100% Cricket - Webinars

100% Cricket - Leading the Game Series

The ICC is hosting the 100% Cricket – Leading the Games series, a weekly webinar series spanning 6 weeks dedicated to women’s cricket.

For each webinar, the ICC will invite experts from around the world to share their knowledge, challenges and passion for the women’s game covering topics such as strategy, high performance, grass-roots development and fan engagement.

The aim of the webinar series is to upskill, connect and empower the global cricket family to support the growth of the women’s cricket and engage more women and girls in the sport.

WEEK 1 – 100% LEADERSHIP

ICC strategy and leading women’s cricket into the future

DISCUSSION

Host Mel Jones was joined by Manu Sawhney (CEO, International Cricket Council) who looked ahead at the ICC’s future in respect to women’s cricket, Clare Connor CBE (Managing Director of Women’s Cricket at the England & Wales Cricket Board) and Katie Sadleir (General Manager of Women’s Rugby, World Rugby) who discussed the impact of Covid-19 on women’s cricket and rugby.

VIDEO

WEEK 2 – 100% PERFORMANCE

Developing high performance systems for elite female cricketers

DISCUSSION

Learn from experts, Dr Urooj Mumtaz Khan (interim Head of Women’s Cricket, PCB) and **Julia Price **(USA Women’s Head Coach) and about creating high performance environments to best develop female cricketers. In particular, they talked about the challenges and share best practice regarding:

• Strategic investment in high performance systems
• Professionalisation of elite training environments in amateur systems
• Importance of coaching and other high-performance support
• Talent identification of young athletes

VIDEO

**WEEK 3 – **100% DEDICATION

Coaching female teams and players to reach their potential

DISCUSSION

Mel Jones spoke with Anju Jain (Bangladesh Women’s Team Head Coach) and Matthew Mott (Australia Women’s Team Head Coach) about coaching female teams and players to reach their potential.

VIDEO

**WEEK 4 – **100% INNOVATION

DISCUSSION

Mel Jones spoke with Jemimah Rodrigues and Sophie Devine about how women’s cricket has led the way for the sport with innovation and where it will go in the future.

VIDEO

WEEK 5 – 100% PASSION

Raising the profile and engaging new fans of women's cricket

Mel Jones spoke with Will Giles, Content Manager at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, and Karren Rogers, APAC Sports Partnerships Lead at Facebook, to discuss fan engagement during Covid-19 and future trends, accessibility to new athletes and top tips for promoting sports teams and players. 

VIDEO

WEEK 6 – 100% UNITY

Creating inclusive environments to encourage more girls and women to participate in cricket

Mel Jones was joined by guests Arijana Demirovic, Head of Women’s Football Development, FIFA  and Belinda Clark (AO), Executive General Manager – Community Cricket, Cricket Australia to discuss how we can grow the sport and encourage more girls and women to participate in cricket, the importance of creating the right environment for them to thrive. 

VIDEO

GUEST BIOGRAPHIES

Manu Sawhney

Manu Sawhney became the fifth Chief Executive of the ICC on 1 April 2019 succeeding David Richardson who had held the role since June 2012.

Mr Sawhney is the former CEO of Singapore Sports Hub and Managing Director of ESPN Star Sports with 22 years of commercial experience in both sport and broadcasting in senior leadership roles. He was with ESPN Star Sports for seventeen years and during his tenure as Managing Director was responsible for scaling the business and doubling annual revenues whilst delivering an innovative content and digital growth strategy and building strong partnerships with stakeholders across 24 countries in Asia. Additionally, he led the global broadcast partnership deal with the ICC that ran from 2007-2015.

He is also a non-executive director and member of the Audit Committee of Manchester United Ltd.

Clare Connor (CBE)

Former England captain, Clare Connor, made the transition from player to administrator when she joined the ECB in 2007 as the Head of England Women’s Cricket. Clare was elected as the first female Member of the ICC Cricket Committee in 2009 and as Chair of the ICC Women’s Committee in 2011. She still Chairs the Women’s Committee.

