Jemma Green is a former cricket coach, now working as a sports analyst – and this week I was lucky enough to interview her, asking about her sporting career, her views on the progress on women’s cricket and her love for the sport as a whole.
How did you first get into cricket?
Basically, the same old story I think – through my dad. Every weekend I was brought to different cricket grounds, but I didn’t play, because girls didn’t usually play back then, but that’s how I became aware of it. I started actually playing in my teens. Before that, I played other sports, netball, rounders, all the usual things, but had I been a boy, I would have probably been in the junior boys’ team and got into the sport a lot quicker.
Did you start at school or in a club?
I started in a club. At fifteen I did the scoring and all sorts of things for my dad’s club and decided I would like to give it a go, so I looked up women’s clubs – there were more and them by then – and just went for it. When I went to school all week, I just ended up just looking forward to the weekends when I could play cricket. It became such a passion that, in my late teens, I tried to get involved professionally. I did a lot of a coaching and continued throughout university, but it was never really for me, my heart just wasn’t in it, but. I was always very ‘mathsy’ and cricket, more than any other sport, really lends itself to stats, which I did at university. Data analysis of sport was just becoming a thing, so when I left university, I was able to get a few ad hoc projects at the counties like Kent and Derby, since there weren’t many people doing jobs like that, but it was mostly providing statistics reports for coaches.
What does a typical day look like for you now?
Currently I have two roles. Today, I’m doing data collection at the home bowl that I work at in Hampshire. When play starts, I record every detail of every ball: pitches, type of shot, whether it was good or not, if it moves, that kind of thing. Every ball has about twenty data points. My second role for international or televised games, such as for the Ashes, I will take out the data, and answer questions on it.
The first test cricket match of the Women’s Ashes happened recently; how much progress do you think there has been in interest for Women’s cricket?
Women’s cricket has changed in the last five years more than anything else I’ve ever known in any sport. We didn’t have any professional cricketers not that long ago, and then only semi-professionals for a time after that. But now all the England cricketers and fully contracted and well paid. Being involved in a women’s club, I’ve seen players elevated into that system, who can now be fulltime even though they don’t play for England. Even women’s football, that has had a lot of really good publicity in the last year – which is fantastic – I don’t think is comparable to what we’ve seen in cricket in the last five years.
Is it getting easier for women to be able to get into cricket? Is there much more work left to be done?
You will always get people who compare men’s and women’s cricket at any time, in terms of coverage and everything else. Yes, it’s not yet equal, and you will get people who view that negatively but my take on it is that the change is incredible. It’s still underrepresented compared to the men, but I don’t see that as a block to women’s cricket because it’s such an upward curve in how they’re catching up. The other thing that’s massive is that young girls now do have a pathway from junior clubs to a chance at being professional somewhere that’s not just for England players. They’re presented with these opportunities to begin a journey up to a top level. Also, since schools scrapping rounders from the curriculum for cricket, more girls can get into it from a young age, which is really exciting. Of course, people enjoyed rounders, but there was nothing to do with it afterwards – there was no club system or anything like that, instead it prevented girls from being able to get access to cricket, if they couldn’t do it outside of school.
Would you encourage more girls to go into a field such as yours, that combines a love of sport with another skill?
Yes, I would. I know a lot of people in my industry who aren’t necessarily cricket fans but are just really excited about sport as a whole. One of the cricketers in my club does a similar job for speedway, despite not having a background with it. I find myself very lucky, even at my job now, being able to look out over the cricket ground, that this is my working day. There are so many ways you can be involved in sports at the top level, if you’re not quite good enough to play, which many of us aren’t. Especially as there’s a lot more options nowadays, such as physiology and sports psychology as well, you can stay in the sport you love, even if you’re not on the team itself.
Do you prefer test matches or T-20s?
Personally, a test match every day.
What are your opinions of Bazball (A style of cricket with an emphasis on taking positive decisions in attack and defence)?
I think it’s been really important because whilst there are some pure lovers of the test match, sadly that generation does seem to be dying out, particularly because of the amount of exposure there is to T20s. I totally understand that people who come into the sport prefer to see T20s, because they are much more fast paced and therefore exciting. Test matches needed something to keep up with T20s, as really gripping test matches just weren’t happening enough, so I think Bazball has just given the impetus to test match cricket to make itself more engaging. Even though England lost the last match, that in itself is exciting. Had they not had the Bazball approach it probably would have just been a draw, and at the end of the day, that excitement of the game going either way is going to get the viewers.
