This episode was originally released as part of Series 2 on Sept 17, 2019.
Former England Cricket Captain, Clare Connor has transformed the game from grassroots to the elite level, she is now ECB Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director England Women.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
This episode was originally released as part of Series 2 on Sept 17, 2019.
Former England Cricket Captain, Clare Connor has transformed the game from grassroots to the elite level, she is now ECB Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director England Women.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello, I'm Sue Anstos, the host of the Game Changers, with a quick message before this episode. As we've had thousands of new listeners in 2023, we thought we'd take this small break between series 15 and 16 to share some of our back catalogue. We've loved listening back to these earlier episodes and hope that you also enjoy hearing from these incredible leaders in women's sport. And while I'm here, don't forget that the whole of my book Game On the Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to. In series 13 of the podcast, every episode is me reading a chapter of the book.
Speaker 1:Now it's time for the Game Changers. Hello and welcome to the Game Changers podcast, where you'll hear from trailblazing, fearless women in sport. I'm Sue Anstos, a founding trustee of the Women's Sport Trust Charity and the founder and CEO of Promote PR, one of Britain's leading sports PR agencies. In this episode, you'll hear from Claire Connor, cbe, former England cricket captain and now much respected managing director for women's cricket at the ECB. On Claire's watch, the women's team were awarded professional contracts, increased sponsorships led to a new competitive structure and the England women won the World Cup in front of packed stands at Lords. And it was at Lords, the home of cricket that I sat down to talk with Claire. I began by asking her if she could remember the first time she saw women playing cricket.
Speaker 2:Oh, not for ages, not until well into my teens actually. So all my everything that was visible to me and everything that I watched on television and knew about was, you know, was men and boys playing cricket. My own experiences, you know very much, started as a little girl, playing in a team of boys at the age of seven or eight, and that was my experience. That was my constant experience until into my mid-teens. So I grew up, you know I've got a younger brother, but he's 10 years younger than me, so I was essentially an only child for 10 years and my all my early playing experiences and experiences of the game all around me were of it being a game for men and boys.
Speaker 2:And I think that I discovered women's cricket when I was in the summer of 1993. So I was 16, nearly 17. Well, that was when, I think, I first became aware that there was an England women's team that you know played at grounds such as this at Lords Cricket Ground when they won the World Cup final here at Lords against New Zealand. A couple of years before then I had trialled for Sussex girls and the Sussex women's team, so I suppose that's when I first started playing in girls and women's teams. But I had no idea, I had no clue of the structures or the pathways or what was possible, until really I saw that England women's win in 1993 in the World Cup.
Speaker 1:And what was it about that drew you to cricket? Did you play other sports? I?
Speaker 2:did. Yeah, I played all lots of ball sports. So I played a lot of hockey and squash. I didn't like netball very much, I didn't like the standing still bit, so I played lots of cricket, hockey and squash. And what drew me to it?
Speaker 2:I've been asked that so many times and I don't know if it was nature or nurture, but I just do remember being very, very little and listening to my family tell me stories of you know, almost as soon as I was a toddler and I could run around, I was dragging a cricket bat that was far too big for me to do anything with and I was just really attached to it. And I can remember from a really young age sitting on the doorstep and crying if I wasn't allowed to go to cricket with my dad at the weekend and not wanting to come back inside, and so I think it was somehow in me very, very, very young and I had a close relationship with both my parents, but I mean, particularly it became very close with my dad through cricket. And I suppose I, you know, like lots of lucky young children, you know, I, or children who are lucky I grew up really at our local cricket club, which was sort of this idyllic location in the South Downs called Preston Nomads Cricket Club and I really did grow up there and had really lovely experiences there as a little girl. Yeah, I just love the sport and I it was something that, you know, I knew I always wanted to do and I was quite good at squash and hockey, but cricket was definitely my thing and it was where even though I was a bit of a freak, I suppose you know, being the only girl in boys teams for so long it was where I felt comfortable and normal and oddly, you know that is, there's a real contradiction there but it was where I felt at home and it was where I felt I could really kind of express myself and thrive and you played for a while for the boys team, the men's team at Brighton College.
Speaker 1:So how was that received? How are you received by them as players, and also by parents and so on, because sometimes we hear a negative side of girls playing football and so on within boys teams. Did you ever experience that?
Speaker 2:No, not really, I think my mum. I think it was difficult, for sometimes for my mum watching and being the mum of the only girl in the match and hearing some comments, that I was odd. Oh, you know who's brought this girl up and she must. You know, gosh, what would her? Well, her parents, like my poor mum, had to listen to that. Yeah, and also, if I got boy, you know when I took, when I got wickets, so when I got the wickets of their sons, you know, I think she heard some not very nice comments, but I don't think it bothered her too much In terms of how the other players accepted me.
