WOMEN AND GIRLS

WOMEN AND GIRLS

The Women & Girls game has grown significantly over the last 18 years in Sussex, with more females trying and playing cricket, whether that is in school, within the community or at a local cricket club. 

Women & Girls Cricket is one of the main pillars in the ECB action plan and like the ECB, in Sussex we want females to say, “Cricket is a game for me”. 

Through the work we do at the Sussex Cricket Foundation, we have been able to provide more cricket to women and girls, whether that is soft ball, hard ball, social, fun or competitive cricket, we are able to support any female coming into cricket with an option that suits them. 

The Sussex Cricket Foundation have helped support clubs across Sussex to start a Women and/or girls section, with over 65 clubs now with a section and each year this continues to grow. 

We provide junior club cricket leagues and competitions for all our clubs to enter at all ages, from U9, U11 and U13 one day soft ball festivals to an U11 and U13 soft ball league, U11, U13, U15 and U17 hard ball leagues. Clubs also have an option to enter the U13, U15 and U19 ECB T20 knockout cups each year. 

Through our Women’s soft ball festivals, which are held at a number of cricket clubs across Sussex in the summer, we are able to introduce Women of all ages into cricket whether they have never played before or are coming back into the game after years of not playing.  The soft ball festivals are a great way to engage new women into cricket, they are fun, friendly, non-competitive and suit anyone of any age and ability.  

We also run a Women’s soft ball league and soft ball super series, to find out more on these head to our Women’s soft ball page. 

For clubs who are either new to hard ball or developing their hard ball players, there is the Women’s Sussex Slam which is played on weekday evenings or weekends 

For 2023 we are launching two new Women’s hard ball leagues, the Sussex Women’s Premier League and Sussex Division 1 League, which are played on Sunday’s. The Sussex premier league is T20 and 40 over cricket and our Sussex Division 1 league is 30 over cricket.  

At school level we run two specific girls projects, the Chance to Shine Girls Secondary School Programme, where we work with 13 schools to deliver cricket and leadership sessions. Our second project is the ECB Secondary School Proof of Concept project where we are aiming to work with 30 secondary schools to deliver taster sessions specifically for girls. 

During the school year we run a number of competitions and leagues, in the winter we have run some Chance to Compete Indoor tournaments for state schools only and during the months of January – March we run the ECB Indoor National Competition at U13 & U15 for state and Independent schools. 

In the summer we will run leagues for state and independent schools at U13 and U15 level, as well as one day Chance to Compete tournaments for state schools, through our chance to shine project. 

At primary school age we deliver coaching sessions through our primary school chance to shine project and run summer Dynamos girls’ countdown competitions.