South Asian Cricket Academy will launch its inaugural ladies’s programme for the 2026 season.
The brand new scheme is in search of between six and 10 non-professionally contracted British south Asian ladies aged over 18 for the fully-funded high-performance elite programme, which can run over the following 12 months.
The pilot programme has been arrange with assist from Take Her Lead, the registered charity based by former England worldwide and broadcaster Isa Guha.
The charity is devoted to advancing equality and variety in cricket and growing participation for ladies and ladies.
Since its institution in 2022, SACA has helped 18 male gamers of a south Asian background safe skilled with county golf equipment.
Within the time because it was based, the proportion {of professional} gamers of a south Asian background within the county sport has elevated from 4 to 13%, whereas the variety of academy gamers has expanded from 18 to 26%.
SACA analysis states there are at present 5 skilled south Asian ladies’s gamers at counties (3.3% of all gamers), with an extra 5 (7.1%) of their academies.
“Having labored within the ladies’s sport as a scout and coach for the previous six years I’ve seen first-hand how the sport has grown,” mentioned Tom Brown, the founder and supervisor director of SACA.
“We’re excited that SACA will tackle a number one position in serving to to develop proficient younger British Asian feminine cricketers and serving to them obtain their ambitions to interrupt into the skilled sport.
“We’re assured that we will in a short time begin to emulate the success our males’s programme has delivered for therefore many proficient cricketers.”
Guha will chair an advisory group of consultants skilled in high-performance environments and with a south Asian perspective, which incorporates England selector Lydia Greenway and former gamers Abtaha Maqsood and Sonia Odedra.
“The inaugural SACA ladies’s programme will present a much-needed focus for south Asian ladies in cricket,” mentioned Guha.
“Our position is to make sure the surroundings created makes these ladies really feel like they belong in cricket, taking their background and gender into consideration.
“Our fabulous group of advisors and consultants will assist their improvement, whereas additionally making certain this programme is constructed for fulfillment.”
