Glasgow hosted seven nations last month. No matches. No trophies.
Jersey Cricket CEO Sarah Gomersall joined female leaders from Scotland, England, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Finland for the ICC Europe Female Leaders’ Summit. The three-day event happened during Scottish Women and Girls in Sport Week.
The format mattered.
Dragon’s Den sessions and start-up thinking workshops replaced traditional conference panels. Leaders worked through real problems using entrepreneurial frameworks borrowed from business sectors that have already solved similar challenges.
Cricket is importing methodology from outside its walls.
The timing matters. Women’s and girls’ cricket teams in England and Wales doubled in three years, jumping from 2,700 teams in 2021 to 5,400 in 2024.
The ICC forecasts over two million registered female players globally by 2027. Participation is exploding faster than governance structures built for a different era can handle.
Cross-border collaboration is now a necessity, not a luxury.
For Jersey, every relationship compounds influence. Gomersall’s participation connects Jersey Cricket to leaders across Europe facing the same challenges around female participation, facilities, and organizational change.
Gomersall called her appointment as CEO “a real statement of intent” in a traditionally male sport. The summit multiplies that statement across borders.
Jersey gains access to proven strategies from larger cricket nations while contributing insights from operating at smaller scale with different constraints. The DFDS partnership supporting Jersey Cricket over the next three years aligns with this momentum.
But summits create potential, not outcomes.
The value shows up in what happens next. Whether Jersey hosts more women’s international fixtures. Whether female participation increases. Whether the entrepreneurial thinking reshapes how Jersey Cricket operates.
Seven nations built a network in Scotland. Networks either compound or decay.
Jersey’s betting on compound growth.