Clare Connor, the managing director of England women, will leave the England and Wales Cricket Board after this summer’s home Women’s T20 World Cup.<\/p>\n
Connor, who is also the ECB’s deputy chief executive, has been with the organisation for 18 years.<\/p>\n
Prior to that, the 49-year-old won 111 caps across formats in a 10-year England career, famously captaining them to victory in the 2005 Ashes. She combined playing with a job as a teacher.<\/p>\n
Connor, one of the most influential administrators in the game, became the first female president of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 2021-22.<\/p>\n
She became the first woman to sit on the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) cricket committee and remains the chair of the governing body’s women’s cricket committee.<\/p>\n
Connor also served as the ECB’s interim chief executive between 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n
The Ashes triumph she led in 2005 was the first time England women had beaten Australia for 42 years.<\/p>\n
She retired from playing at the age of 29 and has arguably had an even greater impact on the game in the boardroom than on the field.<\/p>\n
In Connor’s time with the ECB, English women’s cricket has moved from an amateur game into the professional era, including multiple changes to the domestic structure.<\/p>\n
The decision to depart is a personal one, and Connor’s exit will come after the World Cup, which ends with the final at Lord’s on 5 July.<\/p>\n
“Helping to grow women’s cricket for the past 18 years has been an absolute privilege,” said Connor.<\/p>\n
“Having fallen in love with the game in a quite different era from the one we are in now, my goals as an administrator have been firmly rooted in making cricket more equal for women and girls. <\/p>\n
“For it to be as normal for a girl to pick up a cricket bat as a boy. For a young woman to know – not just dream – that she can become a professional cricketer.<\/p>\n
“To have played a part in removing some of the barriers that were preventing those things from being possible and to know that cricket is now a more inclusive and more gender balanced sport, is deeply rewarding.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clare Connor, the managing director of England women, will leave the England and Wales Cricket Board after this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-418414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}