The Scotland women’s cricket team, recently celebrated as the nation’s team of the year in 2024, finds itself grappling with significant challenges as it seeks to establish a stronger presence in the sport. The squad achieved new heights with an impressive debut in the Women’s World Cup earlier this year. They have gone without a home match since 2022 and are enduring crippling financial hardships. Worse still, a non-existent Future Tours Programme is legally required. This programme usually affords a very collaborative, single-focused platform for Full Member countries.
Cricket Scotland admits that it has never made a profit on hosting international series. The only exception was a one-off match against the England men’s team in 2018. In order to host a series, Cricket Scotland has to spend £75-100,000 but the return is hardly worth it. The whole operation is funded to the tune of some £1.3 million per season by the International Cricket Council (ICC). This funding is rarely enough for all of its programs.
Steve Snell, Director of Performance at Cricket Scotland, expressed his concern. He pointed to the nonexistent budget of the women’s program. He stated, “From a funding perspective, cricket costs so much to run. Our resources are extremely sparse – we’re almost running on fumes to try and have our women’s programme exist.” This lack of resources has a direct link to the team’s difficulty in being able to schedule matches/tournaments.
This is especially true for players such as wicketkeeper Sarah Bryce and bowler Abtaha Maqsood. Bryce only scratched the surface on the challenges his young team endured because of often last-minute accommodations made to host qualifying tournaments. “It’s okay if it happens once every now and again, but when that’s every tour, it’s so challenging,” she remarked. “Different people’s workplaces are like: ‘You need to give us more notice.’”
Maqsood echoed these feelings, calling on more financial backing to prevent the team from being disbanded. “We feel pretty helpless. There’s not really much we can do about the situation if we don’t get the financial support that I think we deserve at this point,” she said.
Even though these were disappointing blows, the appetite to play against Scotland’s women is increasing. As Snell pointed out, when they’re that good, teams want to beat them, but financial realities prevent that. “Teams are wanting to play us now, which is really exciting, but we’re not able,” Bryce noted.
Additionally, Snell voiced his displeasure at the consistently late notice with which information was provided for new tournaments in the pipeline. They aren’t terrible, but we are receiving three weeks out—or even worse—very last-minute information about tournaments. And when we’ve got short-term dollars, it just makes planning so challenging,” he said. And in fact, just four weeks before that Women’s World Cup Qualifier in Pakistan, the team remained uncertain of their participation. They were given almost no information about the event.
The gap in funding between Full Member countries and associate nations is an issue that exacerbates the situation. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) receives over £30 million from the ICC and benefits from lucrative broadcast rights for series matches. By contrast, the women’s Scotland cricket team has difficulty gaining enough funding.
Maqsood called on Full Member countries to better support associate members. She stated, “These Full Member nations need to help out the associate members a little bit more and try their best to host us whenever they can because it’s clearly not really coming from the ICC.”
The ECB believes in investing in the future of Women’s cricket at all levels. It puts the scheduling of series with Full Members above all else to meet its responsibilities to the ICC’s Future Tours Programme.
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