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KMTV go behind the scenes with Kent captain Megan Belt for a day in the life of Tier Two county cricket player, as well as chat to head coach James Hockley for the inside track on how the club are getting on.
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00:00Hello I'm Henry Cowling and welcome to this Kent Tonight special. Tonight we'll
00:25be looking at the current state of women's cricket in Kent including how
00:28the county women's side fared in their first season since being put in a second
00:31tier. We spent the day with club captain Megan Belt and spoke to women's head
00:35coach James Hockley to get the inside track on how the club are getting on.
00:39But first, how much do the people of Canterbury know about the women's game?
00:42Can either of you name any or three women's cricketers?
00:46Kerry Sale? No. Heather Knight? Someone called Cross and that's Sylvia Skyver Brunt? No.
00:57No. No. Sorry. Can you name a men's cricketer? Eve Botham. Emile O'Dwyer. Joe Root. Freddie Flintoff. No. Jeff Boycott. Viv Richards. Joe Root. Harry Brooke. Ben Stokes. Describe what you think a day in the life of a women's cricket
01:23player looks like? A lot of training. Yeah. Busy. Yeah. Repeatedly hitting something. Get up, have breakfast in the nets, lots of training. Wake up, breakfast to train. I would imagine sort of fitness training, weight training and then sort of net drills. Big breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe go for a run. Put his nice little white outfit on. Yeah. I'd imagine they go in for training. I mean they don't get paid as much as men's
01:50probably do they. And how much do you think a Kent County cricketer gets paid?
01:57Um... 30k? 250 a year? 250,000 a year? Really? Way more than what I get paid for my job. Well, like 18 grand a year? Yeah. I was going to say like 20, 22. Maybe a bit less. Maybe like a bit of a side hustle. 10? 15?
02:13Well, certainly some interesting answers there in Canterbury. Tier 2 teams don't have the same level of investment as those in Tier 1, meaning players often have to work alongside their cricket to make ends meet. Let's find out then what does a day in the life of a Tier 2 women's county cricket player look like? We spent a day with Kent captain Megan Belt.
02:33Pefferminty is meant to wake you up a bit more. So if I've got a long day in training today, I have one. It should wake me up a little bit more.
02:40So I'm a big fan of hoops. Really exciting, isn't it? I'm not a massive breakfast eater in the morning. But yeah, I think just some cereal and nothing too big. I'm a big fan of having a big lunch and a big dinner.
02:56Our team now, where it's the new structure for women's cricket, we've got Tier 1 and Tier 2. We're Tier 2. We were just thinking about getting a mortgage and I hate to say about money, but the money that I would have earned as a professional cricket player wasn't enough to cover all of the mortgage that we were trying to get. Whereas working as a teacher full time, it is.
03:18Oh, he's a little bit more needy. I don't get much of a rest when I'm at home because he's just in your face a little bit.
03:28I'm good. See you later.
03:30So today, today's my really busy day actually. I normally get in a little bit earlier and plan my lessons and stuff, but I've already done that so I didn't need to.
03:40Teaching kids that are struggling with something and then making them better, I think for me that's the most rewarding thing.
03:50Morning. That's Teach Ari. I'm going to talk about the Christmas story and Bethlehem and they're going to start drawing little pictures of Bethlehem and what they think it looked like back in the day.
04:01Who can tell me what religion is the Christmas story? Flynn. They're a really nice bunch of kids. Yeah, they're really engaged.
04:12And I think the Christmas story is just more, it's very magical. So I think for them, they get very excited then about Christmas and yeah, I love teaching it.
04:22Well done. See you later. Just finished Ari. Come in Roman. Ordering fractions with the same denominator. Okay.
04:34Being a captain, I've got a managed behaviour of the women's players, not as much as children in the classroom, but I think it's being disciplined, organised.
04:42They do really cross over and having that sporting mindset, I think helps you understand children a little bit better.
04:48Yes, George. Yeah, so just finished maths. Really good maths lesson today. And then yeah, on to driving to London for some more cricket training.
05:02I'm done for the day and now off to London for some Kent training, meeting up with the Kent women to train. So looking forward to it.
05:09It's taken about two hours today to get from Canterbury to Beckenham near London. So yeah, it's quite a late night for me. This is the training grounds. This is the Kent training grounds here.
05:21Hello. All right. The most rewarding thing I would say is after a long day, coming and doing something that you absolutely love and getting better at it as well. There's a nice feeling and just coming and seeing the girls.
05:27The squads, they're happy to see me, I hope. So yeah, I think that is the most rewarding thing.
05:45I'm just going to do parents evening and finished training slightly earlier. So I need to do online parents evening. I've got four appointments tonight. So yes, hopefully it all goes okay.
05:55I've got to try and make do and find it. I might sit here and then put a little table there or something. So I think the parents might be a bit confused about it all.
06:03Hi. Hello. Hello. I do feel tired. I think when I get home, I sleep really well. So when I get home tonight, I will just go straight to bed and not time for dinner tonight, actually.
06:17So I might just have to grab something on the way home, quick something to eat or when I get home, make a sandwich or something.
06:24You've got to commit. If you want to be high up in sport, you've got to make sacrifices. So yeah, that's why I do it all.
