Re: Canadian Women's cricket
Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2023 8:27 pm
If he/she singlehandedly knocks "Team USA" out of the qualifier there sure will be push back!
I think it's wonderful a transgender person can play cricket, and should feel welcome to play, it should be for everyone, but looking at the science and regulations of other elite sports - rugby, tennis, swimming, athletics, cycling, etc, where fairness has been exhaustively researched and legislated for - I don't think it's fair that someone who has spent 27 years growing as a man before transitioning, with all the benefits of puberty, larger skeleton, muscle mass, larger lung capacity, and without any of the challenges of menstruation, should be able to play in an international women's team. Taking medication to reduce testosterone does not remove all the male advantages in sport, and this as the entry barrier (along with a letter of self identification) would not be accepted in many other sports. Canada and the ICC are behind the ball here.
There is a trade-off in inclusion. I am a huge fan of inclusion but when it comes to international sports, age-based sports or women’s sport, there have to be limits, or it ceases to be. If you include someone who has, as a fully grown man, transitioned to being a transgender woman, then this is likely (and has in this case) led to the exclusion of someone born, and who has spent their whole life, as a woman, who made many sacrifices to get in that team, and whose opportunities, like most women in cricket, have been severely limited. On top of that, it can be no fun for the opposition, in these fledgling women's associate teams, to be flayed around the park (73 off 42 balls vs Brazil) by someone with vastly superior strength.
It's a personal view, so it's not a fact, and I fully support someone's right to transition, and their right to play cricket (I would happily play with them), but I believe there is a huge difference in someone transitioning before puberty and transitioning as a 27-year-old, and that (in my non-qualified opinion - and I'm open to evidence-based persuasion either way) they should probably be playing mixed club cricket and trying out for the men's (or mixed) national team.
Without science backed boundaries to protect fairness and balance inclusion, it is not out of the question, these minor international women's teams will start having 2/3 players who were born and grew up as men and where will that leave the people born as women? Do we go for inclusion or fairness? It's not possible to have both. None of this imparts any blame on transgender players. At the end of the day, we want everybody to play.
