Talking with ECB's Managing Director of Women’s Cricket Clare Connor

Oborne & Heller on Cricket

The rise of women’s cricket, in England and worldwide, is the biggest story in the modern history of the game. Clare Connor CBE is a witness to this journey and a key driver of it. As a cricket-crazed girl, she played in boys’ and men’s teams, not even aware of English women’s cricket. But still in her teens, she played Test cricket for England women, then captained the side to a famous long-delayed Ashes triumph. After retirement she became a top administrator. Since 2012 she has been the chair of the ICC’s women’s committee, and more recently became the ECB’s Managing Director for women’s cricket and a board member. From October next year, she will become the first woman President of the MCC – a men-only bastion for over 150 years. She is the guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast.

She describes the thrill of learning about her MCC appointment from its incumbent, Kumar Sangakkara (then captaining MCC on tour in Pakistan) and the MCC Chief Executive, Guy Lavender. She outlines her ambitions in the role in making the Club more inclusive.

She outlines her early cricket career in and near Brighton, unaware of women’s cricket and with no role model in women’s cricket. Although the only girl in her early teams, she never felt like an outsider, through the unconditional support of her parents and team members. She describes the trial – and the shot in front of the then England women’s coach – that brought her into women’s cricket.

Clare speaks of the demands of her England international career, juggling them against her university studies in English and her later job as a teacher. Like her colleagues she was never paid match fees: initially they even had to pay all their own expenses, including overseas tours. Full professional contracts were introduced only in 2014.

She describes vividly the intense national celebrations in 2005, shared with the England men, of the double success in their respective Ashes series, culminating in a ceremony and a joint photograph at an empty Lord’s.

Clare picks out highlights of the global advance of women’s cricket, given new impetus by T20, notably its take-off in Thailand, its progress in Pakistan after the pioneering courageous work of the Khan sisters, and the current proliferation of women’s competitions. She outlines the ICC’s efforts to develop the game in new territories with no background in cricket, and to use the game for social unity and global healing after the pandemic. She cites dramatic statistics of the current TV and digital audience for women’s cricket in England and worldwide. She refers to the growing discussions of the possibilities of women’s cricket selling its own rights and obtaining its own sponsorship. (One downside to its growing success is the infiltration of attempted match fixing into women’s cricket.)

She emphasizes the huge importance of showcasing women’s cricket (with free-to-air TV coverage) at the forthcoming Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022, and the strong efforts being made to include both men’s and women’s cricket in the next Olympic Games in Paris. Time constraints might well require this to be a T10 format. Hybrid pitches (real turf matched with artificial) will be essential: they have played a great role in the spread of global cricket.

Finally she contrasts her early career, unaware of women’s cricket, with the ambitious ten-stage pathway devised by the ECB to attract girls and women into cricket and let them progress as far as they want. She concludes: “There are so many more opportunities now for girls and women to feel more part of cricket, as players, fans, coaches, and that’s a very exciting journey.”