Girls’ cricket is taking off at the moment. Following the 2017 World Cup, many schools dropped rounders and adopted cricket. The ECB have been pouring in money and support. In particular, they have created regulations which means that men’s teams can only play at the highest recreational levels if they have a women’s or girls section. But the club’s offerings are all very different. We have been talking to parents recently about South London cricket clubs for girls. Here is what we have learned:
This club has more overtly performance ethos than many of the other clubs. Nevertheless it has a reputation as being friendly and supportive with a highly engaged and welcoming parent body. Unlike many other clubs most of the parental club leadership is female. Their girls section has been set up more recently, but it has attracted regional and county standard girls from all over Surrey and Kent. Part of this is its second to none training progamme run by a suite of senior coaches from county pathways. It is probably not the place to go to learn your cricket but if you are a hardball player and want to play county level or even above, this is most assuredly the club for you.
This is very much a family club. The bar sees multi-generations enjoying the game. Different ages and genders will turn out to support their teams. The girls cricket is passionate and organised across ages. They can struggle for numbers but this means that there is lots of opportunties to play with the boys and to play up years. People have great loyalty to this club based on the full family involvement.
Dulwich has well developed girls sections and a long standing commitment to girls cricket. They have a pitch entirely dedicated to girls and womens cricket so the issues around Saturday pitch availability are alleviated. They have a good pathway training programme, a decent winter nets programme, well organised parents and are able to get girls into county pathways.
This club is probably the most popular in Surrey. It has an extremely well organised programme of activities. The result is that in the younger years they have around 65 girls per year. There is a waiting list and places are much sought after. The coaches are generally parents and the club pays for them to go on formal coaching courses. As you get older they have their own academy structure to help bridge the gap into county representation. The club has a heavy representation of children from the local private schools but there is a determined and well organised state school outreach programme. Their summer programme is quite the social gathering in Wandsworth but they do not have such a well developed programme of winter nets as at other clubs. There is definitely a shortage of pitches relative to the numbers of players – the club have ambitious plans to resolve this though. They club is a definite feeder to the Surrey County set up.
Streatham and Marlborough Cricket Club
This club prides itself on its inclusive approach. They want all standards of player to feel welcome from whatever background. As a result, they have been committed to developing a girls and women’s section and have full teams and squads at all ages. There is very a fun first ethos. Training, pitch access, selection and match plans are all done with equality front of mind. While they do develop county players but then struggle to keep those more performance minded girls but they do support these girls moving to other clubs. They have recently completed a substantial redevelopment of their pavilion which is opening in 2026.
This article was written by several parents of girls who have or have had players at many of these South London cricket clubs