Speaker 2:I think you know when you, when you grow up in one place and you grow up on a in a in a cricket club and in a team in a school, on that circuit of club cricket and schools cricket, you essentially come up against the same people year after year and you're playing essentially with the same group of teammates from the age of seven to 17, which was eight to 17. So I think at first it was, it was abnormal and unusual and you know it was a bit of a, you know I was the sort of the novelty factor within our team. But I think soon people became used to it and you know, like anything, once you prove yourself and that you're, you're there on merit and that you're not a PR stunt or whatever, then then you are accepted. I think it was. It was difficult when I you know when, when the boys in Brighton College, when, as I suppose, when I got to sort of 15 or 16, probably 14 or 15, and the boys became sometimes a lot stronger and a lot more physical, you know that's where nice, you know where I suppose I felt really tested.
Speaker 2:But I was accepted. You know, considering it was so unusual, I was completely accepted and and when I look back on those times I don't even though, you know, when I look at it rationally, it was odd I didn't feel at all odd there. No, and I suppose that's I'm so lucky, because that won't be a common experience, I'm sure, or a shared experience with other girls or boys in similar kind of kind of gender imbalanced environments. But I think that probably the love and support of my family and this real, unbelievable support of the cricket coaches that I had around me just goes to show that that is such a true a truism that family and coaches and teachers are so important in young people's lives for making them feel that they can spread their wings and really thrive at something and and yeah, absolutely do whatever they want to do.
Speaker 1:And you were just a teenager, so your first one day, international 1995, was that a thing? So how can you remember the time and how that felt, walking out representing your country?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was all quite sudden really, like I say, you know, I went from essentially sort of only discovering girls county crickets and girls club cricket to, within probably three or four years, making my England debut. So it was a, you know, and with all the other stuff that was going on in my life as a teenager and doing GCSEs and A levels and playing loads of sport at school, it was, it was an and starting university. So I started university in 1995 and I'd had a gap year in 94 and traveled to Zimbabwe and done some teaching there and it was. It was such an exciting time and I was very proud. I missed when I got picked we would do. I was due to go on a family holiday to Spain which I had to miss because of being picked for England.
Speaker 1:So you forget them now.
Speaker 2:Just yeah, that holiday that you missed, yeah, okay, I think the big, the big moment was starting university in the whatever it would have been the September 95, going up to Manchester to read English. So I just turned 19. And I got picked to go to India in the November, december. So it would have meant missing half of my first term of university and it was a long tour. It was very unusual tour because it was three test matches and five one day internationals which we know hasn't been heard of since. I don't think in terms of duration, and it was our first major series or competition since England had won that World Cup in 93 that I wasn't part of. It was the first time that a England women, as world champions, went on a big tour. So to be picked for that and for it to be in India was just overwhelming.
Speaker 2:You know I did my first six or seven weeks at university, made some friends, said goodbye to those friends. Luckily some of them stayed my friends and went off on that trip and it was at a time when women's cricket in India. You know, sometimes we had 20,000 people watching us, sometimes we had 20 people watching us and it was really. We traveled all over the all over India. It was such an amazing life experience, as well as a cricket experience. I was trying to do a bit of studying whilst I was there.
Speaker 1:How did you balance that education with playing then?
Speaker 2:Well, I came yeah so I missed that first half a term of and it was like that actually for the rest of uni and and it was just a case, I suppose, of, yeah, like you know, anyone who, I suppose, who has to balance education, you know have to be disciplined and you have to, you know, focus on what you need, what's what's ahead of you, whether that was cricket at a certain time or studying and I had good support from Manchester University and I managed to make it work.
Speaker 1:And the setup and support for the women's games massively evolved in those 25 years. So what do you feel the key differences of the young English cricketer in the 90s versus the girls that are coming to play, maybe for the first time now?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, well, that's a. You know, that's a kind of book in itself.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I mean there is. There is very little that's the same. I mean, it's a bat and a ball and it's 22 yards and it's, you know, essentially the same laws and the same, the same contest between bat and ball. But the cricket environment I grew up in, the women's and girls cricket environment that I grew up in in the mid to late 90s. Compared with now, I mean, firstly, I think the most important or the biggest difference is the visibility of women in cricket and women's cricket and women's sport more more generically, I think, the profile. We've all seen what's happened in the last decade, certainly since, I think, london 2012, with the profile and visibility of female athletes in individual sports and team sports really increasing and everything that comes with that. So support, coaching, support, science and medicine, support, financial support, commercial support, the support of your national governing body and a real drive to. You know that so many people are making such a massive contribution to to for women and girls to feel as welcome in sport.
