It's not all doom and gloom for female cricketers.
CSA is opening new doors for talented girls and women.
As someone who has a massive passion for development and or grassroots cricket, my attention is always on what is being done to improve our development structures. Building up to the two T20 world cups that the country was set to host then but has already hosted, I wrote a piece about how CSA could use the world cups, especially the U19 Girls World Cup to grow the sport in the country. My eyes have been on CSA since then and even though at times, it seemed quiet, I’m happy to say that CSA heard my cry.
Girls cricket in the country is not where it should and could be and it’s a combination of many things. One of those being the lack of proper development structures and lack of care for women’s sports in general in the country. For a country that always shouts and preaches TRANSFORMATION, we have a long way to go before we can fully understand what transformation is about. We seem to think transformation starts and ends with race and that it is exclusive of women. Perhaps this is a topic the South African cricket fraternity still needs to sit down and have a long conversation about because we cannot continue to shout “TRANSFORMATION” yet in cricket, the men are 9 steps ahead of the women and the only time a woman can at least cover some ground is when they play for the Proteas and maybe in a league somewhere in India or Australia.
Just recently, changes to the men’s structure were made and nothing on the women’s structure. We sit in 2023, in a country where playing senior provincial women’s cricket is not considered professional. Most of the girls and women that play provincial cricket play for free regalia, food, and free sleepovers at a BnB or wherever they sleep when they travel. If you don’t love the game enough, then there’s hardly a reason for you to hang on. Even from a coaching perspective, it’s hard to convince girls to take up cricket or to not leave cricket. There’s a famous phrase a lot of people like to use, “passion doesn’t pay bills”. As these girls grow, responsibilities also change, and one wouldn’t want to be the coach that sold someone dreams when they don’t make it as far as they thought they would.
With all that being said, it’s also important to mention the effort that’s recently been evident from CSA’s side to grow the women’s game. Growing the game and increasing the talent pool will only strengthen the Momentum Proteas and widen the team’s options. The current Momentum Proteas players will retire someday as we have seen recently, the retirements of Mignon du Preez, Liezl Lee and Dané van Niekerk. You don’t want to be left with no options once certain players retire so it is important that there are structures in place from bottom up.
Post the two world cups hosted in SA, CSA has successfully hosted two inaugural girls/women’s tournament. Namely, The inaugural CSA Girls’ U19 T20 National Championships and the CSA Women’s t20 club championship. These two tournaments will create opportunities for girls and women from outside the Provincial system. They will also serve as a stepping stone for some of the girls to get exposure and to learn from players who already play provincial cricket. Premier league players from different provinces will also feel like they now have something to play for. The thought of going to the play offs with the hopes of making it to nationals will definitely be very enticing for the girls.
One can hope that this is the start of bigger and better things for women’s cricket in general. The growth and improvement of women’s cricket relies heavily on trying to keep girls in the sport and attracting more of them to start playing. Unions will also eventually have to carry their weight. There are very few unions in the country that take women’s cricket seriously and for CSA’s efforts to not go to waste, Unions will have to play their part.
Jeppe Girls – U19 Tournament winners
Union Stars inaugural National T20 Championship Winners
