27-05-2025
Women's cricket is becoming reliant on private schools but never used to be
England's leading private schools are well established as mini academies when it comes to men's cricket and that battle to secure the next generation's most coveted talent has now spread into the women's game.
As of October 2024, just 29 per cent of players in the women's professional game came from a private school background, compared with 50 per cent of male cricketers, but further down the pathway the numbers become more skewed towards those from fee-paying establishments 42 per cent at county age group.
Of the 19 women's players currently centrally-contracted by England, 12 went to private schools or 63 per cent. The figure for the men's players with a central contract is almost identical, standing at 64 per cent, of those educated in the United Kingdom. But when England Women won the World Cup in front of a sold-out Lord's in 2017, just three of the starting XI had attended a fee-paying school.
Three years ago Telegraph Sport revealed that agents, parents and school directors of cricket were offering bespoke scholarships and 110 per cent-off fees to talented players. More recently, those same schools have turned their attention to women's cricket.
Private school pathway
Directors of cricket from leading private schools have spoken to Telegraph Sport about the rise in the girls' game over the past decade, to the extent that at one school highly-rated players can drop an academic subject to take cricket instead.
Bede's in Brighton, which charges full boarders up to £51,075 a year, has a scholarship for players from Barbados, established in conjunction with the Barbados Cricket Association. It is a pathway trodden by the likes of Shai Hope, who now plays for the West Indies men's team, but one of the current scholars is NaiJanni Cumberbatch, who represents women's franchise side Barbados Pride and the West Indies Under-19s.
At Bede's, Cumberbatch will play boys' cricket, likely in the second XI, the same team that England international Ryana MacDonald-Gay captained during her time at the school. Students from South Africa have also been in contact with the school, such is its reputation for producing cricketers.
'We've had three girls playing for England at the same time which is quite unique,' Bede's director of cricket, Alan Wells, explains to Telegraph Sport. 'I can't imagine that's happened for any other school. We had Alice Capsey, Freya Kemp and Ryana MacDonald-Gay all playing for England at the same time in the Ashes and it's a rich heritage of girls' cricket that we have here. For those three to be representing England, all coming through our system here, is very special for us obviously.'
Cricket might once have been considered a summer sport, but at the majority of these schools it has become a year-round programme, starting at Bede's as early as September. The goal for the schools is not just to perform against others, but establish themselves as pathways for professional cricketers.
Eight years ago, Wells started an academy at Bede's, offering cricket lessons instead of a subject, with students selecting the sport as part of their curriculum.
'As long as they're of a certain standard they can choose cricket as part of their timetable and then beyond that going into Years 10 and 11 and GCSE years, in consultation with their parents, if we feel that a young girl cricketer or boy has the potential to have a career, they're on a career pathway, then they can drop a GCSE and do cricket instead,' Wells explains.
'So the better cricketers at the school will be getting up to eight hours of contact time with our coaches here. That gives us the ability to have the contact time with the students that's needed if they're on a career pathway.'
Roedean was one of the earliest schools to adopt cricket. The girls' school has played cricket from as early as the 1890s, long before there was any option of a professional career or even women's international cricket.
Today it has a wealth of cricketing talent, although not as many scholarships as some of the others, with more given to those from netball, hockey or swimming backgrounds. Mike Smethurst, the school's director of cricket, says: 'We've got girls in county cricket. We've got girls who play for Hampshire and we've got a lot of girls below that who play at club level as well.'
The likes of Shrewsbury and Millfield were earlier supporters of women's cricket, with Issy Wong having attended the former, while Sedbergh and Repton, who have won three national titles in the last two years for cricket, have adopted the sport in the last decade. Players join the schools on means-tested bursaries with typical scholarships capped at just 10 per cent of fees, but for exceptional sporting talent, exemptions are common.
At Repton, where Martin Speight is the director of cricket, there are a number of boys and girls involved in county cricket. He says: 'There's a lot of academy and even players that are playing county second XI or county first-team cricket now. Someone like Harry Moore, we won't see much of this year because he'll be playing for Derbyshire or England Lions, and I think the girls is moving that way.'
Growing elitism in women's game
In women's cricket there are still far more players who attended state schools compared with private than in the men's game. Warwickshire for example have just four players out of 15 in the senior squad from fee-paying schools and five of 13 in the academy. The Lancashire Academy is a similar picture, with just three private school attendees of the 13 in their development group. Yet there are a growing number of female players coming through the private schools pathway – and it is easy to see the appeal.
Smethurst, who works in the boys' cricket pathway at Sussex explains how boys attending state schools are offered an extra coaching session per week by the county, to try to close the gap with private school students, but it is hard to contend with the eight hours of cricket time some can receive.
The facilities at certain schools are enough to make some counties, if not the smaller Test-playing nations, jealous. In fact, Millfield has been used by international travelling sides as a base because of the quality of its facilities. In 2020, Millfield finished a £2.6 million investment in its golf and cricket centres. The cricket one includes five nets, specialist technology and a 4G fielding area – to complement its existing six pitches and eight outdoor nets.
Richard Gould, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has stated his intention and desire for cricket to become the country's most inclusive sport, with the governing body having a clear vision, and an action plan, to do this.
The ECB wants to invest millions and train hundreds, partly in association with programmes like ACE, Chance to Shine and the MCC Foundation to introduce and expand cricket in state schools, which may draw more to the game at grass-roots level.
However, there is no way for a state school, particularly one in an inner city, to compete on an even playing field against a school like Millfield, say, that has nets specifically designed to replicate the bounce found in Australia and the spin of India.
The opportunity to develop skills at one of these elite schools that almost double as academies would be almost impossible for a burgeoning cricketer, or their parents, to turn down.
