Rebooted women's county game seeks the pros of progress

Unless you were deeply invested in the rise of English women's cricket, you could be forgiven for not having previously heard of Kelly Castle and Sophie Luff. At the ages of 27 and 31 respectively, each has been a county cricketer for more than a decade already - providing solid, dependable presences in the previously amateur ranks of Essex and Somerset, including six years each as captain. However, throughout that time, neither player has come especially close to international recognition nor, in Castle's case, attracted the attentions of the Women's Hundred.

Now, however, Castle, Luff and their ilk are at the vanguard of a brand-new era for their sport. Last April, Essex and Somerset were chosen as two of the eight initial Tier 1 women's professional set-ups, and this week each player will be helping to launch her county's Metro Bank One-Day Cup campaign: Castle, up at Chester-le-Street, where Essex take on Durham, and Luff down at Beckenham for Somerset versus Surrey.

How each player fares individually will be of less relevance than what they represent. At a time when the depth of English women's cricket is under scrutiny like never before, amid the failings of the national team at the T20 World Cup and the Ashes, the rebooted county game is intended to create the sort of pyramid structure that has never previously existed within the sport.

And what that may entail - more urgently even than the identification of a new golden generation to challenge the current stars of the international set-up - is the expansion of this middle tier of "solid pros": the likes of which have shored up the men's game for generations but which, due to the fast-tracked nature of the women's elite game, have not yet had a chance to take proper root among their female counterparts.

"I've been here for a long time, so it's cool to see a full-circle moment," Castle tells ESPNcricinfo ahead of a transformative season. "For a lot of us girls, no matter where we played, we didn't know if we could play professional cricket, unless we got to international level. So now, it's great to see that it can be a career and, for that to happen at the club that I've grown up playing at, is pretty cool."

The professional experience isn't brand-new to either player: in 2020, both were among the initial tranche of 41 regional players to be handed groundbreaking full-time contracts. And yet, seeing as Castle had been one of just five initial pros within the now-disbanded Sunrisers squad, and Luff one of six at Western Storm, even that seminal step-up was limited compared to the opportunity that awaits the women's game this summer.

"I never envisaged I'd be a professional cricketer first and foremost, particularly not at domestic level," Luff, who has been named as Somerset's first professional captain, tells ESPNcricinfo. "It just wasn't an option when I was growing up. I chased the England dream for a long time and that ship's probably sailed. But the fact that I can be a domestic professional cricketer, playing in front of a lot of people and getting paid pretty well, it's come an awful long way, and I think it's only going to grow.

"When I first started at Western Storm there were three professional players on a retainer, then it went to six in the first winter. Now we've got a full squad of players, some of whom are rookies obviously. But the fact that we've got a full squad of girls in training week in, week out, makes a huge difference. I'm really excited to see what difference that makes moving into the season."

Those rookie contracts, worth £20,000 for this first year, will have a crucial part to play in the expansion of that pyramid. Notwithstanding the growth of the women's game in recent years, there's still a significant element of chance that dictates the ability of young players to rise through the sport's existing ranks, as Castle's own story relates.

Had it not been for the fact that her primary-school teacher in Southend was Australian, Castle says she would never have got a taste for the sport in the first place. And thereafter, having followed the familiar path of being a token girl in the local boys' cricket team, she made her first appearance for Essex as a 13-year-old in 2011, and so was in position to ride the wave as the first stirrings of professionalism began.

"I remember thinking, if I'm not playing for England by the time I'm 15, then I'll need to give up, which is crazy," Castle recalls. "And then, there was always something else that just kept me going, until I'm 17 … until I'm 19 ... I was in my third year of university when there were murmurs around professional cricket happening, and because I'd always worked in cricket, I managed to transition in when I'd finished. I still do a lot of coaching on the side, just to keep myself busy. It feels as though the sport is getting there, but there's still a lot of stuff to do."

To judge by the new narrative that surrounds the county game, however, the changes this season have already been stark. The ethos of one club, two teams has been a feature of the formative years of the Hundred, but already that seems to have been adopted across the board.

Wherever you look, there's a new recognition of the importance of the women's set-up, whether it's Surrey factoring a bespoke women's changing room into their plans for a multi-million pound redevelopment of the Kia Oval pavilion, or Essex talking excitedly about their plans for expansion at Chelmsford, a project that simply could not have been possible when the club only catered for its men's team.

"We get to come to the same place every day for work," Luff says of the experience down at Taunton. "The girls have a familiarity around where they're coming to train and the infrastructure here has been brilliant, the way that we've been welcomed into the club.

"The one thing that I really took away from our first week here was we met every department," she adds. "It felt like Western Storm in the previous era was just a cricket team that existed as cricket players and cricket staff - whereas coming here, there's a lot more that goes into a county cricket club than just the cricket on the pitch.

"We've had great access to the facilities. Our changing rooms have been upgraded. We've got lockers in, the gym's been extended to accommodate more people basically. And I think the men have probably seen some benefits from us coming in as well, which is nice."

However, it's not simply the Tier 1 teams that have got the memo. As Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB's Director of Women's Professional Game, noted earlier this month, some of the most interesting dynamics are set to occur within the new Tier 2 set-up, where a lot of ambitious amateur players will be seeking to make a name - and maybe ultimately a career - for themselves this summer.

At Middlesex, for instance, where there was initial "shock" and "frustration", according to their head of women's cricket, Marc Broom, at the club's failure to secure Tier 1 status, there has been a determination to prove the ECB's decision-making wrong.

"We're going to treat you like professional cricketers, and we want you to act, train and play and think like professional cricketers," says Broom, whose players stormed out of the blocks in their opening fixture earlier this week, bowling Kent out for 66 at Radlett en route to an eight-wicket victory.

"Everything we're going to be able to provide you is what we would try and provide a professional cricketer. The difference is your contact time with coaches is going to be less than a pro. The money you receive back is going to be less than a pro, and the time you've got available to commit to this is going to be less than a pro."

That would sound like an unpalatable prospect to most amateur players, were it not for the new incentives that the tiered structure has put in place.

"My job is to create the best environment for these players and set them on the right journeys," Broom says. "If, at the end of this year, every single player in this squad got signed by a Tier 1 county, I would be holding my hands up saying, 'I've done my job'."