Wiltshire Cricket

Women’s and Girls’ Cricket

Women’s & Girls’ Cricket

Women's and girls' cricket continues to be a priority for Wiltshire Cricket Limited and in support of the development of this area the company has taken a very positive step in employing a full time Head of Women and Girls Cricket, Lisa Keightley. Lisa's responsibilities are to increase participation and improve standards across the following areas of the women and girls game:

Schools

A key component of developing the women and girls game is through school delivery and in Wiltshire a lot of school delivery to drive participation in girls cricket is done through Chance to Shine. However, all other school delivery is done with an aim of supporting school:club links for the clubs in the county that have recognised girls sections. Lisa's key objectives for schools cricket and when working in schools can be summarised as follows:

  • To facilitate increased club memberships for clubs with girls sections.
  • To increase the number of teams entering the annual ASDA Kwik Cricket competitions.
  • To increase the number of teams entering the Lady Taverners Under 11, 13 and 15 competitions.

Clubs

In Wiltshire there is a Wiltshire Womens Cricket Committee (WWCC) that is responsible for developing club cricket throughout the county. The committee looks at all aspects of club cricket, ranging from how to attract more members through to discussing improvements to the Wiltshire Girls Youth League. The Wiltshire Girls Youth League was set up in 2010 and now runs leagues at under 11, 13 and 17 but with relatively low numbers. However, above under 17 cricket there is currently no adult club structure in Wiltshire and so the development of womens club cricket is another key objective for Lisa and the WWCC. Lisa's key objectives for club cricket can be summarised as follows:

  • To increase the number of clubs with girls only sections.
  • To attract new members to girls clubs in order to make these girls sections sustainable.
  • To increase the number of teams participating in the Wiltshire Girls Youth League.
  • To deliver taster sessions or programmes for female adult cricketers in order to increase the number of clubs with womens sections.
  • To develop a senior womens league.

Representative Cricket

Improving the quality and competitiveness of Wiltshire's representative teams is a key objective for Wiltshire Cricket and ultimately a key indicator as to the success that women and girls development is having across the county. Wiltshire now fields representative teams at under 11, 13, 15, 17 and senior level with all but the under 11s playing in the national ECB competitions. Lisa's key objectives for representative cricket can be summarised as follows:

  • To provide high quality coaching for the talented girls within Wiltshire that are a part of the girls performance programme.
  • To ensure that Wiltshire is entered in to all ECB age group competitions and that all of these age group squads in Wiltshire have access to a winter performance programme.
  • To provide a series of fixtures for the Wiltshire County under 11 squad as there is currently no ECB competition for this age group.

ECB Strategy

Alongside all of the objectives above Wiltshire is also driven by national strategy and the ECB Women and Girls department has recently issued an 11 Point Plan to cover the period of 2010-2013.