Women’s High Performance Workshop

The International Cricket Council (ICC) hosted a Women’s High Performance workshop in Lahore, which coincided with the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 Qualifier which took place in the same city.

The forum was attended by High Performance Managers, heads of women’s cricket, coaches and staff from Full and Associate Members of the ICC, including representatives from the teams participating in the Qualifier.

The theme of the workshop was “collaboration and competitiveness” with the aim to share knowledge, best practice and experience in various key areas of the women’s game. The main focus areas were High Performance systems used by leading Members, strength and conditioning and the next ICC U19 Women’s T20 World Cup which will be staged in Bangladesh and Nepal.

The workshop was a platform where Members were given the opportunity to learn from other Members, with the ultimate aim of improving competitiveness at ICC women’s events, thereby raising the profile and commercial appeal of those events.

Ayesha Ashhar, General Manager of International Women’s Cricket, Pakistan Cricket Board said: “This workshop was a great initiative, it has been very educational to all the people who attended it. We’ve been given insight on how to put together our plans for programmes, be it batting, bowling, fitness on the field of play or administratively off the field.

“It’s been very helpful and also a lot of fun to attend it with everyone, getting different points of view, listening to everyone and the challenges they are overcoming in their different regions and how they have gone about it.

“It’s a great initiative by the ICC and I’m grateful to have been a part of this workshop.”

Craig Wallace, Head Coach of Scotland women said: “I thought it was brilliant to get everyone in one room and speak about the different things that they are working on and going through in their separate regions.

“It’s challenging sometimes as Associates to come up with ideas, programmes, structures and other things to help overcome certain issues, but having so many others going through similar challenges gives everyone the opportunity to learn from one another.”

Sheena Gooding, Team Manager of the West Indies women said: “It’s been a really good experience, the presentation by Cricket South Africa was really interesting. What stood out for me was that they travel with an educator for their U19s programme. I thought that was brilliant. It’s really helpful because every time we look at fixtures for our U19 teams, the topic of players missing out on school always comes up and I think this is a brilliant solution to that particular challenge.

“Also, the Talent Acceleration Camps that they do is something simple that we could also look into replicating in our different regions.

There was a presentation on “best practices” which was also very interesting, seeing how many full member nations play both 50-over and T20 cricket for their U19 teams has given us a lot to consider and hopefully we can get there someday soon.”