Cricket Board of England and Wales (ECB)

The Yorkshire Cricket Board has spent this month of women’s cricket celebrating local participation stories with a weekly online chat program.

Earlier in April this year, YCB launched its Shining the Light blog page to highlight amazing cricket stories of women and girls across the county. The team has curated and published more than 30 participation stories in eight issues each week and inspired readers to take the bats and balls themselves.

As the page’s success only grew, the board decided to take it a step further and create a weekly online chat presentation throughout this year’s Womens Big Cricket Month.

Amna Rafiq, YCB’s Club and Community Development Manager, has spoken to players, coaches, volunteers, parents and many other people involved in women’s cricket in Yorkshire in blog posts. Each week, the exhibition addresses a variety of themes, including: Volunteers; Elite and performance; Schools and children and most recently communities.

The community section discussed difficult but important topics, including some of the obstacles to cricket and how community members have overcome them to get involved.

Amna Rafiq said: It is really important to have these discussions and show women and girls that they can play and enjoy cricket. Expressing real-life stories that people can join will hopefully give them the confidence they need to break all the obstacles they face.

Running this series has been so rewarding that you can connect with different clubs and communities in Yorkshire. It has only been invaluable. We were really happy to bring out all the great things and encourage more women and girls around the county.

Katie Stewart, development manager for the West Yorkshire Women and Girls Club and League, said: This year, Womens Big Cricket Month has been massive for us. We’ve been forced to use different ways to connect with communities, and I think we proved this works! Weve got women and girls to come tell us they read the blog or saw an episode of the chat show and that’s why they’re here, which is great. It’s great to inspire a wave of new people to participate in sports.