ECB eager to end club-versus-country dilemmas with new FTP in the pipeline
Valkerie Baynes03-Sep-2024England players will miss the latter stages of the WBBL, due to a clash with their tour of South Africa.To avoid a repetition of the situation which occurred earlier this year, when the end of the WPL overlapped with England Women’s arrival in New Zealand for a bilateral series, causing players to have to choose between club and country, the ECB has told players that they are expected in South Africa, if selected, on certain dates regardless of any overlap with WBBL games.The ECB informed players and their agents of the requirements before they entered the WBBL draft, which was held last weekend.”If a player is selected in the T20 squad, we’re expecting them into South Africa on November 17 and if they’re named in the ODI squad we’re expecting them into South Africa on the 27th,” Jonathan Finch, Director of England Women’s Cricket, told ESPNcricinfo. “That’s been reflected in everyone’s availability when they’ve gone into the draft.”This year’s WBBL starts on October 27 and there will be 11 regular-season matches remaining out of a total of 40 from November 17 before the knockout stages. England are due to play the first of three T20Is in South Africa on November 24, followed by three ODIs from December 4 and a Test starting on December 15.England had seven players signed in the WBBL draft, with Danni Wyatt-Hodge joining Hobart Hurricanes, Sophie Ecclestone retained by Sydney Sixers, and Heather Knight retained by Sydney Thunder, all at platinum level, worth up to $A110,000 (£56,000) depending on availability.Alice Capsey will join Melbourne Renegades from cross-town rivals Stars and Amy Jones returns to Perth Scorchers, both on gold $A90,000 (£46,000) deals. Hollie Armitage and Georgia Adams, who will both tour Ireland from this week while England’s senior squad prepares for next month’s T20 World Cup, joined the Sixers and Thunder respectively in the bronze price bracket for $A40,000 (£20,000).Sophie Ecclestone has been retained by Sydney Sixers for this year’s WBBL•Cricket Australia via Getty Images
The ECB took similar stance during last year’s WBBL with Bess Heath and Danielle Gibson both missing the final to join England’s squad in Mumbai for a T20I series against India starting four days later.The WPL announced their 2024 fixtures in January with the March 17 final falling two days before England’s first of five T20Is in New Zealand on March 19. New Zealand Cricket had confirmed the tour schedule, which also included three ODIs, the previous July and turned down an ECB request to move the dates.Knight, England’s captain, and seam bowler Lauren Bell opted out of their WPL deals to join the New Zealand tour from the outset, while Nat Sciver-Brunt, Wyatt-Hodge, Capsey and Ecclestone linked up with the squad for the fourth and fifth T20Is. Armitage, meanwhile, earned her only England cap to date in the third T20I before she and Linsey Smith made way for the WPL contingent.With the current Women’s Future Tours Program ending in 2025 and the next edition being worked on now, Finch is confident major clashes can be avoided in future.”What we have to get better at is having indicative dates when the tournaments are taking place,” he said. “That’s difficult because you’ve got broadcast complexities and all that kind of thing, but I think if we can get that pretty much nailed on, we shouldn’t have that problem.”I’ve got a responsibility to England and we think that’s fair – five or seven days out from a start of a tour – to come in, really focus in on what we’re trying to do from that tour and go from there.”Now where we’re looking at our FTP for after the next 50-over World Cup and I think everyone is sensitive to not wanting to have any clashes. Even if we don’t have the exact dates of the WBBL for instance, or the WPL, we have some indication of when they are so we can work out what that looks like.”Related
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A problem national boards have faced is that the WPL in particular offers leading players a chance to make life-changing amounts of money for the first time in their careers. Sciver-Brunt was the joint-highest-earning overseas player in the inaugural WPL player auction when she went to Mumbai Indians for £320,000.Finch conceded that denying a player the chance to earn that sort of salary, especially later in their careers, was difficult. As a result, there would be some scope for discussion with players on an individual basis, and he said bringing England Women’s international match fees into line with those of their male counterparts also went some way towards easing the tension.”You know when you sign a central contract that you’re signing a contract that says, ‘my main focus is England,’ so that’s the starting point,” he said. “It’s not an exact science, things change – workloads over a period of time – as to whether we would want to have players exposed to that depending on what the lead-up looks like, but when you sign a central contract, that’s what you’re buying into.”I think we’re still in a space where we can manipulate or cultivate times of the year where it’s not going to have a massive impact.”The ECB is also in talks with the England Women’s Player Partnership, which has a number of current players on its committee, about introducing multi-year central contracts, which Finch said would give some players a greater level of security while protecting the ECB’s resources.”You’ve got a welfare perspective for players so the thing that was sticking out for the New Zealand one was I wasn’t willing for a player to get on a plane at the end of their competition, fly in and play within 24 hours,” he said.”People might say, ‘that’s not your choice to make.’ Well, I think it is. We’ve got a responsibility to ensure that we’re not asking too much of them and that’s why we put that period of time leading into a series. Not only does it give you time to get the players up and running for that series, it also allows you to build in a bit of decompression time if you need to. That’s something that I’m quite strong on.”The panacea will be that our players are available without worrying about whether they’re available for the whole tournament or not. I’m never going to take that [case-by-case discussion] away but we’re hopeful that we won’t get to that point.”