From the professional game through to recreational and community cricket, the ECB Coach Development team is driving a marked increase in coaching diversity through targeted interventions and expert programme development.
The aim is to improve on-field performance at the highest levels of the game by harnessing the different perspectives of the latest generation of coaches and the expertise across the elite of women’s cricket. The aim is also to create a new generation of high-profile female cricket coaches which is likely to inspire other women and girls to take up recreational cricket.
“We’ve really felt a strong alignment to the Inspiring Generations strategy, particularly around developing the most inclusive team sport,” says ECB Head of Coach Development Diccon Edwards, who began his role in February 2025.
Edwards adds: “What that led to was prioritising objectives around the development of a diverse coaching workforce. We wanted a workforce that’s inspiring and representative of society, and that has the benefit of diversity in all its aspects – whether that’s gender, cultural, cognitive, or anything else – because the power of that diversity and the richness of that environment can drive inclusion, belonging, and ultimately create a legacy for cricket.”
The ECB’s Coach Development Strategy focuses on three things: a diverse workforce; qualified and highly skilled coaches; and inspired and highly skilled coach developers.
To deliver this, targeted interventions are required now, to have long-term impact. In the last year, just under one in four (22.5%) of all registrants on coach development programmes have been female.
At the highest level, a new Female Professional Player to Coach programme enrolled its first cohort in November 2025. Since then, the 12 players involved – including former England players Alice Davidson-Richards and Fran Wilson – have attended workshops and received one-to-one guidance on their coaching development.
When the programme was conceived, only one of the Tier One or Tier Two professional female teams had a female head coach. The ECB Coach Development team expects that figure to change significantly in the medium term.
