Participation rates in women and girls cricket soar - but facilities are struggling to keep pace

Their home is very much reflective of the way that venues were traditionally formed in the space that was available.

The Norman Edwards (no relation) ground can be found at the end of Locks Lane, a winding, narrow path which isn't great for any car with a groaning suspension.

It has been Sparsholt's home since 1929. The current pavilion was built in the 1980s.

It shows.

Despite recent improvements, the pavilion was designed for the days when cricket was almost entirely male-dominated. The toilets are urinals, the showers are old school.

The only facility available to females—either cricketer or spectator—is a single toilet next to the bar.

The fact that the infrastructure at cricket clubs up and down the country has struggled to keep pace with the rate of change in the sport isn't surprising.

According to ECB stats, there has been a 320% increase in the number of women's cricket teams.

The number of girls' teams, meanwhile, has risen by 360%. In short, there are nearly four times as many females playing cricket in 2026 than there were in 2016.

It's little wonder that participation levels have far outstripped investment in facilities.

Sparsholt is a great example of the growth of the game.

In May 2021, the club played host to the first girls' match in the club's history.

The under-13 game was a culmination of a year's worth of work by the club's champions of youth cricket, Jim and Helen Ley, club chairman Andy Worth, and a team of girls with limited experience but bountiful levels of enthusiasm.

I was lucky enough to be coaching them and, if memory serves, that first game against Ropley ended in a win.

There wouldn't be many more of those over the next three years - hardly surprising given the strength of some of the clubs in Hampshire - but that wasn't the point.

These teenagers had shown what was possible. They opened a door that more and more girls have poured through since.

Boosted by a huge influx of youngsters taking up the game as a result of the ECB's All-Stars programme, the club's young female cricketers suddenly had role models to look up to.

And five years later, its women and girls' section is utterly transformed.

Having teamed up with South Winchester, the club now has an under-11 and under-13 side, as well as a senior women's team.

There are now 28 girls and women involved at Sparsholt, and more at South Winchester.

Sonia Zakrzewski - whose daughter Cecilia was in the first cohort of young female cricketers that included my own daughter, Jemima - is the first chair of the Sparsholt and has been tireless in her promotion of the sport.

It's a similar picture elsewhere.

Clubs such as New Milton, Hursley Park, and St Cross have transformed Hampshire's cricket landscape. Others, such as Trojans and Ropley, continue to do fantastic work.

The infrastructure, though, is still creaking.

Sparsholt are now attempting to raise £20,000 to ensure that the club's facilities are now more reflective of the sport in 2026.

It's a demonstration, not just of their determination to make their home a welcoming place, but also of the grants available out there for those clubs who want to invest in facilities.

If Sparsholt manage to raise £10,000, then Sport England will match that figure.

"Facilities in many clubs, including Sparsholt, don't make the sport welcoming," says Zakrzewski. "Communal showers and urinals are very off-putting to girls.

"We want them to feel fully welcomed and to feel that they are vital full members of the club.

"We're fundraising to change our changing facilities so that they have standard toilets (without urinals) and showers in cubicles.

"Meanwhile, we're also trying to come up with other ways to make cricket more appealing to our younger players - we want to make cricket fun for everyone."

The rush to upgrade is arguably overdue across Hampshire, although the past has directly influenced the present in many ways, as Phil Green, manager of Hursley Park Ladies, tells The Hawk.

"By and large, female players have grown up in an environment where they have never had separate changing rooms or showers - the vast majority of them will arrive at the ground changed and ready to go," he says.

"I think that's a legacy of the infrastructure at cricket clubs being very much shaped by everything that has gone before."

Times are changing.

At the Southern League's recent AGM - in line with an ECB edict - it was announced that every team in the top two divisions would have to make a 'meaningful effort' to create a girls' cricket section.

They will also have to host at least one game of girls' cricket over the course of the 2026 season.

Failure to do so could result in points deductions and even expulsion from the league.

The pros and cons of that ECB directive can be argued from now until the start of the season.

Given the astonishing growth witnessed over the past ten years, this would suggest that this top-down decision making is now neither helpful nor, arguably, required.

But there you go.

From a number of clubs' perspectives, the issue isn't participation levels, it's ground availability.

Alongside dual-gender facilities, this is probably the biggest issue facing clubs across Hampshire in both the men's and women's game.

And that's an issue that can't be fixed with a wave of a Sport England wand.