Woodlands, Farsley & Pudsey Congs collaborate on girls cricket

Three Bradford Premier League clubs without girls sections – Farsley, Pudsey Congs and Woodlands – have joined forces to launch indoor winter all-girls Dynamos sessions (Roses).

Each of the three clubs have recruited a group of girls aged 8-11 to take part in an eight-week training programme at Woodlands’ indoor centre on Sunday afternoons.

The collaboration is more unusual given clubs tend to do their own thing and when it comes to any form of player / member recruitment such as All Stars and Dynamos or adult cricket, there’s often plenty of local competition for sign-ups.

In this case, the three cricket clubs are pooling resources in the sense that the girls are all training together while the clubs each have an activator or two who discuss between themselves how to plan and deliver these sessions.

Rather than each club having a squad, it’s more fluid than that with the girls (many of whom are new to the game) divided into small groups based on age and experience. It means that those attending can get coached by Farsley, Woodlands or Pudsey Congs coaches.

I learnt the latest from Woodlands coach Mohammed Salim (known to many as ‘Sal’ who I met at Parkside’s women’s league cricket indoors), he is leading the girls cricket push for the Oakenshaw club.

He has two coaches in Emily Copeman and Matilda Potter to help with sessions as role models to the girls and talented cricketers in their own right. Both have represented Yorkshire U18 Girls with Matilda playing her club cricket at Pudsey St Lawrence and Emily is at Tickhill.

While Woodlands are embryonic in terms of their own girls team, Sal has run the Bradford MCC Foundation Hub from their indoor sports hall for years, with Bradford U15 Girls even winning the Lord’s final back in 2021. He also praised the other two cricket clubs involved in this latest project in how everyone has seen its potential beyond club boundaries.

Katie Stewart, the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation’s Women & Girls Development Manager for West Yorkshire, told me that this cross-club initiative is only the beginning.

Though this initial eight-week programme for girls cricket is about to run its course, plans are in place for an indoor festival at Woodlands, just before Christmas, to keep the interest and momentum going.

Another festival in February is then inked in with Bradford Park Avenue’s all-weather dome lined up as a possible venue.

With all clubs in the top two tiers of ECB Premier Leagues in Yorkshire expected to develop girls cricket (and face penalties if they’ve not set up a team and played a fixture by October 2026), this is a blueprint that others will be keeping their eye on.