Speaker 2:You know, I think my, my experiences were, were, were very non non-typical I. I say that I mean lots of girls had to find their way into cricket through playing with playing cricket with boys and men, obviously back then. But I think where I was lucky was every at every stage I had unbelievable support and acceptance around me and I don't think that would have been the the the common story over the last 20 to 30 years. But thankfully, now you know, girls and women can see a place for them in sport, and that's on on and off the pitch. You know we've got so much more still to do in terms of of that kind of gender shift, coaching and volunteering and officiating and the running of sport, but certainly the last, well, the last 10 years have been have been game changing, haven't they?
Speaker 1:Indeed, and do you, do you think the players at the time felt they wanted to be, or they should have been, better supported?
Speaker 2:I, I'm asked all the time, you know, claire, you know, are you jealous of what the players have now? And and I, you know, frankly, and I talked to other players from my generation, and Charlotte Edwards would be one, and she has transcended both the fully amateur and the fully professional eras, but I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, yes, I, you know, curious. I would have been curious to see what it would have been like to be a completely professional cricketer and for that to be my sole focus, and but I had 10 amazing years playing cricket for England, combining it with teaching. I learned such a lot about myself in that time and how to manage myself and my goals. And I travelled the world. I had three or four tours to India. I went to Australia, new Zealand, south Africa.
Speaker 2:I didn't ever think, oh, someone should be doing more for me, pay me or put me in that part of the plane to fly to Australia, or why am I staying Cracky? Some of the accommodation we stayed in on that first tour of India was appalling. Some of us got so sick. It was mosquito ridden, there wasn't running water sometimes. I mean it was no way fit by standards now to send an international team to, but that's part of the stories that you can tell, isn't it? And those experiences shape you and provide you with certain, certainly some resilience and bring you close to your teammates and make you feel, teach you that life doesn't always go your way. So, no, I never once thought the game or anyone should be doing more for me, but I do look at what there is available now to girls choosing sports, with whatever that might be, and I think, wow, there's never been a better time to be starting out as a young athlete.
Speaker 1:And you were captain at just 24. Yes, so what kind of leader were you?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think I was very different to how I would be now.
Speaker 2:That's my next question actually there's no doubt about that I was thrust into the role I'm not saying I didn't want it, I really did want it but at a very, very turbulent time midway through a tour. So we'd been hammered in Australia 5-0. We were quite a fragmented group and we were to go on to New Zealand and play for another three weeks and I was made captain midway through and I took the captaincy on from someone who was a legend of the women's game, karen Smithies, who'd been captain for nearly 10 years. So there'd been real consistency. She'd led England to that World Cup win in 93. So I had big shoes to fill and a big job to do, because we weren't in a great place, we weren't playing well and we didn't have any kind of harmony on or off the pitch really as a group. So it was a baptism of fire, for sure, but one which is certainly something I wanted to take on.
Speaker 2:I'd always been captain of teams. I'd captained my boys under 10 prep school team to an unbeaten season. I can remember the final game, beating St Christopher's to secure an unbeaten season. It stays with you forever. It stays with you, and I'd always captained Sussex.
Speaker 2:I captained Sussex for about a decade, I think, and so captaincy sat comfortably with me, but I was very inexperienced in kind of. I wasn't inexperienced in captaincy, but I was a young leader. I had some very strong personalities in that squad that I was the captain and, as I say, it wasn't a smooth period, but I learned a huge amount. What sort of captain was I? Certainly very hard on my sleeve. I was very open, perhaps too open at times.
Speaker 2:I got better at collaborating, I think, probably because of the situation I found myself in and because I was young and confident, I was perhaps a bit too not self-assured. Maybe I thought I had all the answers or that I needed to have, because I'd been given that responsibility, so I had to have all the answers, and of course you don't. That's what you learn about leadership, isn't it? One thing I didn't do? Enough of that I've learned. I think if it was one lesson, it would be to tolerate and respect the difference in people and not expect everyone to be like you. And as a young, confident leader, I think I thought that everyone should be like me, as in. I believe we should review the game straight after the match, even though everyone's really emotional, and if I believe that, then everyone should believe that, and if you don't believe that, then obviously you don't care as much. I can remember thinking and feeling things like that, and actually that's nonsense. As you grow, don't you? You learn about the difference in personality types and responses. You get any coaching or support?
Speaker 1:on being captain.
Speaker 2:Not really Some informal bits and pieces, nothing, no mentoring or any structured support. I've learnt that leadership is, yes, you have to be able to take a decision in the moment and obviously in sport more so than in, say, the corporate world or the world I'm in now in terms of administration, the buck does stop with you and you have to make a call on the pitch and you have to back yourself and be confident. I could have collaborated a lot more and I could have listened a lot better.
