{"id":232764,"date":"2026-03-11T20:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T20:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/11\/a-historic-day-at-hundred-auction-but-barely-any-women-were-there-to-see-it\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T20:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T20:09:12","slug":"a-historic-day-at-hundred-auction-but-barely-any-women-were-there-to-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/11\/a-historic-day-at-hundred-auction-but-barely-any-women-were-there-to-see-it\/","title":{"rendered":"A historic day at Hundred auction but barely any women were there to see it"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

I<\/span>t\u2019s Piccadilly Circus. It\u2019s candy pink and dayglow green. It\u2019s 19\u2011year\u2011old Davina Perrin being bought by the Birmingham Phoenix for \u00a350,000 a couple of years after she has graduated from Ebony Rainford Brent\u2019s ACE programme<\/a>. It\u2019s the former Leicestershire fast bowler Charles Dagnall in skinny jeans with an iPad and an interactive screen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Hero Players. It\u2019s Vitality Wild Cards. It\u2019s Sophie Devine and Beth Mooney being signed for \u00a3210,000, which is more than the entire women\u2019s squad earned between them when the Hundred launched in 2021. It\u2019s English cricket\u2019s first player auction.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

It\u2019s that Richard Madley off Bargain Hunt with a gavel and a silk handkerchief in his top pocket, it\u2019s a grand total of 2,667 people watching a YouTube live stream. It\u2019s the teams\u2019 in\u2011house content creators filming TikTok interviews with their bosses in a \u201cbrand performance space\u201d at the centre of a part of London no Londoners go to unless they absolutely have to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the bright, brilliant, inclusive future of English cricket. And it\u2019s a room full of men sitting around weighing the relative merits of young women so they can bid against each other for their services in a competitive auction.<\/p>\n

Wait. Is that last one right?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, yes. It was a historic day for female cricket players. England\u2019s Dani Gibson has become one of the best-paid sportswomen in the country after being brought for \u00a3190,000. But it wasn\u2019t a historic day for female cricket coaches, analysts, administrators or franchise owners, who were mostly missing from the scene.<\/p>\n

Among the 60-odd people in the room, a dozen of them were women and two of the team\u2019s tables were entirely male. Whichever way you cut it, it was an odd look on the first day of the new era of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really disappointing seeing one female senior coach in this competition,\u201d said that one female senior coach, MI London\u2019s Lisa Keightley. \u201cI hope that changes over time. There\u2019s some really good female coaches that will be disappointed not to be involved. But I will keep flying the flag.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have another female coach coming in as assistant. I would hope that once we get to the competition to see more females involved in those sorts of roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a couple. Anya Shrubsole is working with the Southern Brave. \u201cI really hope it will change,\u201d she said. \u201cSimilarly to the playing side of things it will probably take some time for those coaches to come through. It is a chicken\u2011and\u2011egg situation. I wouldn\u2019t want to be there if someone didn\u2019t think I was good enough, but I was there just because I was a woman. But, equally, in order to be good enough you have to be given an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Anya Shrubsole (centre) is part of the Southern Brave coaching setup. <\/span> Photograph: John Phillips\/ECB\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMe and Anya, we love what we are doing,\u201d says Sarah Taylor, who is working with the Manchester Super Giants. \u201cBut naturally we would like to see more people doing it, too. I\u2019d like to think it will change. The more girls that are playing in the professional game, that are privy to these environments, then the more girls will have the knowledge for them to want to come back and coach or be part of the set-up in another role. I hope more people will go in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way. The Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup held in Britain last year was led by an entirely female executive team, who organised a final that featured an entirely female refereeing team and an entirely female groundstaff. But a loss of control over things such as this is part of what English cricket paid in return for all the money it has made by allowing private investors to take control of the teams. It was conspicuous, too, that neither of the Pakistani players in the auction were bought.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

One of them, Sadia Iqbal, is No 1 in the world international T20 bowling rankings and the other, Fatima Sana, was the top scorer in a series against South Africa. There are reasons. A lot of the 32 spaces available to overseas players filled up before the auction and neither Sana nor Iqbal has played in the Hundred before.<\/p>\n

But after all the controversy about the shadow ban on Pakistani players<\/a> by the Hundred\u2019s Indian team owners, and given the importance of the British-Pakistani population in English cricket, it was hard to avoid feeling the tension between what English cricket has earned from private investment and what it has sold.<\/p>\n

The prices will be higher on Thursday, when it is the men\u2019s turn. Given there are 14 Pakistani players involved, and six in the heroes list of the top 50 players, the stakes will be higher too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Piccadilly Circus. It\u2019s candy pink and dayglow green. It\u2019s 19\u2011year\u2011old Davina Perrin being bought by the Birmingham Phoenix for \u00a350,000 a couple of years after she has graduated from Ebony Rainford Brent\u2019s ACE programme. It\u2019s the former Leicestershire fast bowler Charles Dagnall in skinny jeans with an iPad and an interactive screen. It\u2019s Hero […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-232764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}