UEL women’s indoor cricket 1st is at the brink of terminating for the 2018/19 season after the past few months has seen participation numbers dwindle.
The team initially started with three players, with number rising to five by the end of 2018 – one less than the minimum number of players required to compete in the BUCS South Eastern division.
Due to difficulties in fielding a full squad of six players, the Blues have had to forfeit all three fixtures lined up for the 2018/19 season, resulting in the East Londoners falling to the bottom of the table with -12 points.
Participant Decline Causes
The shortage of players may be due lack of understanding of the sport and the undertone of being a male dominated sport, despite Team England’s recent win at the 2017 Women’s Cricket World Cup.
UEL cricket scholar, Ihtisham Mir who occasionally serves as a coach in the absence of women’s cricket coach, Arfan Akram believes this is the case, telling Rising East:
“I believe that the reason why women don’t turn up is because they haven’t actually tried the sport, or they’re too afraid to because it’s a gentlemen’s game as they say.”
He went onto add that the reason for the decline in participants may be something as mundane as a lack of communication.
At the start of 2019, UEL women’s indoor cricket switched their training grounds at the SportsDock, and Mir considers this could be an additional reason as to why player numbers have reduced; “The room change could be the reason why.”
Still To Come
Despite a lack of participants this term, the club is still new and Mir believes there is still time to develop for the coming seasons:
“The coming term, we’re going to look to recruit as many players by giving more awareness of the sport and letting people know the training times and making it more engaging.”
Mir will be around till mid-March to offer one to one cricket training to women who are still keen to get into the game.
As with any new club, it is not unusual to see a shortage of players as the club develops. Mir and Akram now have an insight as to how to improve participation in the upcoming season, and with the ICC Cricket World Cup this summer bringing further exposure to the sport, the UEL women’s indoor cricket is sure to progress in the 2019/20 season.
