Girls’ Area Programme Launching in November

As the cricket season was coming to an end attention quickly turned to finding new talent from around the county in our County Age Group (CAG) open trials. In addition to more girls’ CAG squads in 2023 than ever before, Kent Cricket have launched a Girls Under 11 & Under 13 Area Programme. It’s an exciting time for girls’ cricket in Kent!

The Girls’ Area Programme will involve the CAG squad players and a selection of players who just missed out on the county squads, or second stage of trials, but who showed potential in one or two disciplines. There will be three Area Centres, based in the West, East & Metropolitan areas of the county. Each squad will have 8 winter training sessions and then play against each other across a range of formats during the summer season. The idea is to give more girls exposure to county level coaching and expose them to a level of cricket above what they play at club level. In 2024 there are plans to increase the number of Area Centres to four by adding a Central area squad.

Over 120 girls took part in our Under 11 soft ball trials with 46 players making the next stage of hard ball trials before we picked our Under 10 and Under 11 county squads. 56 girls will be invited to take part in the area Under 11 Girls’ Area Programme this winter.

At Under 13 we had 45 new trialists at the open trials and once we put some players through, to join the county age group players from the 2022 season, it meant 51 girls were through to the next stage, from which we picked our county Under 12 and Under 13 squads. The Under 13 Girls’ Area Programme is going to involve 59 players across the three squads.

Kent Women & Girls Pathway Manager, Dave Smith said on the introduction of the Girls Area Programme: “The growth of women’s & girls’ cricket is rapid and we are lucky in Kent that there are lots of clubs and schools supporting this growth. Adding this level of cricket into the girls’ cricket pathway will bring positive long-term results and I’m excited to see its impact over the next few years.”