Speaker 1:It's all the leadership's principles?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and it's been a yeah. You don't know, everything can't be expected to Responsibility, having a position of responsibility doesn't equal you must know all the answers yourself. You have to find ways of seeking them out and working out who you can confide in, and understanding that everyone is different and that's part of the beauty of it all and that's what makes great teams and that conformity doesn't Well, it's diversity isn't it.
Speaker 2:It's what we know, it's what we talk about all the time that diverse teams full of diverse voices and differences are a really healthy thing.
Speaker 1:So, after a decade of playing for England and six years as a captain and winning the Ashes and so on, you chose to retire in 2005. Was that a very difficult decision for you to make at the time?
Speaker 2:It was a very, very difficult decision and I can remember sitting and crying a lot with my mum and dad as I wrestled with it. Oh, getting emotional now? Oh yeah, because you didn't feel you were. Oh no, that was it. I knew it was the right time. I knew that Charlotte Edwards was chomping at the bit.
Speaker 2:Having been my vice captain for five years or so, I knew that my body and my physical and my emotional well-being was a little precarious. You know, I'd invested a huge amount of myself into being captain of England. I had nothing really left to give and I needed an operation on my ankle that was a less relevant, probably, and that would take me out for a little while. And I was so privileged that I was able to make that decision myself. No one made it for me, because I think that's one of the saddest things when you don't have the chance to own your decision to depart from something that's been as important to you as that.
Speaker 2:And I was going out at a real high. We'd got the ashes back from Australia after 42 years and I felt I thought about it so hard and I thought the team are so ready for a new voice. But it was really difficult because all the logic I had all of that logic, but I knew that letting it go would be very difficult because of the emotional investment. On the one hand it was an easy, obvious, sensible, rational and the right time for all the logical and rational reasons. But emotionally it was just. I had to get there and had to sweat it out and cry it out a bit with friends and family. But it was 100% and I really am so lucky that I don't have any regret about that decision. The timing was right for me and the team and that's the team is the most important thing and Charlotte Edwards obviously flew as England captain, do you?
Speaker 1:think it would have been a hard decision had you been contracted players there and it had been more of a career Might. You have done another tour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, maybe, and I do feel that is all part of how this transition it's been a few years now, but I'm seeing that with our players their finance and earning a living complicates matters and is another key ingredient in your decision making. Again, I didn't have that complication or luxury, or however you want to put it. I was also very lucky and I had a very good job to go to and I had always managed to combine the teaching with playing cricket for England, and I had dabbled in some media as well and done a bit of TV and a little bit of writing. So I had some options and so I didn't have the financial pressure of it being my job and a contract that I could. Oh, I'll just try and eke out a bit longer.
Speaker 2:And I'm very sensitive to that with our players now because some of them are on one-year central contracts, some are on two-year central contracts and I'm sensitive when those renewal times come up and it's a real concern. It's now their job and their livelihood and they've got mortgages that depend upon it. So it is a very different again, a very different time. And did you ever?
Speaker 1:envisage a role in working cricket when you left playing.
Speaker 2:No, I genuinely didn't. I'd done my advanced what would now be level three coaching award. I did that in probably my mid to late 20s. So I had that and I enjoyed coaching. But the other love of my life, other than cricket, was teaching and teaching English. And so I just had quite a clear view of things that when I stopped playing cricket for England then you know my future would be in teaching and that's how I set up. You know I retired and I set about retirement from international cricket.
Speaker 2:I was back in teaching, having had a sabbatical In my last two years I was. I did have a small taste of being a full-time cricketer, so I had a sabbatical from teaching for my last two years playing for England, but anyway I didn't. I didn't see myself going into cricket administration or sports administration. I really thought my future would stay in teaching. So I'd been back in teaching for about a year and a half or two years and Hugh Morris, who was the then managing director of England cricket. I'd had a close working relationship with him as England captain and he contacted me about About a role. It wasn't anywhere anything like what my current role is now, but essentially it's evolved from there, completely out of the blue. I was just visiting friends in Lincolnshire I can remember it really clearly, and he told me about a, so Jill McConway, who was the national manager, head of women's cricket, I don't remember exact title. She was retiring and going to live back in New Zealand and they had decided to create a new role, slightly different role, with her, with her retirement, and he wanted to talk to me about it and so we talked about it and we met and it was clear that it was going to have a real focus on on Development and much more on the recreational game. And I said to Hugh, that's not where my skills Will will be. You know, I I don't think I'm cut out for that and it doesn't sort of doesn't, doesn't feel quite, quite right.
