Following a committee meeting last week, the governing body for Goulburn Valley cricketing affairs will push on with the advent of a junior girls’ competition for season 2024-25.
The format and current number of planned teams are as yet unknown, but the league has committed to the new program — and one club is acting quickly in response.
Shepparton United has announced its initial raft of recommitments to the senior squad ahead of another Goulburn Murray Cricket campaign, including influential skipper Mel Saunders.
However, it’s the impending arrival of import signing Sophie Ullah that shapes as a pioneering step.
Ullah hails from Ramsbottom Cricket Club in England’s Lancashire league and is understood to be the first fully professional female cricketer to come under contract within Cricket Shepparton’s system.
Shepparton United president Steven Nash maintains that more signings of this nature will be paramount across the league to further nurture the growth and development of girls and women in cricket.
“If you want to be an inclusive club with male and female teams, you need to be doing this and showing that you’re just as committed to both,” Nash said.
“(The new girls league) makes our club fully inclusive in supporting women’s cricket and provides a pathway from girls playing cricket at Master Blasters to juniors and then supporting our women’s team.
“Bringing Sophie about shows those girls that cricket can take you anywhere in the world and shows them that pathway is there.
“She’s going to help initiate our girls side; she has a background in teaching and has done this before in England.
“It adds to the strength of our coaching with some great male and female players coming out to coach our juniors.”
The process of obtaining Ullah’s signature, it would appear, was generally similar to how Cricket Shepparton clubs pick up their male imports.
That is, you have your usual middle people contacted, screening chats conducted and arrangements for travel promptly booked.
“It came from the two leaders of our club, Sam Nash and Mel Saunders,” Nash said.
“Sam asked, ‘If we’re bringing men out, why aren’t we bringing women?’
“We went through the process of having the best people apply and it was agreed that Sophie best suited our club at this stage.
“We’ve been actively involved as a club getting this girls team up through Mel as well as Chris Barclay.”
