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Harrison: We've only scratched the surface

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England and Wales Cricket Board Chief Executive Tom Harrison sees International Women's Day as an opportunity to plan for the next stage of the development of the women's game.

With World Cup and World Twenty20 successes as well as four Ashes series wins in the last 10 years, England women have been at the forefront of a movement which has seen leading female athletes and sports teams gain greater recognition than ever before.

And Harrison told ecb.co.uk:"International Women's Day is a really good reference point for us, to check our progress on women's cricket.

"We've made some progress in this area but we've a lot more to do and I think we're really only scratching the surface in terms of our potential.

"We only see great things happening going forward and obviously continued success for our international team."

This summer's Ashes series against Australia women - starting in July and, like the last two, contested across multiple formats using a points system - will be shown live in its entirety on Sky Sports.

Harrison added: "It just shows the massive strides the women's game has made, to now being a bona fide broadcast product in its own right.

"It's going to be a massive summer for all our international teams but our women's team, we've got some seriously high hopes for them.

"They've just had an interesting, topsy-turvy tour in New Zealand, but we're expecting them to go really well against Australia this summer."

England women skipper Charlotte Edwards enjoyed a winter in Australia as captain of Western Fury

One development during England women's period of success has been the introduction of professional contracts for the leading female players.

Undoubtedly among those is England captain Charlotte Edwards, and she is thrilled that professional cricket is now a viable career path for women.

Edwards spent the winter captaining Western Fury in Australia's domestic competition, with team-mates Sarah Taylor and Heather Knight also playing Down Under, and she said: "Professional contracts have changed the game massively.

"In the last year we've seen how the game's grown and in my time of playing, 18 years, it's been quite unbelievable the changes that I've seen.

"To think now that I'm paid for playing and it's a career option, to go and tell a young primary school child that there is a career in cricket is a very powerful thing to tell anyone."


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