Female cricket players will only be protected from sharing facilities and competing with “trans” males if they’re “good enough”, according to a new ECB ruling that has been slammed for letting women down. The Telegraph has more.
Transgender women are to be banned from professional and semi-professional women’s cricket in England – but controversially not from the grass-roots game.
As revealed by Telegraph Sport, the England and Wales Cricket Board on Thursday announced its long-awaited new trans policy following a review of its existing rules.
Those rules are among the most liberal in sport, allowing anyone identifying as female to play in women’s cricket – subject to written ECB clearance only for “professional club and England pathway teams”.
This has long sparked major concern among women’s rights campaigners about fairness and safety for those born female, including around shared changing facilities.
The ECB’s new policy has been announced almost a year after the ICC banned anyone to have gone through male puberty from playing in events such as the Women’s Ashes or World Cup.
That was after Canada’s Danielle McGahey became the first transgender cricketer to play an official Twenty20 international.
The ECB’s policy will mirror that of the ICC at the highest levels – tier one and two – of the new women’s game pyramid that begins next year.
However, the ban will not apply below that, with anyone who identifies as female still able to play in women’s and girls’ competitions.
The participation of transgender women will instead be policed under the ECB’s “disparity policy”, which covers any player deemed to have a significant strength, stamina or physique advantage over their opponents.
The current policy allows the game’s authorities to make “non-binding” recommendations when it comes to such players on the grounds of fairness or safety. …
The current ECB policy has raised concerns about changing facilities, with a frequently-asked-questions document produced by the governing body stating: “Trans people should have access to toilets, showers and changing rooms that accord with their gender identity wherever possible.”
Sharron Davies, the British swimming icon denied Olympic gold in 1980 by state-sponsored doping in East Germany, and a leading voice in the trans debate, branded the new policy “a coward’s cop-out”. She added: “If it’s dangerous, unfair and unsafe at professional and semi-professional level, it’s the same at grass-roots or pathways. The ECB can’t say, ‘We’ll protect these females but not these females – because they’re not good enough’. All sport for females should be protected and an open category created, made welcoming of all, no matter how they identify. It’s wilful negligence to pretend biological males and females aren’t physically different.”
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