Cricket for women and girls is booming right around the world and particularly here in New South Wales.
Registrations are up, more and more young girls are attending WBBL and BBL matches and women’s social cricket is the next big thing.
But what about the role of women in coaching cricket?
Fortunately, that’s on the rise too, thanks to some outstanding female role models and a concerted effort by Cricket NSW to attract the best female coaches in the world and build a female coaching pathway to mirror their world-renowned player pathways.
This summer, all-time greats as players – and now coaches – Charlotte Edwards and Lisa Keightley will lead the Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder, respectively, in Weber WBBL|10. On their staff are rising female coaches Jenny Gunn and Kristen Beams, both internationals as players. Gunn is also a highly regarded assistant at the NSW Breakers.
Leah Poulton, CNSW’s Head of Elite Female Cricket and one of the sport’s foremost high-performance managers, is steering the ship and has built a pathway system led solely by women in Sarah Aley, another Sydney Thunder coach, and Hannah Trethewy.
Both Edwards and Keightley have coached around the world, predominantly in England and Australia, and Edwards believes CNSW is ahead of the curve in developing female coaches.
“I think Australia, and New South Wales in particular, really lead the way in terms of the way they go about stuff, I'm really inspired every time I come out here,” Edwards said.
“Everything they’re doing for women's cricket, for females in the game, and the facilities you've got, I mean, it's pretty inspirational.
“You're certainly leading the way, and I learn so much every time I come out here and you know it's been a big part of my development as well.”
More and more women – predominantly mum’s - are being encouraged to take up a coaching role with their girls’ and boys’ teams, building from the ground up.
Edwards, says it’s important to have more females involved at every level of the game, including coaching.
“Having more females involved, it's critical moving forward,” Edwards said.
“I think it's really important to have females involved in the current professional game and the more exposure female coaches get at the elite level, I think can only breed confidence.”
The sands are shifting, and Keightley believes the timing is now right for a further influx of female coaches
“What I've noticed is you've got so many more opportunities and what I think will happen is we're going to get more female coaches naturally, because players in the Australian team set up are now retiring, female roles are now full time, and you can actually go around the world coaching in different formats,” Keightley said.
Will more female coaches at the elite level have a flow on effect on the overall growth of the game for girls?
“Yeah, I think it'd be quite inspiring now that they've actually got some role models to look up to and see that, whether that’s for players or coaches. If you can't see it, you don't dream it, and you can't be it, can you?
“So, I think the more females that come through, I think the landscape will look a lot different because they're seeing it.”
Edwards can see the same prospects emerging for the current group of players.
“This current generation of players, I guess, is the one where a lot will come out of playing and they would have had potentially female coaches, and then they'll become the next female coaches,” Edwards said.
“I was probably the lucky one at the end of my career, the opportunities started opening up. But I reckon if I'd have retired five years before that, there certainly weren't any professional women's roles in England and I think that would have maybe been something when you stopped playing that you thought, well, that's actually not an avenue I can go down, but now that is, and I think that's so powerful for female players and current players, that they know that that's an avenue.
“Now they've seen role models. It's the same as playing, you know, you see them, you want to do it. And if you know the players see us doing it, they think, well, that's a possibility for me after my career.”
Trethewy thinks the biggest barrier for women entering the coaching system, and coaching men, is experience and confidence.
“I think as women, we probably don't back ourselves enough to think that we can do it or thinking perhaps we're not good enough, but I hope that times are changing.
“I think we're certainly not limited to just being able to coach our gender.”
Edwards agrees and says that a lack of confidence could be the main barrier to women taking roles in the community and club cricket space.
“That's definitely confidence. That's definitely making females at that junior level confident to say, ‘I'll take on the team, I'll look after this team’, whereas I think previously, males have taken up those roles because they've had the confidence that they've put a hand up.
“I think that's where we've really got to put a bit of emphasis on, is, again, more females in that space, I think to be visible at that level. I think even going to schools and stuff that's so, so important, and it's giving those females the tools to be able to do that.
“I think it’s more the confidence that they can do it, whereas previously, they haven't probably thought they could.”
Trethewy, 25, said the opportunities for her at this early stage of her coaching career have been mind blowing, considering not that many years ago she was playing club cricket.
“In a way, I feel like it's a dream come true. When I was a young girl, I never thought that it would be possible that women were in full time coaching roles and coaching could be a career. So, yeah, I certainly think that it's developed over time and hopefully continues to develop.”
Does she have aspirations to one day coach an elite men's team?
“Yeah. “I think that'd be really cool if the right opportunity came up
“I really hope that I'm involved in sport at the time where we don’t look at coaches as men or women, just their experience and expertise.