In her role, Clare has taken some brave steps to grow women’s cricket, establishing the Women’s Super League in 2016 and launching a bold strategy to transform cricket for women and girls across the UK in 2019.

In line with this strategy, Clare’s role has evolved to become Managing Director of Women’s Cricket looking after the whole of the game that involves an Asian focused grass-roots program and eight new Regional entities to deliver the high-performance aspects of the women’s and girls’ domestic game across England and Wales. These eight Regions will exist alongside the exciting city-based women’s and men’s competition, The Hundred, to try to drive a more diverse audience for the sport.

Katie Sadlier

Katie was appointed the General Manager for Women’s Rugby at World Rugby in November 2016.

Katie’s background as athlete was in synchronised swimming representing New Zealand in the Olympic Games in 1984 and taking a bronze medal in the 1986 Commonwealth Games. Following her career in the pool, Katie turned to sports administration and was instrumental in establishing New Zealand Academy of Sport network and lead the transformation of New Zealand’s High Performance structure as General Manager of Sport and Recreation New Zealand (now Sport New Zealand).

Since her appointment at World Rugby, women’s rugby is thriving. Katie leads the development of the Women’s Rugby strategic plan 2017-2025 which has already led to the addition of 17 women on the World Rugby Council . Underpinned by this plan, Katie has introduced new initiatives such as the Executive Leadership Scholarship Program, the global marketing campaign ‘Try and Stop Us’ and a Women Coaching Rugby Toolkit.

Dr Urooj Mumtaz Khan

Urooj is a trailblazer of Pakistan Women’s cricket. She is the former national captain, commentator, selector and a consultant dental surgeon.

In March 2019 she became the first female chief selector of the three-person selection committee for the national women’s team. She was also the first woman elected to the PCB Cricket Committee.

As of 2019, Urooj is the acting Head of Women’s Cricket at the Pakistan Cricket Board. There she overseas the implementation of the PCB’s vision to expand women’s high performance academies throughout Pakistan and revolutionise the women’s senior team by developing new talented players.

Julia Price

Julia, had a successful 9 year career representing Australia in 94 international appearances as their primary wicket keeper. Julia enjoyed coaching alongside her playing career and decided to pursue this as a full-time profession after international retirement.

Julia has had a wide range of coaching experiences from working with Scotland and Netherlands in the early 2000s whilst still playing, to the Head Coach of the Tasmania Roar and Hobart Hurricanes WBBL for three seasons. In 2019, she was appointed the USA women’s head coach and became the first ever female coach involved in the Men’s BBL.

Julia is at the heart of the evolution of the USA women’s team, to professionalise the system in a widespread country and is pulling on her own experiences as player and coach in semi-professional environments.

Anju Jain

Anju has been a leader both on the field as a player and from the boundary edge as a coach.

Anju had a 12-year playing career with India as a wicket keeper batter and captained the side during the 2000 Women’s Cricket World Cup.

Following playing retirement in 2005, Anju became a selector of the India Women’s Team for three years and during that time realised that coaching was where her passion lied.

After working her way through the coaching set up in India, Anju was named Head of the India Women’s Team 2011-2013.

In 2018, she was appointed as Head Coach of Bangladesh Women’s Cricket Team making an immediate impact with a historic win over India in the Asia Cup Final. Since that time Bangladesh have won back-to-back titles of the ICC Women’s T20 Cup Qualifier in 2018 and 2019 and are now looking to qualify for the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2021.

Matthew Mott

Matthew is one of the most successful women’s international coaches in the game as the current Head Coach of the Australia Women’s Cricket Team.

Matthew retired from a 66-game playing career in 2004. For the next two seasons he became the NSW Blues Assistant coach and was appointed Head Coach in 2007 for a further four years. In 2011, he moved across the pond to coach Glamorgan CCC for three seasons.

In 2015 he was appointed the Australia Women’s Team Coach and has had instant success, winning both editions of the ICC Women’s Championship, the ICC World T20 2018, ICC T20 World Cup 2020, and won back the Women’s Ashes in 2015 - Australia have retained them ever since.

