Kate Cross has admitted there are cultural issues within English women’s cricket and said she fears the national team have lost fans after a disastrous Ashes series in which the side were whitewashed 16-0 by Australia amid a sea of glaring fielding and batting errors.
Cross, an unused squad member on the tour thanks to a back injury, also called on the England and Wales Cricket Board to leave no stone unturned in their review of the trip, which she said is crucial to ensuring the public “fall back in love with English cricket”.
The review is being led by the ECB managing director, Clare Connor, and was expected to conclude within four weeks of the tour. However, that deadline has now passed and there has been radio silence on the futures of Jon Lewis as head coach and Heather Knight, the captain.
As part of the review, all current England players have been asked to provide feedback to the director of England women’s cricket, Jonathan Finch; Cross, it appears, has been unstintingly honest in her own account.
“I do believe as a team we do a lot of things really well, but there’s areas we know we need to address, from cricket points of view, from cultural points of view,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to come of this review, but I’m hoping that these are the things that will get addressed and it will pave the way for the next generation to want to play for England.
“I feel we might have lost a few fans in the last couple of months, which is really sad from our point of view. We as cricketers know how bad that tour was – we’re not going to try to sugarcoat that. But I’d like people to fall back in love with English cricket.”
Cross’s views are in stark contrast with those of Connor, who maintained in her own post-Ashes press conference that there were no cultural issues at play in the defeat.
Cross further acknowledged that Lewis’s “inspire and entertain” mantra rang hollow by the end of a three week multi-format tour in which England did not win a game.
“We didn’t play good cricket for any part of that tour,” she said. “We can’t come away from that and say that we want to inspire and entertain people when we’re not doing our jobs as well as we should have done.”
The 33-year-old was speaking at the launch of Accelerating Action for Players, a new women’s cricket impact report by the Professional Cricketers’ Association, which celebrates the increased professionalism of the women’s game since 2021. Over the past four years, there has been a 430% increase in remuneration for the women’s game across England, domestic cricket and the Hundred. The average salary for an England women’s player has increased by 236% since 2021, with centrally contracted players now earning up to £300,000 a year from the ECB when taking match fees into account.
But as salaries have increased, so have public expectations of the team. “The positive from a really terrible Ashes is that the scrutiny that we got showed how much more people are interested now,” Cross said. “People care, and that is why there is so much frustration at the result.”
Cross added that the back injury which prevented her from playing in the Ashes was healing well. “I’m on track for the start of the season,” she said.
