CAPE TOWN: Australia head coach Shelly Nitschke had a smile on her face. She had been just asked to share her thoughts on being the only female head coach in the ongoing 2023 T20 World Cup in South Africa. “I hadn't actually thought about it until then,” Nitschke said. In fact, ask most women coaches who have worked at the international level, and their first reaction and answer are likely to be on similar lines. However, it is hard to look past what the numbers say.
If Nitschke was the only female head coach in the ongoing tournament, during the 2022 ODI World Cup, Lisa Keightley was the only one when she was in charge of England women. The last time Australia had a female head coach before Nitschke was when Cathryn Fitzpatrick resigned in 2015. For England, Jane Powell was the acting head coach in 2001 — she is the first woman to progress onto the ECB Level 4 course — before Keightley. India last had a female head coach when Purnima Rau was at the helm in 2017.
The scene in the T20 and franchise-based leagues isn’t great either. At the moment, the Women’s Big Bash League has three female head coaches, The Hundred has two and so does the inaugural edition of the Women’s Premier League. At a time when women’s cricket is breaking ground in every aspect of the sport, it seems like an area that needs to be explored.
If one digs deep, there are a few questions that keep coming up. Has it been the same for a long time? Is there more competition now with professionalisation kicking in? What are the challenges they face once they take up coaching? What kind of systemic support could be provided to make things better? When these questions are put forward in front of several female coaches in the system often the first sentence they say is — you need the best person for the job irrespective of male or female. But once you go past the most obvious thing, the perspectives are fascinating, to say the least.
Former Australian cricketer Joanne Broadbent, who has been involved in coaching for close to two decades, remembers how things were when she took the coaching courses. “I was pretty much the only woman when I was going to a lot of these things,” she laughs. “It's quite daunting when you're in a room full of men and you're the only female, but I think when you're really passionate about what you do, you'll be able to get to places regardless of whether you're uncomfortable in some situations,” said Broadbent who has coached several domestic teams in Australia and New Zealand.
Until the last decade, elite female cricketers were working multiple jobs to make ends meet even when they were representing their countries. In some nations, they still do. For coaches, especially those who entered the profession when Broadbent did, the financial incentive was even less. Over the years, with contracts coming in for the players, the attention seems to be slowly shifting toward the coaches.
Another Australian, Erin Osborne, who is Cricket ACT's Male Pathway Manager, says that financial stability is key in bringing in more female coaches into the system.
“It's definitely an area that needs addressing. I think there're opportunities to actually coach, there's education as well as professional development, so what can we do for our coaches to upskill them? It's looking outside the square, it's not always you're a female coach, you have to work in the female pathway and vice versa for the male coaches,” says Osborne who was the head coach of Australia women in the U19 World Cup.
Once the coaches are brought into the system, the next step is providing them with opportunities. And they do not come easy. From an Indian context, there are several other factors that come into play. Whether they have played at the highest level, do they have the necessary experience in coaching and more? With the number of state associations in India, it only becomes a bit more complex.
“All this development or the number of matches in women's cricket has happened in the last ten years. Those who have played the game, who have retired and have taken up coaching haven't had the opportunity to coach teams at various competitive levels. There were very limited teams. If you see, there are few states which insist that there can only be women in your support staff for women's teams. Not every state has that rule,” says former Tamil Nadu cricketer and coach Aarti Sankaran.
What happens in such situations is that the female coaches often have to work under someone else with more experience, which in the larger scheme of things does not add much to their resume. With all the limitations, they often seem to prefer a more lucrative profession like media or mentoring, or management. What could be done to keep the coaches in the system? Former Indian cricketer Anju Jain feels that a pathway system, similar to the pilot program Cricket Australia started in 2020, needs to be set up from the grassroots.
“It's not only about the coaching. It's all in the management as well as in the administration. Yes, it's picking up, but to bring it up to this level, we have to start something from the state levels and the district levels. I look and the designated people, qualified people, and good administrators are there. Along with some qualified coaches, they can bring out a pathway because that's what's missing,” said Jain who is a former head coach of Bangladesh women.
While things are not where one would like them to be, former Indian skipper Mamatha Maben feels that the sport is heading in the right direction and the change is happening. She said that the National Cricket Academy is working towards creating a larger pool of female coaches.
“It is looking better than what it was three years back. They have conducted a lot of courses in bulk, they are making an effort to have more women in the system. They have made up their minds that in the next five years, they want to really ramp up the women’s game, which means, the game is going to grow and you need the coaches, right? With that in mind, they are going to groom at all levels,” says Maben.
All five of them, including Nitschke, believe that the opportunities female coaches are getting in franchise-based tournaments like WBBL, WPL, The Hundred, Fairbreak, etc. will help them grow in confidence. While the WPL has only two female head coaches, every team has several former women cricketers as support staff in different capacities.
“I think the time is coming. We are having that kind of quality around now, where even the women coaches now have got a lot of exposure, quite a few are with the WPL. In the near future, even at the highest level, I see women getting drafted in,” Maben said.
There is a T20 World Cup to be played next year, an ODI World Cup in 2025 followed by another T20 World Cup and a T20 Champions Trophy. With several global events to play for, the onus is now on the respective boards to do all that they need to ensure more female coaches are able to come up the ranks. Even if they are partially successful at it, by the time the ongoing Women’s FTP cycle comes to an end, Nitschke will not be the only head coach at a World Cup.