As the cur­tain on the 2024 lo­cal crick­et sea­son (men and women) draws to a close, one of the un­in­tend­ed strate­gic de­vel­op­ments that has emerged is the crit­i­cal role that men's crick­et clubs can play in de­vel­op­ing women's crick­et in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Cen­tral Sports, Pow­er­Gen Sports Club, and Vic­to­ria Crick­et Club all in­vest­ed in women's teams in the 2024 Trinidad and To­ba­go Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (TTWCA) 30/50 overs and T20 com­pe­ti­tions. Pow­er­Gen Sports Club merged with Phoenix Women's Crick­et Club, which ran away with the Pre­mier­ship 50 overs ti­tle, while Cen­tral Sports and Vic­to­ria Crick­et Club de­buted in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion (30 overs), fin­ish­ing third and fourth re­spec­tive­ly. All the teams are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in their re­spec­tive T20 com­pe­ti­tions.

The in­ter­na­tion­al growth of women's crick­et is oc­cur­ring rapid­ly with in­creas­es in the amount of crick­et, fi­nan­cial re­turns vis a vis the past and greater me­dia at­ten­tion to men­tion a few. Surf­ing soar­ing wave of change, re­quires cre­ative strate­gies and im­ple­mentable ac­tion plans to fa­cil­i­tate op­por­tu­ni­ties for women and girls to play, dis­play their tal­ent and skills, and vie for se­lec­tion to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go, the West In­dies, and cap­ture the at­ten­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise scouts.

While the women's game was in­her­ent in the re­cent CARI­COM/Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) dis­cus­sion on rein­vig­o­rat­ing West In­dies crick­et, there was no spe­cif­ic dis­cus­sion on women's crick­et. How­ev­er, the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et an­nounced that CWI will launch a re­gion­al Un­der-16 tour­na­ment in 2026. This tour­na­ment will com­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing re­gion­al U-19 and Se­nior Tour­na­ments. In hind­sight, a pan­el ad­dress­ing the women's game's is­sues and chal­lenges may have yield­ed valu­able, unique de­vel­op­men­tal in­sights. Ip­so fac­to, the de­riv­a­tive of con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions on de­vel­op­ing women's crick­et, will be use­ful con­tri­bu­tions to the ex­tant sug­ges­tions emerg­ing from the CARI­COM/CWI con­fer­ence.

Men's clubs merg­ing or es­tab­lish­ing women's teams of­fer sev­er­al ad­van­tages:

· Ac­cess to fa­cil­i­ties for train­ing and play­ing match­es.

· Util­is­ing the club's hu­man re­sources for gen­er­al coach­ing and spe­cif­ic skills such as bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing, and strate­gis­ing.

· Play­ing prac­tice match­es against male (age group) teams with­in or be­tween clubs to de­vel­op skills.

· Ac­quir­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port, as left on their own, women's teams will be com­pet­ing for the same re­sources (pri­mar­i­ly fi­nan­cial) as men. Giv­en the cur­rent sport cul­ture, the women's team will be dis­ad­van­taged. One of the ben­e­fits that ac­crued to the women's game in Eng­land when the ECB took over the Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion was "the in­ter­na­tion­al side ben­e­fit from Lot­tery fund­ing, in­creased spon­sor­ship and per­son­alised coach­ing."

· Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ap­proach­ing spon­sors pro­mot­ing men's and women's crick­et may have a stronger ap­peal to cor­po­rate spon­sors who may have as part of their core val­ue for cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty the pro­mo­tion of Eq­ui­ty, Di­ver­si­ty, and In­clu­sion (EDI).

· The clubs can al­so pro­mote them­selves as an or­gan­i­sa­tion that sup­ports EDI on and off the field.

· There will be greater vis­i­bil­i­ty for women’s crick­et and the clubs in gen­er­al.

· Friend­ly brag­ging rights can oc­cur when play­ers are se­lect­ed to na­tion­al age groups, se­nior, West In­dies, or fran­chise teams.

The sug­ges­tion above will take time, al­though what has tak­en place in 2024 is en­cour­ag­ing. For this rec­om­men­da­tion to work, there must be sus­tain­able gov­er­nance com­mit­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will re­quire cul­tur­al change/ad­just­ment among ad­min­is­tra­tors, tech­ni­cal staff, and all play­ers. How­ev­er, enough pro­fes­sion­al re­sources (The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies) are avail­able to clubs to cre­ate a safe and com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment for male and fe­male play­ers to play, hone and ex­press their skills.

The merg­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Crick­et Coun­cil (IW­CC0 in 2005 meant that the ICC (male-dom­i­nat­ed) be­came re­spon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the women's game. Nine­teen years on, the changes have been ev­i­dent. It re­in­forces the salient point that males are gate­keep­ers to gen­der equal­i­ty, and in sports where they have his­tor­i­cal­ly oc­cu­pied the por­tals of pow­er, they are cru­cial to change [Con­nell, 2003].

As Mal­colm Glad­well has said, do­ing the same thing in dif­fer­ent ways is ben­e­fi­cial as it al­lows for draw­ing up­on ex­ist­ing strengths. As the TTWCA launch­es its U-16 De­vel­op­ment Acad­e­my in 2024, to en­sure the readi­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the 2026 re­gion­al U-16 tour­na­ment, it will be sig­nif­i­cant if oth­er male clubs fol­low the path of Cen­tral Sports, Pow­er­Gen Sports Club and Vic­to­ria Crick­et Club and in­vest in the present and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of fe­male crick­et.