Women's Cricket continues to develop across Europe
2006 has been an action packed year for women's cricket in Europe, thanks to an injection of $15,000, made available following the integration of the International Women's Cricket Council with the International Cricket Council in March 2005. The money helped fund various women's cricket development projects in eight of the ECC member countries.
The largest of the projects, was the inaugural ECC Women's Cricket Academy, run in association with Lloyds TSB Scotland. The five-day event, held in August and hosted by Cricket Scotland in Edinburgh, exposed twenty three girls aged between 15-21 from the top three Associate Countries (Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands) to intensive, elite coaching in an Academy setting - the first of its kind in the world.
Elsewhere a number of countries got their own projects underway.
The Netherlands U21 Women's Squad
The Netherlands were granted over £1000 towards thirty indoor training sessions which helped the girls prepare for various competitions like the U21 Championships in August, whilst Cricket Scotland chose to prepare for the same championships by putting their £1000 grant towards a U21 Development Series ? a set of four matches against district standard U14 and U16 boy's teams.
In Germany the objective was to establish a women's team in each of the five states that would compete in a nationwide league, and to organise 7-a-side indoor and outdoor tournaments. Wraye Wenigmann, the German Director for Women's Cricket, reports that this primary aim is near completion,
"We currently have 17 teams throughout the country training girls and boys under the youth scheme and have women playing and training in all five regions, with five active teams in three of those regions. We held our first National Women's Championship in Berlin in September and we anticipate the formation of a Northern League in 2007. Our first European Girls U16 tournament is to be held on 17th-18th February 2007 in Oldenburg. Furthermore, we are now establishing a network of regional officers and have training courses for coaches, umpires and scorers planned for the winter."
Jersey used their grant to fund ten training sessions between January and April. The aim was to promote ladies cricket in a safe environment, to enhance skills, introduce hardball cricket and ultimately produce junior and senior ladies cricket teams. Chris Minty, Director of Cricket for Jersey, reported "the winter training went very well and continued into the summer with regular outdoor sessions culminating in a middle practice as a finale."
A similar project was held in Spain, to establish and develop the women's game there. Weekly coaching sessions started in February in Albir and there are now around 15 ladies regularly training and hoping to form a team to play their first match. In addition to the success in Albir, November will see the beginning of women's coaching in La Manga, which will be overseen by George Wambeek, Director of Cricket in Spain.
In Denmark the grant was used to run a series of junior cricket festivals, coordinated by Mickey Lund, Cricket Development Officer. Thanks to this, more and more girls are playing mixed youth cricket and girl's matches have been played between Svanholm and Nykøbing.
Finland launched "Project Phoenix"? an initiative to revive women's cricket through extensive advertising and recruiting. Part of the ICC funding was used to buy essential equipment to run a series of training sessions, out of which a ladies team was formed to compete in the SKK Sixes Tournament held in Helsinki ? a valuable experience, providing the women with match practice and the opportunity to watch and learn from the more experienced teams on display. The women will continue training indoors throughout the winter, and the remaining funding will go towards venue hire for these sessions.
In Switzerland a grant of over $1000 helped fund the "Swiss Young Ladies Cricket Initiative", a scheme to provide girls with access to equipment and facilities to establish three girl's teams in the three regions Zurich, Basle and Geneva. Patrick Henderson, the Swiss Cricket Development Officer, reports that "good progress is being made in the setting up of 'whole' girls' cricket teams and it is hoped there will be one in each of the three regions by the end of the year."