Speaker 2:Anyway, to fast forward a few weeks, they decided to create two new roles. So one was a essentially a national participation lead and one was Motte I took, which was the head of the England women's game and the talent system. So and building that from from scratch and building the kind of infrastructure around England and coaching and science and medicine and all of that provision and Working with our national cricket centre up at Loughborough and so, and I can remember coming to my job. I came with my mom and I walked down from St John's wood tube station and my interview was at 230 or whatever it was and we stopped at cafe rouge on the corner, which has gone, now replaced by the IZ cafe, and we had a croque monsieur and I sat with my mom, who decided just to come with me for the for the trip, and I said I can't do it, mom. What am I doing? I don't, I don't. I wouldn't even know where to start with a job like this. And she said you can stop that nonsense.
Speaker 2:As soon as you like you go for it and you do give you to put your best foot forward and see how you feel at the end of it. And if you don't, if they offer it to you and you don't want it, you don't have to take it. You've got a lovely job in teaching. But yeah, hugh humorous did a good job and and gosh, you know I wouldn't again.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't change a thing because it's been an amazing 10 years here and looking across those 10 years, what are the achievements that you're I mean there's so many. Is so much changes occurred? What are the achievements that you're most proud of, do you feel?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the a couple, so one would be right up there would be these getting some central contracts approved for 20 or so women for this to be there. Their sole focus and I think you know that enables you to make such a step change in performance and in working with that group of group of players and Alongside that moment was the first standalone commercial deal for women's cricket with Kia, and they've been such lovely partners, so much more than a sponsor. They've been with us every step of the way, since Central contracts for about five years ago and then with the Kia Super League. So they've they've they've been brilliant to work with and they've really they felt it has felt like a real partnership From an ECB and an ICC perspective. So, with my ICC women's chair hat on, would be the getting the ICC women's championship approved, which has enabled the top eight teams in the world to all have an equal share of international cricket, rather than it being dominated by England, australia, india or whatever, and Having a really meritocratic, equal route through to World Cup qualification. So we started that in 2013-14, ahead of the 2017 women's World Cup here and which we're now 60 or 70 percent of the way through in its second edition ahead of the 2021 World Cup in New Zealand, and I think that was a really that was a key moment for the women's game globally in terms of everyone being able to understand and and the less well-funded women's nations being able to get extra funding to be able to to develop and with that, the reason that's been so important is that, with that commitment to scheduling and Commitment that all of the boards have had to make those top eight boards have had to make has come, obviously, because of that commitment has come more Investment and more contracts for more women around the world, and I think we needed that to be able to say right, this is the route to the World Cup and If we're to make that as competitive as possible, then we need players and there's many players around the world to be full, as full-time as possible.
Speaker 2:And then I think the other big, huge, the huge big development was the Kia Super League. I can remember getting approval at the board. I can remember Rachel Hayhoe Flint, obviously, who's not with us now and her support and challenge in board meetings. It took two or three board meetings to get the Kia Super League approved and I think that's that.
Speaker 2:I'm proud of that because it's changed the game. You know it. It came up with new ways of working and counties working together For example, the Western Storm with Somerset and Gloucestershire working together, or Hampshire and Sussex with the Southern Vipers, and it it created new collaborative ways of working for a greater good. And obviously, as we know, in sports sometimes the politics of Local interests can become so Paralyzing for other things that sometimes innovation gets stifled or relationships are Are difficult because of local interests. And I think that everyone approached the Kia Super League with a really unselfish, non-perochial mindset and something really good came out of that. I think that's been a really interesting test case for cricket in how you know you can, you don't have to stick to county boundaries.
Speaker 2:You can do things differently and take the game on yeah, and that's, as you know, and that's linked, isn't it, to the fact that, essentially, cricket has been a game, a men's game in the main, set up for men, with all the structures around it have been about men's cricket and professional men's cricket, and I suppose my whole time here is about has been about finding ways to change that.
Speaker 1:How have you dealt with those challenges of being in such a male dominated sport?
Speaker 2:I think, well, yeah, it's a really good question. I think I think I had an advantage because and it shouldn't be this way, but this is how sport works, and maybe other industries you know, I had an advantage because I played at the highest level.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you if you hadn't played and had come in as a woman, would you? Well, it's hard to know really hard to know.
