DUBLIN –Cricket Ireland on Friday released a new three-year Action Plan and took a dedicated look at what is needed to strengthen and increase cricket opportunities for women and girls across the country, with the longer-term objective of making cricket the fastest growing sport for women and girls in Ireland.

The Women & Girls’ Cricket Action Plan 2021-2023 is a more detailed complementary document to the recently announced Cricket Ireland Strategic Plan 2021-2023 titled: “Creating a Cricket Island” which chalks out a staged approach to growing cricket across the country.

One of the major focuses in the Strategic Plan was growth of the women’s game – and that is exactly where this Action Plan fits in. Where the Strategic Plan talks about longer term ambition and direction, this Action Plan offers a more detailed roadmap of actions to be taken over the next three years.

Amongst the key headlines of the Action Plan, Cricket Ireland will aim to:

Roll out a range of new national participation and leadership programmes to attract and retain women and girls within the sport;

Significantly increase opportunities for women and girls to play cricket by working with Provincial Unions to support more cricket clubs across Ireland in developing their capacity to deliver cricket experiences for females;

Significantly increasing visibility of the women’s game and growing attendances at international matches;

Invest more in the performance pathway and further support women’s international squads to seek on-field success and regular world cup qualification;

Implement a sustained investment in women coaches and officials to increase the number and skills of those involved;

Deliver proactive programmes that further increase diversity and inclusion – aiming to make cricket one of the most welcoming sports in Ireland; and

Drive greater gender diversity on boards and committees in line with upcoming National Sport Policy standards.

Warren Deutrom, Chief Executive of Cricket Ireland, said: “This is an important piece of work that will help guide what is already one of our fastest growing demographics with the sport in Ireland.

We have certainly invested a great deal more in the women’s high performance programme over recent years – a 45% increase in funding over the last four years, and plan to increase this significantly further over coming years.”

“This Action Plan makes one thing clear – the intent of Cricket Ireland is to drive growth of opportunity for girls and women to get involved in cricket across Ireland. The Plan aims to break down those more traditional stereotypes that exist around cricket and create fun and engaging experiences that will hopefully make participants want to come back for more.”

Richard Holdsworth, High Performance Director for Cricket Ireland, said: “We have invested heavily in the women’s high performance system over recent years to increasingly professionalise the sport. Two years ago we became the second team sport in Ireland to offer playing contracts to women, and in fact, I believe we may be the only sport in Ireland right now to have maintained those contracts through the pandemic. We didn’t just maintain these contracts, we grew our retainer contracts to seven, and added 12 additional non-retainer contracts during this period. But professionalism hasn’t just been about contracts – we have significantly increased our investment in health, fitness, nutrition, physio and S&C services particularly – as well as more coaching contact hours and employed a Pathway and Performance Coach specifically for the women’s system.”

 “We haven’t stopped there, and this Action Plan outlines a range of goals and activities we will be taking over the coming years – including investing in leadership, growing overseas opportunities and raising the profile of the women’s performance squad as role models for our sport.”