Jemimah Rodrigues

Jemimah was a child prodigy in both hockey and cricket making her U19 state debut in cricket at just 12 years old and being selected for both state U17 & U19 hockey teams.

Luckily for fans, she decided to pursue cricket and went on to debut for India in February 2018 at just 17. Jemimah instantly made an impact cementing herself as an attacking batter in the India top order and has now played 44 T20Is and 16 ODIs.

Within a year of playing for India, she had broken into the top five batters of the ICC T20I Player Rankings after a successful series against the West Indies in November 2019.

Jemimah is a character in the team and is very active to share this on social media whether it’s conducting teammate interviews, playing the guitar or dancing around even with security guards. Jemimah has now started a YouTube chat show with teammate Smriti Mandhana called Double Trouble, which has kept her busy in lockdown.

Sophie Devine

Sophie was just 17 years old when she was selected to play for New Zealand in 2006. Sophie has now played 105 ODIs and 91 T20Is and was appointed as captain in January earlier this year.

Sophie started off her career as opening bowler and lower-order batter but has now established herself as one of the most explosive all-rounders in the game. In July 2015, she broke the international record for the fastest T20I half century ever (18 balls) against India and is the first player ever to score six consecutive 50+ scores in T20Is.

Sophie has been named in the ICC Team of the Year in 2017 (T20I), 2018 (ODI) and has won the New Zealand Cricket CPA Players' Award for the last three consecutive seasons, equaling the record of Kane Williamson. She was also named Player of the Tournament for the last edition of the WBBL|05 with a club season record of 699 runs at an average of 77.7. the highest of any player to play more than 10 matches.

Sophie is another multi-talented athlete, representing New Zealand in Hockey in the early stages of her cricket career.

Karren Rogers

Karren, has been part of the Facebook Media Partnerships team for over 6 years and is currently the Sports Media Partnerships Lead for Australia and New Zealand, a role she has had for just over a year.

In this role she works on promoting women’s sports with various leagues such as AFLW, Women’s BBL, Australian Women’s football plus athletes including Tayla Harris and Kayla Itsines. She has also managed the Facebook partnership with Ellyse Perry to launch an exclusive docuseries which aired in January 2020.

Karren was instrumental in leading the #BreakingBoundaries campaign with the ICC, showcasing messages from key global public figures, sharing their moments of resilience and overcoming adversity in sport which aligned with the WT20WC this year.

She has co-led various other initiatives such as working with the Australian Olympic Committee to launch Wellbeing Week and setting up the first event partnership to position Facebook as the official Social Media Partner for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Arijana Demirovic

Born in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arijana’s passion for football started from very early age following the footsteps of her father who was a goalkeeper, coach and administrator in football.

After pursuing business consultancy for several years in Milano, Italy, she decided to enroll in FIFA Master programme, which enabled her to join FIFA in 2013 as an intern in Member associations division. In 2014 she joined the women’s football development team and has remained in this role for several years working on implementation of different development initiatives for members associations and confederations, as well as legacy programmes for youth and senior FIFA women’s tournaments. In December 2019, Arijana took over the role of Head of Women’s Football Development.

Parallel to her role in FIFA, Arijana has in the last six years worked with her FIFA master classmates on the implementation of their final thesis project that dealt with feasibility of establishing a sports academy in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her Little Bridge Sports Academy started with its work in June 2015 and has been awarded Sports Community of 2017 by International Sports Awards.

Belinda Clark (AO)

Belinda Clark is a trailblazer of world cricket. Belinda had a 15-year playing career consisting of 118 ODIs, 15 Tests, captaining the Australia women’s team for the last 11 years until her retirement in 2005.

Belinda has been inducted into multiple Halls of Fame including the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and ICC Hall of Fame in 2011 and was the first female inductee of the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2014.

Following her playing career Belinda became the Manager of the National Cricket Centre (previously the Australian Cricket Academy) in Brisbane overseeing the high-performance program for Australia’s young male and female talent.

In 2018, she was as appointed Executive General Manager – Community Cricket and is leading her team to create the best participation experiences to grow junior cricket and to become a leading sport for women and girls.