Speaker 2:I think you know I can only, I only know what I know and I think, being a successful England captain, you steal a march and you know you've got 20% extra respect or credibility. I don't know this, but I'm guessing I did, it felt that way anyway, and it shouldn't be that way because just because you've played and captained your, you know your country or a team at a high level doesn't make you a good cricket administrator, but it does give you, I suppose, interesting and valuable insights and experiences and and certainly I tried to put those to good use. I think you know it's not an easy. It's not easy. I think you learn a lot about yourself, like like any job, but particularly when you're trying, you know you're. I think it leads to quite a lot of analysis about your character and you know, okay, how am I gonna? You know I feel so. I might feel so angry or so emotional about something and I'm not saying that can't happen in in other environments and regardless of gender. But it's just been fascinating to to reflect on how I, how you do, handle situations. And I think one thing is certainly presenting to the board when the board used to be virtually all male and sort of presiding over a very male, male sport which thankfully, has changed beyond recognition now and is set to change even more with our strategy over the next five years and the level of investment coming into the women's and girls game from next year.
Speaker 2:But I think it's understanding, recognizing that you've got to be really well prepared. You find a way, I think, to manage the. I think sometimes showing like anything, sometimes showing some emotion is good and sometimes it isn't. I think you learn about how to let that manifest and when to try and suppress it. I think you learn when you need to be patient and when something just isn't acceptable. So there are times when you know patience and the the long game is what you're playing, and there are sometimes when no, this isn't, this isn't okay and you can't let something go. So it's working out. I suppose how militant's the wrong word, but how strong a position to take, and I suppose those are all lessons that everyone learns, in whatever field or environment you're in. But I think when you're in a world where there is such a disparity between in gender and when you are trying to really change our sport to make it more inclusive and so that every woman and girl can see herself in it. That doesn't happen overnight, and so it's working out.
Speaker 2:I suppose the pace at which you can move and influence and I was probably very slow to understand the politics of, and everywhere's got politics, hasn't it? So any advice to anyone listening would be try and understand the politics. And what can you? What have you got to accept? What can you work with? What do you try and influence? Where does it become a waste of energy? You know, I've been lucky. I don't think I've had enemies, but I've certainly had, you know, working at how to get round some opposition. What are the skills you need to call upon? And I was asked a really interesting question not long ago about you know, do you work out when to use your femininity? And that's an interesting one, because your immediate reaction to that is, well, no, I've never thought it, but we all know that whether you're male or female, you have to be charming.
Speaker 1:You've got to be different people in different places in some, to a degree, and I guess I can't be interviewed and not talk about the World Cup and that amazing win. I was fortunate enough to be here that day for that noise and it was an amazing atmosphere, wasn't it? When you went into that championship, did you feel that England could win or were likely to?
Speaker 2:Definitely not likely to. I think you always go into. You always have to have a belief that you can, I suppose, get to the final. We've gone through a lot of change. We'd only had a new captain for a year, heather Knight, after a decade of Charlotte Edwards at the helm. So we had a new captain who hadn't gone through anything like that before, that sort of profile or pressure. Our head coach had come from professional men's cricket, had only been in the women's game just over a year. We had lost some other senior players quite recently, so we were sort of in flux. If you were to define how you need to be to go into a World Cup and describe it, and how consistent or settled you need to be as a unit and with your leadership in place and at the right blend of you have to have some players who carried a few scars and you have to have some who are fearless and don't understand what that's, what the hurt can feel like from defeat, and I think we did in the end have the.
Speaker 2:I didn't know it at the time, but in the end I think it worked out that we did have the right mix. I thought it was possibly a year too soon for us for all those reasons. But Krikey we lost that first game to India and then just didn't look back and got stronger and physically and mentally we were strong and our medical team did such an amazing job. We had 15, a squad of 15 players and we only, in a really intense schedule of high pressure cricket with a lot of travel and a lot of volume of cricket, we only needed to use 13 players. So our medical team did an amazing job. Our head coach, mark Robinson, was incredible.
Speaker 2:Heather Knight proved just every game, just showed something more amazing as a young leader and you know, and obviously key players, you know, stood up at different times, whether that was Tammy Beaumont or Sarah Taylor or Catherine Bront or Anja Shropsell. Nat Siver amazing really came into her own as one of the world's best all-rounders. So you know, to go through that and to end up in front of a full house at Lord's, you know, and the ICC and Lord's had sold Lord's out before we even knew we were in the final, which to me is just shows the power of a home event and the sort of the hopes of a nation hoping that you're in that final perhaps we, you know, we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, essentially, and I think you know you asked me what am I?
Speaker 3:I didn't even mention it when you said what are you?
Speaker 2:most proud of that, without doubt. As a moment and I was able to watch the last 40 minutes or so I'd done sort of official duties and a bit of hosting and hospitality and been to Pavilion, been to the media center and been around and thanked people and seen people and I had the last 40 minutes up in the tavern stand watching with my dad and brother.
Speaker 2:So you walked to 40 minutes to a period and my best friend from university and went through every emotion and, yeah, it was incredible, it was absolutely incredible. I'd never thought I would see a day like that.
