Cricket Scotland: How ladies’s crew have gone from crew of the 12 months to no fixtures

Scotland ladies’s cricket crew had been using a excessive in December 2024. Only one month after their first look at a World Cup, they’d been named as their nation’s crew of the 12 months.

Lower than six months on, they haven’t any fixtures scheduled.

Not one within the diary. In reality, they haven’t performed at house since 2023.

“From a funding perspective, cricket prices a lot to run. Our sources are extraordinarily sparse – we’re virtually working on fumes to try to have our ladies’s programme exist,” says director of efficiency Steve Snell.

“To host a sequence we’re taking a look at, give or take, between £75,000 and £100,000 and with little or no kickback when it comes to getting any a reimbursement in from that. If we do this three or 4 occasions a 12 months towards totally different groups, it will get costly in a short time.”

The ladies’s recreation for affiliate nations, in contrast to Full Member nations like England, doesn’t have a mandated Future Excursions Programme that dictates when fixtures must occur.

With groups having to organise issues themselves, even when there may be prepared from touring nations, reminiscent of Pakistan, the prohibitive prices usually make it inconceivable.

And for gamers reminiscent of wicketkeeper Sarah Bryce, the state of affairs is a painful one: “Groups are desirous to play us now, which is admittedly thrilling, however we’re not in a position to.

“It is simply actually irritating as a result of it is troublesome to understand how we maintain pushing ahead as a crew when we do not have these alternatives to develop.”

“We really feel fairly helpless. There’s probably not a lot we are able to do in regards to the state of affairs if we do not get the monetary help that I believe we deserve at this level,” agrees bowler Abtaha Maqsood.

Cricket Scotland receives roughly £1.3m per 12 months as a part of the Worldwide Cricket Council’s (ICC) income share to fund all their programmes, males’s and girls’s.

The board has reportedly by no means made a revenue.

Evaluate this with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which receives in extra of £30m from the ICC and has profitable sequence for which to promote broadcast rights on an annual foundation. The ECB’s newest accounts present a pre-tax revenue of £27.9m.

Extra help could possibly be provided from England with common fixtures, says Snell.

“I do not suppose it is an enormous ask for us to have extra interplay from a males’s and girls’s perspective when it comes to England and England A for males’s and girls’s groups.”