Former Australia Women’s Cricket Team Captain Belinda Clark is calling for more investment into women’s cricket. Clarke’s comments were made during a Cricket webinar series held on Wednesday along with Arijana Demirovic, head of FIFA’s Women’s Football Development.
The duo’s discussions centered on the infrastructure and environment needed to encourage women in sports especially after the successes of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 in France and the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia.
The one-hour conversation was moderated by cricket commentator Mel Jones. Clark, the first female cricketer to score a double-century in ODIs, said it was important to continue the good work.
“The biggest challenge is protecting the progress that we have made and not taking it for granted that the next steps will just flow without a similar amount of effort and attention,” said the Australian.
Her comments came a few days after the ICC had announced that the 2020 edition of the Women’s T20 World Cup was the most-watched ICC Women’s T20 event in history.
It is assumed that with the women’s game attracting more views, more finance for
development and other initiatives should follow. Clark underscored the need for more financial support even as the world is experiencing a pandemic.
“Whilst financial belts are being tightened across the world with what we are experiencing at the moment, it is easy to include inclusion as a concept, females playing sports is part of that, but it is really easy for us to go backwards,” she said.
“I think it will be really important that we protect our investment, that we stay on the path, that we don’t become a ‘nice to have’. It is critical that it is a ‘must-have’ and it is demonstrated that when you do it over a period of time, you do see results,” she added.
Meanwhile, Jones, who is also a former Australian cricketer, said that it was fascinating to follow the progress of women’s cricket. Like Clark, she argued that is it now critical to sustain the momentum needed to develop the sport and suggested the need to continue pushing new boundaries so that women’s cricket will continue to grow across the world.