Speaker 1:I guess, moving on to the ashes this summer and not the result that anybody wanted to play at those players and the support staff team, do you see what that's been a there's a positive coming out of that in terms of you alluded to the strategy moving forward, but where the women's game is going now. Do we need to have that disappointment this summer to know what we need to invest?
Speaker 2:in. Well, I think all these are. You know, these are all such sort of speculative conversations, aren't they that we always have in sport, and you always know things with hindsight, and it's fabulous. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:And I think what it? I think it showed us a few things that are uncontestable. You know that Australia and whether their performance in that 2017 World Cup was their moment because they didn't make the final and they underperformed but certainly the these ashes, this ashes series showed us that Australia have widened the gap. Now, whether that's because some of our players and our team performance has stood still or whether we've moved at an okay pace, but they, they've flown in the last couple of years. Either way, you know something has to happen and you know, fortunately, over the last year prior to that defeat, we have been writing a new strategy to, as we're saying in our strategy called inspiring generations are. Our focus is on transforming the game for women and girls, and we've got some big, expensive and ambitious plans over the next couple of years at all levels of the game, whether it's clubs and facilities, or whether it's girls county age group pathways, local pathways or our new semi pro domestic structure and doubling the number of women on who can earn a living from the game in the next two or three years. We were writing those plans and I suppose the ashes defeat has shown that we need those plans more than ever and we need the investment and the focus that the game and the organisation is going to give to the women's game. So that's, that's the good news.
Speaker 2:The defeat was obviously a huge blow. Certain players, lots of players, will be really disappointed with their performance. So it's, you know, it's the great. It is such a great test, that multi format series, and it's brutal because you know, if you lose those first two, one day internationals and there's only three to play and then you're straight into a test match with so much riding on it and we play so little test cricket. It's a real. It is a real test for those players, for their, their character and their skills and their resilience, really.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was a disappointing, very disappointing series. Fair play to Australia for how they out outperformed us and it just gives. I suppose the good thing to come out of defeat is that it it refocuses. If which sounds that sounds bad, because it sounds like we all needed a refocus, which we were, but it just sharpens your focus. I think it it's a test for us all. It tests our resolve and it tests okay, well, what do we want to do about that and how serious are we about the plans for the next, the next phase of of the women's game.
Speaker 1:And hugely positive last week with the Commonwealth Games 2020 announcing that the women's game was so much included in the in the in Birmingham. What impact do you feel that could have on the women's game and profile?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, yeah, it potentially so even a bigger impact than winning a World Cup, I think, because the World Cup is your pinnacle event in your sport. But I think multi-sport games like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, they sort of transcend that and we see, don't we different sports getting these huge new reach or new audience, new following, and then I guess the challenge is making that endure past the games themselves. It's the first time women's cricket's ever been in a multi-sport games. Men's cricket was in the Commonwealth games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and not once since then. So it's a huge opportunity.
Speaker 2:I think cricket is the true sport of the Commonwealth when you think of the likes of India and Pakistan and South Africa, and the prominent teams as well in women's cricket align really nicely to the big Commonwealth countries and we're there on our own right, we're not an add-on to a men's tournament, and I think that gives us a really unique opportunity that women's cricket probably hasn't had before, because it'll be free-to-air television coverage in our time zone, in our country. We won't go into it necessarily as world champions, because we've got the World Cup in New Zealand just the year before it, but to be able to go into a home games and compete on a different platform, really and hopefully to lots and lots of millions, thousands, millions of new potential fans and to show girls that that's another really enticing or attractive thing about our sport, that we've got that opportunity to be part of a games aside from our normal cricket calendar. So, yeah, really excited about that.
Speaker 1:And I'm assuming you're very involved in Not making the habit but in the business side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a joint. Well, I think the main credit, if you like, must go to ICC, because they've been working with the Commonwealth Games Federation for the last probably two and a half years, and then ECB got involved, I suppose, in the last three or four months of 2018. So we then joined forces from a logistics and pulling the bid together, and that was very much led by ECB and ICC jointly with, obviously, us, and then some key folk from ICC from Dubai came over and we presented to the Birmingham 2022 panel up in Birmingham and that was a joint ECB ICC panel presenting. So it's been a really lovely project and one that we've really, really all enjoyed working on, because we had a very tight timeline.
Speaker 2:It was during the Women's T20 World Cup as well in the Caribbean at the time. So we were all involved in that and it was one of those kind of projects that I think you make a few friends for life in those situations, because you're really reliant on everyone pulling their weight A little team, and we were all on different time zones. We had the Dubai people and some of us were out in Antigua at the World Cup, and people here in the office in London, so, but we got it over the line and really, really looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:Last year you sort of ruled out interest in applying for that role within the men's game.