06:32Oh, I'm sorry. That was so long. All good.
06:39Well, an absolutely jam packed schedule for Megan there and our reporter, Michael Gorhan was following her for the day and joins me now.
06:46Michael, just explain why is it the captain of Kent women's has a day like that?
06:50Yeah, no, you're right, Henry. I mean, we just saw her there before she's even thought about picking up a cricket ball.
06:55She's done sort of a full day at work. And that reality is actually built into the system.
06:59Now, women's domestic cricket in England has actually undergone its biggest sort of shake up in years.
07:03And there's now three tiers. So in 2024, counties were invited to apply for tier one status and there were eight spots available.
07:10Now, the England and Wales Cricket Board or the ECB, they then chose which teams based on things like facilities and long term plans would get one of those places.
07:18And Kent didn't end up getting a tier one license. They ended up in tier two.
07:23Now, obviously, there was huge disappointment at the club because of this.
07:26At the time, the club chair, Simon Phillips, said that the decision was hard to take.
07:30He said that, you know, as the most successful county team in the history of women's cricket,
07:35offering the only dedicated women's performance centre at Beckenham, that this was a really difficult decision to swallow.
07:41But as we've seen in that package there, there is still a real optimism at the club and there remains really a fierce ambition for them to get back into tier one.
07:50Yeah, of course. And you spoke a little bit there about the financial implications.
07:53Now you've been digging into the figures specifically. Tell us a bit more about that.
07:56Yes, the two things to look at really here in terms of centralised funding, tier one counties get about one point five million a year from the ECB.
08:03Now, on the flip side of that, tier two teams get about a seventh of that.
08:06So two hundred and thirty thousand pounds, which is, you know, not much at all, considering, you know, this this money goes towards things like staff, medical support and other facilities.
08:14Now, in terms of salaries as well, if we look at that, the salaries in tier two, you don't get a salary.
08:19There is no guaranteed salary. But in tier one, it's between twenty and twenty eight thousand pounds.
08:23So, like you say, on the financial side of things, there is quite a massive disparity, really.
08:28No, it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, when you see that day there, it's just absolute madness what they have to do to balance those two jobs.
08:33Remarkable. Incredible, really. Incredible.
08:35Well, we've heard now from the captain, but what have the management of the club made of their first season in the second division?
08:41I sat down with head coach James Hockley to discuss.
08:44So then, James, how do you reflect on Kent's first season as a tier two side?
08:49I think it was a really big learning curve the whole season.
08:52I think going into the winter last year, coming out and coming into tier two for the first time, I think as a squad, we sort of had to rebuild the whole squad completely.
09:01So we wasn't really setting any targets as such. I think it was just about competing as best we can and see where we were.
09:08I think it was a tough year performance wise. I think we all reflect on that quite well and understand that we struggled a bit in terms of some of our performances.
09:18But it gives us a real pathway of what we need to do this winter.
09:22You spoke quite a bit there about on the pitch performance. Logistically, what challenges have you faced off the pitch since being a tier two team?
09:28I reckon there's probably 13 or 14 Kent players that have left us to go and play professional cricket.
09:35So that has a challenge in itself to be able to compete.
09:38Then the cost of players travelling to and from games, they're travelling all over the country really to come to training.
09:45To get the girls together when they're working, they're full time workers, they're mums, they're at university, whatever it might be.
09:51They're on different pathways to us sometimes as well because some of them are in the Suri Academy.
09:55Also, they can't come to every training session because sometimes it can be costly for them.
10:00You've spoken a little bit then about losing players. Is there a concern around losing talent, particularly young talent?
10:05Unfortunately, it's the space we're in at the moment because I think our pathway historically has been really, really strong.
10:10We've created, we've generated so much talent that's come through our pathway.
10:14So in terms of that, my philosophy is very much that I would love to be able to produce professional athletes, professional cricketers.
10:22And unfortunately, where Kent sits at the moment, we're not going to be able to offer them that.
10:26So can we push them into situations where they can have a professional journey?
10:30Because at the end of the day, it's down to the player.
10:32We want the players to get as far along their cricketing career as they can.
10:36We're into the winter months now then. What does your schedule look like as a tier two side?
10:40And how does that differ from if you've been put in tier one, for example?
10:43So we have at the moment, we've got two sessions a week.
10:47And the difference is the pros, the tier ones will be together four times a week at the moment at this time of year.
10:54So it is a huge difference in terms of what you can do with S&C, physios, psychologists, nutritionists.
11:02It's a whole different ballgame.
11:04Moving forward then, what would you say are the short and then the long term goals for Kent women's cricket?
11:08So short term is to try and compete in tier two.
11:10It's difficult to say we want to win trophies because we don't quite know how we're going to sit in tier two next year.
11:16But we hope to be more competitive.
11:18In terms of long term, I think it would be lovely to be back in and amongst the fold of being professional again.
11:23But for the short term, it's then how do we make us competitive enough in tier two leading up to that point so we can hopefully go to ECB and say we're ready to be professional cricketers again.
11:35Well, fascinating chat there with James.
11:37That's it from us this evening on KMTV.
11:39In the meantime, you can check out our special programmes by visiting our website, kmtv.co.uk.
11:45Thank you very much for watching.
11:47Good night.
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