ECB Bans Transgender Women from Elite Competitions

The England and Wales Cricket Board, ECB, has announced that transgender women who have gone through male puberty will be excluded from Tiers 1 and 2 of the board’s new women’s county competition, as well as the women’s Hundred.

The ECB has made the decision to bring its eligibility policy into line with that adopted by the International Cricket Council in 2023.

The ECB says it acknowledged that the transgender issue was a “complex area” in which it was “impossible to balance all the considerations.

The clarification comes ahead of the relaunch of women’s domestic cricket in 2025, and brings the English game into line with other elite sports in the UK, including swimming, cycling, athletics, rugby league and rugby union.

The policy will not, however, be extended to the grassroots game, nor to Tier 3 of the county competition, which at this stage will comprise teams from the ECB’s national counties, but which will be subject to promotion and relegation from higher tiers from 2029 onwards.

The most prominent player to have been affected by the rule-change was Canada’s Danielle McGahey, who featured in the ICC Women’s T20 Americas Qualifier in September 2023, but acknowledged soon afterwards that her career was over.