CricEd

  Sometimes late in 2021, Helmien Rambaldo, a player and coach from Netherlands sent out a tweet to initiate a survey to figure out a need for a female coaching network in Europe. Both I and Bijeyata filled that survey and played our part in the starting of the network which was established in August 2022. For this cohort of female coaches in Eurpore, Esther De Lange, ICC Europe development officer organized five webinars between November 2022 and March 2023 for this group. Through these webinars and the group of coaches, I learnt a lot about coaching including several online resources about women cricket and one of them was a Facebook group called as Talkin' About Women's Cricket . On that group I came across Jenny Thompson and Her world cricket tour . Jenny Thompson is a former assistant editor of ESPNCricinfo and she was planning a 50-plus country tour to play and write about women's cricket. In March, I sent her a one-line message “I would like to host you in Oslo”. S

  In the current scoring system of Norway cricket, Cricclubs , the oldest women series that is recorded is from 2016. From talking to players from that time, I learnt that girls have played cricket in Norway since 2013 and a national team was first established in 2014 however that time the international games for Norway did not have a T20I status. After 2016, the two out of the three teams from that time, Veitvet and Friends, discontinued. Falken girls stayed on, however had no opposition to play against in 2017 and 2018. Late in 2018, Vestli cricket club started with a women team who played a few friendlies against Falken girls in the winter. This is when I started playing cricket in Norway as a part of the emerging Vestli lady leopards. During that time, with the help of Coach Joshua Young, Gry tried to # restart the national women team and by then Norway has also received a T20I status. In the summer of 2019, a squad of 12 travelled to France with Josh and newly hired head coach

  The journey so far with the boys ( read here ) has been extremely satisfactory but a corner of the coaching kitbag (read as heart) felt empty to both me and Bijeyata. When we started coaching the boys, deep-down we wanted to use the platform to facilitate young girls into playing cricket. In Norway, only a handful of young girls play cricket with no organized youth cricket activities for the girls. We wanted to change this. Occasionally, girls came to our training sessions, but they never continued despite a decent effort from our side as well as the boys.  It became apparent to us that girls need their own space to grow into this sport and it may be possible to have mixed gender teams only once the girls have found their feet. At the same time, we were asked by a few clubs to help them with their girls’ team as they felt they need women coaches to start girls team. But we were not sure if women coaches are a necessity to build girls’ teams. I did have a few chats with Gry Bruaas, NC