead if the women are to emulate the success of the men in beating higher ranked teams.
The introduction of the ‘Super Three’ regional competition in 2015 was on most counts a success. The question is how can we build on this to create a stronger foundation for developing the sport. As always this means starting with the club and with youth cricket.
But first some figures. The total number of players that took part in the Women Competitions across the three divisions in 2015 was 335. With just about all clubs calling up players at short notice without them being registered it is difficult to confirm youth numbers. There were 110 registered U19 girls playing but the actual figure will have been much higher - there were nearly 100 non-registered players who took part last season, presumably a fair number of them girls.
Working with just the 110 registered youth players, the breakdown by age is as follows. There are no figures for girls who only compete in youth competitions, but we can reasonably assume that in the older age groups at least they are likely to be quite small.
The figures need to be developed into a series so that it is possible to identify patterns and to assess the effectiveness of the development efforts and the resources committed to growing the game among schoolgirls. With only figures for a single year one must be cautious about drawing hasty conclusions. But it would seem that the numbers in the over 15 cohort [less than 70 in total] might lead one to question whether there are the numbers to run club competitions. Is it time to consider taking the regional [Super Threes] format from the senior competitions and bringing it down to the U19 and U17 age groups. Indeed from the numbers there may be a case for looking at U18 and U16 age groupings rather than U17 and U19.
A further breakdown of the figures for older girls show that only three registered U19 players took part in ten or more Womens matches in the season. In the U18 category it is 9. Overall the average number of matches played across all age groups is just over 5. Of the 110 registered youth a third played five or fewer games. On the other hand 8 girls played in 20 or more games [and presumably in representative and youth matches as well and had plenty of cricket].
So are the figures a cause for concern or not. They seem to point to a reasonably successful transition from youth to adult competitions. Key players are getting plenty of cricket – but the number of such players is very small. ON the positive side there seems again to be a reasonable involvement of youth players in the matches they play in – 600 innings out of a total of 789 matches played and over 2000 overs bowled.
But perhaps the figures do point to some tentative conclusions. We need to look more closely at the integration of youth and adult competition structures to make sure that we have the right mix. The option should be looked at of expanding the ‘Super 3’ competition to the older youth levels, instead of club competitions. And we need to collect better statistics so that we can get some sense of how well our development efforts are doing.
Turning to the younger age groups it is even more difficult to draw conclusions from the smaller number of younger age groups taking part in womens competitions. Obviously a much higher proportion of the younger age groups take part only in youth competitions. Currently we don’t have any figures for these as they are not collected at a Cricket Leinster level. As a result suggestions for improvements are much more speculative.
There may be an argument for shifting the age groupings to U10, U12 and U14. The youngest age group is needed as it is becoming increasing obvious that we need to attract players at an early age and capture their interest, and not just rely on converting hockey players when they enter secondary school. At U10 the form of competition would emphasise fun and participation and indeed might better be organised as a series of mini-tournaments hosted by clubs throughout the season. By U12s one would introduce girls to playing pairs cricket, closer to the full game but still emphasising engagement by everyone on the team. The full game [T20] would start to be played at the U14 age group. This would also have the advantage that it would allow for the season to start in June and run for most of the summer unaffected by the Junior Certificate exams.
The disruption caused by the Junior Certificate has encouraged the boys youth section to hold a special U14 competition in June to keep players engaged in the first half of the season. This might be an option but shifting the age bands seems a cleaner solution. It is something that might even be considered by the boys at some point although June is a difficult month anyway due to time spend in Irish colleges.
Anyway something to mull over as the winter draws closer.