WORLD CUP LEGACY: EAST MIDLANDS
With two World Cup venues and 15 matches, the region is primed to make the most of a once in a generation celebration of cricket.
The Women’ s World Cup presents a fantastic opportunity to harness the potential of Cricket Unleashed’ s central themes – More Play, Great Teams and Inspired Fans.
Since February, the regional team in the East Midlands has been formulating plans to harness the legacy opportunities presented by the tournament. Bristol, Taunton and Lord’ s have been developing their plans as hosts.
Derbyshire and Leicestershire are the region’ s hosts, with their 15 games including the beginning of England’ s campaign on 24 June against India at Derby, a match that’ s already sold out!
In partnership with their respective city council, county club, cricket board and the ICC, Derby( 23 June) and Leicester( 26 June) will host events to raise people’ s awareness about the global competition on their doorsteps.
Over the next two years the region will focus its efforts on making cricket more inclusive, accessible and inspiring to women and girls through innovative playing opportunities and growing relations throughout the community.
The appointment of a Women and Girls Legacy Officer demonstrates the region’ s commitment to implementing its plans. Jack Arnold, the region’ s Growth Executive, outlined the impact this role will make.
‘ The Legacy Officer will be liaising with the two hosts, working across the community and commercial sectors to identify new ways of growing the game.
‘ It’ s vital we use the World Cup as a tool to engage with new players and coaches, as well as celebrate and advocate the role of women in sport,’ Jack explained.
Growth and retention will be targeted through development and implementation of a plan in conjunction with Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire, and the region’ s Kia Super League women’ s team, Loughborough Lightning.
The region’ s plan includes the following objectives:
• Increase the number of women and girls accessing cricket – related activity
• Increase the number of women’ s and girls’ teams
• Positively change perceptions of women’ s and girls’ cricket
• Increase the number of female volunteers
• Connect the counties’ existing and future plans to the legacy programme
• Increase the number of women and girls attending World Cup fixtures.
After the staging of three women’ s coaching conferences, one element of their strategy is to focus on coach development
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