South Asian Cricket Academy will launch its inaugural women’s programme for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
The new scheme is seeking between six and 10 non-professionally contracted British south Asian women aged over 18 for the fully-funded high-performance elite programme, which will run over the next 12 months.<\/p>\n
The pilot programme has been set up with support from Take Her Lead, the registered charity founded by former England international and broadcaster Isa Guha. <\/p>\n
The charity is dedicated to advancing equality and diversity in cricket and increasing participation for women and girls.<\/p>\n
Since its establishment in 2022, SACA has helped 18 male players of a south Asian background secure professional with county clubs.<\/p>\n
In the time since it was founded, the percentage of professional players of a south Asian background in the county game has increased from four to 13%, while the number of academy players has expanded from 18 to 26%.<\/p>\n
SACA research states there are currently five professional south Asian women’s players at counties (3.3% of all players), with a further five (7.1%) in their academies.<\/p>\n
“Having worked in the women’s game as a scout and coach for the past six years I’ve seen first-hand how the game has grown,” said Tom Brown, the founder and manager director of SACA.<\/p>\n
“We’re excited that SACA will take on a leading role in helping to develop talented young British Asian female cricketers and helping them achieve their ambitions to break into the professional game.<\/p>\n
“We are confident that we can very quickly start to emulate the success our men’s programme has delivered for so many talented cricketers.”<\/p>\n
Guha will chair an advisory group of experts experienced in high-performance environments and with a south Asian perspective, which includes England selector Lydia Greenway and former players Abtaha Maqsood and Sonia Odedra.<\/p>\n
“The inaugural SACA women’s programme will provide a much-needed focus for south Asian women in cricket,” said Guha. <\/p>\n
“Our role is to ensure the environment created makes these women feel like they belong in cricket, taking their background and gender into consideration. <\/p>\n
“Our fabulous group of advisors and experts will support their development, while also ensuring this programme is built for success.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Asian Cricket Academy will launch its inaugural women’s programme for the 2026 season. The new scheme is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-412821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}