Welcome to the first major private women’s cricket event
BCCI refuses permission for Indian players to take part in meet to be held in Dubai next month.
“In three years’ time, this will be the biggest cricket event for women,” says Shaun Martyn but before the words hit mic drop levels, he adds, “outside of the World Cup.” With Australia crowned world champions for the seventh time on Sunday, Planet Cricket could easily push women’s cricket off the radar now. Except, Martyn, Hong Kong Cricket and a man wearing many hats are having none of it.
Between May 1 and 15, six teams comprising cricketers from 35 countries will compete in the Fairbreak Invitational 2022 in Dubai, the first privately-funded women’s cricket event. The list includes key players from the just-concluded World Cup—like captains of New Zealand and the West Indies, Sophie Devine and Stafanie Taylor, Marizanne Kapp, Laura Volvhaardt, Shabnim Ismail, Diana Beg, Fatima Sana and Rumana Ahmed—and players from Associate nations, who will play alongside each other in the six teams.
As for India, Harmanpreet Kaur, Deepti Sharma and Jemima Rodrigues were named on the early Fairbreak lists, NOCs permitting of course. The organisers were to discover only on Tuesday that the BCCI has refused to grant NOCs to their players for several reasons: adequate time to conduct medical revaluations of the World Cup returnees, the importance of the Senior Women’s T20 domestic tournament (final on May 2) and even the 2023 World T20 in South Africa. In any case, the Women’s T20 Challenge , is to be held on May 23 and 24, well after the end of the Fairbreak event.
The Fairbreak Invitational has been four years in the planning and was meant to take place in Hong Kong before Covid intervened. Fairbreak Global, an organisation born out of the idea of the status-quo-busting 2013 Women’s International Cricket League (WICL), was created to promote gender equality and opportunity across sectors with cricket as its main vehicle. From 2018 onwards, it has run Fairbreak XI mixed women’s cricket events beginning with an inaugural Day of Gender Equality on May 30, 2018 and Fairbreak XI tours in England (July 2019) and in Australia (January 2020). Fairbreak founder Martyn says the organisation’s aim, “has always been to runs this tournament– the Fairbreak Invitational, it was never something smaller scale, it has always been this.”
The fact the tournament itself has finally come to be is the result of a series of “cricketing and umpiring connections” and coincidences involving Martyn, Hong Kong Cricket (HKC) and the multi-hat-wearing man, RV Venkatesh. Hong Kong resident Venkatesh owns Gencor, a health care and pharma company, is chairman of cricket officials in HKC and also an ICC development panel umpire. The ICC, he says, “are looking at us more as a partner to develop the game and not as a competitor and have openly put that on record.”
The origin story however, was not quite as smooth. The WICL was originally set up in 2013, Martyn says, “to try and improve the financial gap between men’s and women’s cricket, as well as differences in quality of play and available opportunities for women.” Based out of Singapore, the WICL aimed to follow the IPL model but was met with opposition by the cricket boards and the ICC, “because everyone thought we were trying to set up a rebel organisation.”
Within the next two seasons, as Martyn points out, the ECB announced full time contracts for 18 players (May 2014) and Cricket Australia turned its Australian Women’s T20 Cup into the now-celebrated WBBL (Women’s Big Bash League), launched in July 2015. Fairbreak’s focus then shifted to fielding multi-nation Global XIs on various tours. One of its 2018 Global XI in the Day of Gender Equality match was Hong Kong captain Mariko Hill. When she returned home, she told Venkatesh, who had umpired in her matches for almost a decade, “stories about Fairbreak and what it was all about. She introduced me to Shaun and I became quite interested in what Fairbreak was doing.”
His company Gencor went into partnership with Fairbreak, sponsored the tours over the next two years and he is now a Fairbreak director. When CHK’s general manager Ravi Nagdev heard of the invitational it seemed a perfect fit. “When Venkat and Shaun came to us with the idea of the invitational, it was a great opportunity. It’s not just another cricket event, it’s unique, it’s different, which is what Hong Kong cricket is all about.” The other attraction was the event’s “inclusivity” because “to us in Cricket Hong Kong, men’s game, women’s game it’s is the same…” Twelve Hong Kong cricketers will also feature amongst the six teams and Ravi says, “to sit down with the best players in the world and talk batting— where do you get this opportunity as an associate country?”
Once the event was backed by a cricket board, conversations were resumed with the ICC and other home boards and a window in the calendar sought. The strict lockdown in Hong Kong meant that the event had to be moved to the UAE, and the organisers were presented with two time slots: December 2021 or April-May 2022, which is where we are today.
HKC have signed a three-year deal with Fairbreak and while “very thankful” that the Emirates Cricket Board “were willing to host a Hong Kong Cricket-Fairbreak organised event, we definitely want to bring it back to Hong Kong.” Martyn says that while Fairbreak can be seen as agents of change, “we are also great advocates of the game and supporters of the game and we are not here to hurt anyone.”
The organisers have signed a pledge to refuse sponsorship from gambling, alcohol, tobacco and betting platforms, the players’ uniforms are all made of recycled plastic and during the event, a leading specialist in breast health biomechanics, associate professor Deidre McGhee from Wollongong University, will conduct a research project on the women cricketers around breast health and injury management. Already, the invitational looks like path-breaker many times over.
The teams are owned by Fairbreak but sponsored by brands with three names announced so far: South Coast Sapphires, the Barmy Army and the Tornadoes. A selection panel made up of former Australian cricketer Geoff Lawson, former Pakistan captain Sana Mir and former Australia batter Alex Blackwell and Martyn built the player list with rankings linked to salary caps. The players were distributed between the six teams, with skill levels balanced out and around 12 nationalities represented in each squad.
Other than the dozen or so prominent cricketing nations, the invitational will feature players from the UAE, Brazil, Nepal, Rwanda, Vanuatu, Hong Kong, Austria, Thailand among others, countries that also provide the most delightful back stories out of a cricket event. Like that of former German captain Stephanie Frohnmayer, who played against the MCC on the 2019 England tour on Friday, flew home to fufill her duties as gynaecologist, delivered four babies over the weekend, and returned in time for her Monday fixture. In 2022 Fairbreak invitational, among others, there are molecular biologists, financial analysts, physiotherapists and general physicians.
Beat that, boys.
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