Kit Harris investigates how the county game lost over 100 female players.
The ECB’s much-heralded restructure of the women’s game – introducing a fully professional top division, featuring players on proper county contracts – was implemented for the 2025 season. The aim was to improve the competitiveness and standard of women’s cricket, and the first move was to reorganise the teams.
The diagram shows how this was done. The eight existing top-flight sides, operated regionally by the ECB (and designated here as Category A), became Tier 1. These teams are now run by their corresponding counties, who had previously run amateur sides (Category B). The other ten first-class counties (Category C) became Tier 2, still with amateur players. The minor counties, which in 2024 were on level terms with the first-class teams, were told they would have an opportunity to bid for Tier 2 status. This was later denied to them.
The transition of teams from 2024 to 2025 looks straightforward enough. Yet a player-by-player analysis shows that, for an individual cricketer, the transition was anything but. Far from growing the game, the restructure appears to have shrunk it.
Category A in 2024 (Tier 1 in 2025)
Central Sparks (now Warwickshire), Northern Diamonds (now Durham), South East Stars (now Surrey), Southern Vipers (now Hampshire), Sunrisers (now Essex), The Blaze (now run by Nottinghamshire), Thunder (now Lancashire), Western Storm (now Somerset)
Playing in the 2024 Charlotte Edwards Cup or Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy offered a player rock-solid job security. Of the 163 domestic Category A players that year, only 14 were absent from Tier 1 in 2025. Nine had gone to Yorkshire, temporarily in Tier 2, but set to come straight back up in 2026. So the top flight only really lost five: Chloe Hill went to Worcestershire (where she was made captain), Bethan Gammon went to Glamorgan (but had played for Wales since 2015, and had essentially only been borrowed by The Blaze, because she worked for them), and three were released.
There was also remarkable continuity of team rosters. Of the 162 players who appeared in Tier 1 in 2025, 12 were official overseas signings. Of the 150 domestic players, just 22 changed teams between 2024 and 2025 – all switching from one top-flight team to another. Nobody who played in professional cricketin the 2025 season was brought in from a Category B or Category C team. At the highest level, women’s cricket was the ultimate in closed shops.
Category B in 2024
Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire
Players from these sides found themselves in an invidious position. The eight new Tier 1 teams claimed the Category B teams’ names, and the ten Category C teams became Tier 2. The Category B teams, stuck in the middle, simply ceased to exist.
Their players had three options, as shown on the diagram. Path 1, the most lucrative, was to sign a professional contract with a Tier 1 team. Not a single player managed to follow this path (though a few clung on as Academy players). Path 2, which at least meant continuing to play for a first-class county, was to sign a semi-professional contract (i.e. expenses only) with a team in Tier 2. But these already had squads of their own; only 31 players managed to follow this path. That left 86 without a home: 25 went down to the minor counties in Tier 3, while 61 stopped playing county cricket altogether. Hampshire fielded 21 non-Category A players in 2024, and none was signed for 2025.
If, in 2024, you played for a Category B team, but had not also appeared in Category A:
Your chances of staying with that team were 12%.
Your chances of switching to a Tier 2 semi-professional team were 23%.
Your chances of switching to a Tier 3 (minor counties) team were 19%.
Your chances of leaving the county game altogether were 46%.
Category C in 2024 (Tier 2 in 2025)
Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Sussex, Worcestershire, Yorkshire, Wales (now Glamorgan)
Despite being lower in the food chain, these ten sides did almost no recruitment of brand-new players. During 2025, just ten Tier 2 players made county cricket debuts (Yorkshire accounting for four). A further 22 came up from among the minor counties in Tier 3. Considerably more – 48 – came on loan from Tier 1 teams. Glamorgan received no fewer than 12. They are scheduled for promotion to fully professional status in 2027; will they still be borrowing a third of their team? Kent, having left out 16 of their 2024 players, were loaned six, and brought in eight others. Derbyshire, though, got by with only one loan signing.
Yorkshire set aside 14 of their 2024 squad, nearly as many as Kent – but then, Yorkshire had to plan for promotion to the top flight in 2026, and brought in eight ex-Category A players from Northern Diamonds and Central Sparks. Leicestershire also did without 14 of their 2024 contingent. Gloucestershire jettisoned just two; only one side kept more, Sussex retaining 16. Northamptonshire retained the fewest (six). Worcestershire, true to form, sat in Warwickshire’s shadow: three players they had developed for years signed professionally for Warwickshire, and only returned to Worcester on loan.
If, in 2024, you played for a Category C team:
Your chances of staying with that team were 54%.
Your chances of switching to a different Tier 2 (semi-professional team) were 2%.
Your chances of switching to a Tier 3 (minor counties) team were 7%.
Your chances of leaving the county game altogether were 37%.
Across all the 18 first-class counties, 139 women who featured in 2024 did not play in 2025. And yet only 32 came in (ten debutants, and 22 from the Tier 3 minor counties, as described above). The net loss, then, from Categories A, B and C, was 107 players.
The aim of improving the competitiveness and standard of women’s cricket is honourable. Whether, at the highest level, that has happened yet is debatable.
Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, said: “The act of transitioning the eight existing women’s regional teams into eight women’s professional clubs, each owned and operated by professional county clubs, is not a one-year job.
“Alongside the expansion of the women’s domestic competition structure and a significant uplift in funding, this is a long-term project that will see more professional women’s cricketers than ever before, and more professional women’s teams than ever before.”
It’s true that, in 2025, the players had more time to focus on practice and preparation. On the other hand, they faced no increase in pressure on their places, because the reorganisation allowed over 100 players to be lost from the system – and not from the bottom of the ladder, but from the middle. Make no bones about it: this was a colossal talent drain. It remains to be seen whether, as the ECB hope, this will be merely temporary.
Kit Harris is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
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