The England and Wales Cricket Board has been warned its new policy on transgender cricketers in the recreational game is “unsafe, unfair and discriminatory”.
Last month the ECB unveiled a long-awaited updated policy on transgender participation in cricket. While it banned transgender women from its new professional Tier 1 and semi-professional Tier 2 women’s domestic competitions, it did allow them to play in women’s teams at grass-roots level.
This has sparked a backlash, with a survey of grass-roots volunteers revealing that “79 per cent of respondents expressed a view opposing males participating in the female category in both amateur and professional events”.
This week volunteers belonging to the SEENinSport network (a group which says it is “for all players, coaches, officials and parents who believe that women and girl’s sport should be for biological females only”) conducted a Cricket Female Eligibility Survey and wrote to the ECB about its results. They contacted a series of senior figures at the organisation, including CEO Richard Gould, chairman Richard Thompson and Leshia Hawkins, the managing director of the recreational game.
‘Unsafe, unfair and discriminatory’
The survey showed that 79 per cent of volunteers questioned were opposed to the new rules. The survey was overseen by John Armstrong, a mathematician at King’s College London, and Alice Sullivan, Professor of Sociology at University College London.
The attached letter to ECB reads: “We believe that the views of cricket volunteers are particularly important as they will have to implement the rules. It is not reasonable to ask volunteers to implement rules they believe to be unsafe, unfair and discriminatory.
“According to the ECB’s statement when the new rules on trans participation were announced, you have ‘consulted widely’ on the new policy. However, we are not aware of any call for evidence. Given the results of our survey, we believe it is inconceivable that any properly conducted consultation would have failed to identify the fact that the overwhelming majority of volunteers do not support your position.
“Our survey shows that the grass-roots volunteers who run your cricket clubs do not share your view that fair and safe competition is less important at an amateur level than it is at a professional level. This suggests that your consultation process is not accurately reflecting the views of your own membership.
“We ask that you revise your policy on trans participation in female cricket to reflect the views of your membership. We also ask that you reflect upon your consultation process and consider how it can have failed to identify the views of your volunteers. We would be very happy to meet you to discuss this further.”