Speaker 2:And I think at the time Ruled it out.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, you ruled it out.
Speaker 1:I think you said that the women's game was really on the eve of something very special. I think, talking to you, we can hear all that's happening. At the time we didn't maybe know about the strategy and all that was coming there. So in the future, do you think you would wish to work across the men and female sports?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. I think I would just have to see kind of how I felt at the time. Really, I think I have given it lots of thought and I, you know, being completely, completely honest, I think my identity is very sort of tied up in this role and that's, in many ways, that's really good and in some ways maybe not so good. It means, you know, I think, taking on this new role that I've taken on since the start of this year. So my role for a period was director of England Women's Cricket and now my role is managing director of Women's Cricket. So it's a much more, a much broader role in line with the strategy and in line with our ambition to transform the game for women and girls at all levels. So I feel that certainly is sort of a new lease of life and a really new, much bigger challenge with I can't even work out the percentage increase in budget, but the board have approved £20 million to that, to this area of the strategy in the next two years with a view to, if all goes well, and with a view to that becoming £50 million over the period of the strategy, so over 2020 to 2024. So you know, I've got this huge sense of responsibility, new responsibility to make that investment pay dividends for women and girls at all levels.
Speaker 2:And I have been historically very focused on the elite end and maybe to the debt.
Speaker 2:You know, as an organisation we have kind of nailed our investment and our approach very much around England, women and the Kia Super League and building that infrastructure around high performance, and I think it would be fair criticism to say that we haven't spent as much time on the grass roots of the game and the pathway and schools and clubs.
Speaker 2:And so I've got now the opportunity to make sure that we do that and we'll be, you know, we'll be reorganising ourselves structurally in terms of people to match the investment and the strategy to do that.
Speaker 2:I suppose at the moment I feel that I've got a big, you know, a big, big new opportunity in the women's game, but which is a core. A core, you know, it's a one sixth, we've got six core pillars in the new strategy and it's one of those six. So for the moment, to answer your question, I still feel hugely committed to making the game as good as it can be and as inclusive as it can be for women and girls. If other roles appear down the line which are in men's sport, men's cricket, men's sport more widely or both then I, you know I would, I will, I'm certainly open to them. But I just think, whilst this is such a monumentally exciting time for women in sport, and particularly cricket, with this opportunity, then you know, certainly my commitment and my focus will be here for the next, certainly the next couple of years, I think.
Speaker 1:And there's sometimes an assumption. Isn't there that working in men's sport is that pinnacle for the professional in our sector? Do you feel that's the case?
Speaker 2:Definitely not. No, no, and and I've sort of, I've challenged myself a lot on this yes, it's more in the spotlight, more money attached to it, more commercial maybe, maybe commercial becoming, yeah, to, to, to work with, with bigger budgets and more profile, and to be the bigger brother. But if you challenge yourself on why you go to work and you know at the moment do, I think I could make a difference or get the fulfillment or find the same meaning in men's sport At the moment. I don't think that I could. I'm not saying that wouldn't you know that wouldn't be the case in the future, or a different role wouldn't present that.
Speaker 2:But you know, I, I think women's sport is, is where to be, is is where you can find all of that, because women's sport collectively, not just women's cricket, is on the eve of such a game changing time. And to be part of that and to to be really part of making sport more visible, more accessible for 51% of our population who previously have never seen themselves as having that opportunity or right or access, I think that we need to flip that debate. I wholeheartedly disagree with that, that, that mentality that it's somehow better to be working in men's sport. Surely it's better to be working where you feel. Where can I make the most difference? And and try and make the most impact and take something forward? And at the moment that's in women's sport.
Speaker 1:What an extraordinary woman. I'm so grateful for Claire's honesty in sharing her thoughts with me. You can just feel her passion for transforming women's sport. Please let me know what you think about the game changers podcast. You can leave a review and give us a rating on Apple podcasts or message me on social media at Sue and Stis. If you can spread the word about the game changers podcast across your own networks too, that would be brilliant, and why not encourage your family, colleagues and friends to listen? To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes? Please subscribe to the game changers and you can find out more about all my guests from series one and two at promoteprcom Game changes Last week.
Speaker 1:I'm talking to Anna Kessel MBE from the Telegraph, the first ever women's sports editor at a national newspaper, the co-founder of women in football and the author of one of my all time favourite books, eat Sweat Play. Anna talks openly about the sexism faced by females working in sport, why the profile of female sport matters so much for women and men, and how things are changing for the better.
Speaker 3:I just think if you grow up as a girl, it's almost like there's a room in your house where you're not allowed to go in. That's how I see sport in life, and I think we cannot live a whole and complete life, we cannot really play a full role in society as long as that's the case.