Cricket News

Breaking! Cricket’s Governing Body announces new gender eligibility rules in international cricket

In a recent piece of news, Cricket’s Governing Body came up with a big decision on women’s cricket as it banned transgender cricketers from women’s cricket. The decision came in the Board meeting of the Cricket’s Governing Body, where a couple of issues in international cricket were discussed followed by some major outcomes.

One of those big outcomes was the announcement of new gender eligibilities from the Cricket’s Governing Body. The apex council made it very clear that the males who converted themselves into females and if they undergone any kind of male puberty, will be considered ineligible in women’s international cricket.

“The Board also approved new gender eligibility regulations for the international game following a 9-month consultation process with the sport’s stakeholders. The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” read the official statement of Cricket’s Governing Body through an official media release.

“The review, which was led by the Medical Advisory Committee chaired by Dr Peter Harcourt, relates solely to gender eligibility for international women’s cricket, whilst gender eligibility at the domestic level is a matter for each Member Board, which may be impacted by local legislation. The regulations will be reviewed within two years,” the statement adds further.

“Our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game.” – CEO, Cricket’s Governing Body

Apart from the official statement of Cricket’s Governing Body, the council’s CEO Geoff Allardice also spoke in length about the importance of gender eligibility regulations.

“The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and are founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players,” said Allardice.