Counties have been warned that they cannot misuse money allocated for the female game and must treat their women’s teams exactly the same as their men’s – or face having £1.5 million of central funding docked.
The women’s domestic structure is being overhauled next summer, with counties handed control of teams in replacement of the centrally managed regional system that had been in place in recent years. There will be eight fully professional tier-one counties (rising to 10 by 2027), 10 in a semi-pro tier two and 19 more in tier three, which will act as a bridge between the recreational and professional games.
Just as they do in the men’s game, the England and Wales Cricket Board will hand chunky funding to the counties. Those in tier one will receive £1.56 million each per year from ECB, tier two will earn £260,000 and tier three £30,000. The overall funding of women’s domestic cricket will rise from £11 million in the regional structure to £16.1 million.
Tier-one counties – Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire (called the Blaze), Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire – have been reminded by Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of women’s professional game, that through the County Partnership Agreement this money is ring-fenced for the women’s game. If it is misused or they do not provide the same standard of treatment for the men’s and women’s teams, that funding could be withheld. The ECB will have a “really robust monitoring process”, including a player survey, to check that counties are delivering on their promises.
“For the tier-one counties, how they operate and deliver their men’s team will be exactly the same as how they operate their women’s team,” said Barrett-Wild. “That comes down to things like venue requirements, match-day delivery requirements; in terms of the standard of the facility that the women’s team will be playing at, it has to be the same standard as the facility that the men’s team will be playing at. There are also staffing structure requirements, sports science and medicine requirements across men and women. Talent pathway, looking at that through a gender-balanced lens.
“If it is going wrong, we do have the ability to pull the trigger – and hopefully this won’t happen – but it will effectively trigger a non-compliance event, and at that point we would have the chance to withhold or suspend funding, which hopefully it wouldn’t come to, and we’d be able to proactively address things before they get to that.”
Barrett-Wild also explained that the ECB will be able to monitor how counties spend the funding and ensure it is used on the women’s game. If it is not, again they can withdraw it.
‘Can we trust them? From what I’ve seen so far, I think we can’
“Basically, we have got more leverage than we ever have in terms of delivery, standards and accountability for the women’s game,” she said. “With the regions, there wasn’t quite that level of ability to hold them to account against that. We have that now, and we have that in spades.
“When we started out in this project last year, in terms of some of the big watch-outs and risks, a really big part of it was the prioritisation question, and can we trust them, for want of a better word. From what I’ve seen so far, I absolutely think we can.
“But we are going to be keeping an eye. This isn’t us just giving a big cheque to go away and do a load of stuff. I think the final point on this that I do want to stress is that, in terms of the funding, it is ring-fenced to the women’s programme – and we will be tracking that. We’ve not necessarily got into the minutiae of how the regional money has been spent over the last four years, but moving forwards I am pretty sure that I will have a good idea how every single pound is being spent. I think we’ll know more than we ever have, and I think that is really important.”
On Wednesday, the ECB revealed the draw for the new Vitality T20 Women’s County Cup, which is effectively an FA Cup-style competition featuring all 37 teams. The competition will have five rounds, and culminates with a finals day in Taunton on the second bank holiday Monday of May. Barrett-Wild said she hoped that it would provide “upsets” and “exposure” for smaller counties.
Tier-one counties, like the men, will compete for the Vitality Blast and MetroBank One-Day Cup, but Barrett-Wild says there are no plans to introduce a red-ball competition before 2029. Counties will initially be allowed one overseas player each.
Barrett-Wild says she believes that “the fallout” of the process to choose which counties would get tier-one status is healing. Yorkshire expressed their fury that they were not initially chosen (they will be added in 2026), while Sussex and Kent were also left disappointed given their strong records in the women’s game.
“After the initial reaction, which I think was very public, from Yorkshire in particular, we are working very closely with them on that programme,” she said. “With Sanjay Patel the chief executive there, I have a very strong working relationship with him. I have absolutely every confidence that they will be ready to go in 2026.
“We had the fallout from the tier-one process, which was incredibly difficult and challenging to manage at the time, but equally when you look at it through a slightly different lens, a positive that there was that impassioned response, which – look, I’ll be candid – this time last year when we were just going through the initial formations of this project, there was actually a nervousness around whether there was a desire within the first-class counties to take this on.”
