The new summer is fast-approaching, and with it comes the start of a new era for Women’s Cricket in England and Wales.
No longer are there regional teams such as the Northern Diamonds. Now, all teams are aligned to counties.
The ECB have set-up a three-tiered structure. Tier 1 is the only one which is fully professional.
Yorkshire are in Tier 2 for one season only and will be elevated for 2026. With that, the county have contracted 12 full-time professionals ahead of 2025 as they prepare for that step up.
They have a new head coach in Rich Pyrah, and he will be assisted by Chris Brice, who is also heading up the Academy.
Pyrah has an extensive CV as a player and a coach. As a player, he won the men’s County Championship title on two occasions in 2014 and 2015 with Yorkshire. Upon retirement at the end of 2015, he went straight into coaching and led the Yorkshire Diamonds Women in the Kia Super League in 2016.
He then worked as the fast-bowling and assistant coach for Yorkshire’s men.
For a special International Women’s Day feature, we spoke to Pyrah about his new role with Yorkshire women and his hopes and aims for the forthcoming summer and longer-term too.
Picture by YCCC. Ami Campbell is one of Yorkshire’s 12 contracted professionals for 2025 and beyond.
Rich, you are almost six months into your new role. How are you enjoying it?
I’ve absolutely loved it – it’s been brilliant. The girls have been brilliant and have created a fantastic environment.
The girls we’ve signed, most of them have been in and around first-team cricket in the past without being regulars. So to watch them grow over the last four or five months, with the opportunity of being a frontline player for Yorkshire, has been very exciting.
The thing we need now is some game time. There’s only so much you can do indoor, and that’s why the pre-season tour to Abu Dhabi in a couple of weeks is going to be so valuable.
The things we’ve been working on all winter, we can put them under pressure and see where we get to.
You spoke about the honour and pride you felt when you were appointed last September. Can you just expand on that a bit more now?
There’s absolutely no doubt that this is up there with the biggest honours in my career because you’re not only a head coach of a Yorkshire team but head coach of the first professional Yorkshire Women’s team.
It’s a long-term project, and there are a lot of things we need to put in place to get where we need to in five years’ time. To be here at the beginning of it, and to be able to shape it, is one of the best jobs in the country.
I know what cricket means to Yorkshire and the people, and I’m fully invested in this – fully invested.
I love coaching, and to see players grow is what keeps me going. The development of the girls this winter has really excited me.
Picture by YCCC. Head coach Rich Pyrah leads Yorkshire Women into the new era of domestic cricket in England.
Before taking on this role, you worked away from cricket. What did you learn which can transfer into your coaching career?
I was a project manager for a big Commercial Fit-Out firm. I was managing a number of big contracts, and there were a lot of people involved in each.
It taught me different management styles.
It was brilliant, and I learnt so much – a lot of which will help me going forwards. But cricket’s my life and what I love the most.
I just knew deep down that I wanted to get back in. But it was about choosing the right time and right job to get back in. And this was it.
Once we had a few conversations, I knew straightaway that this was the right one for me.
Let’s talk about targets. Firstly, what are your short-term targets for Yorkshire Women in 2025?
Look, we’ll be going out to try and win every game, of course we will. But I just want people to understand where we’re at.
We’re not guaranteed success this year. We have a long way to go. We’re going to be up and down.
We’ll have players missing at various points of the season. Four have just been retained for the Hundred (Sterre Kalis, Beth Langston, Rachel Slater and Lauren Winfield-Hill), which clashes with some of our 50-over cricket. A couple are also due to be going out on loan.
We will be short on numbers, but that gives opportunity to our Academy girls. And those opportunities, they would never have had if we were in Tier 1 with a senior squad of 15 or 16 contracted pros.
It will be a tough couple of years, but what it will do is present a lot of opportunities. The growth that these girls are going to get from having these, they will be a lot further ahead than they would have been otherwise.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Beth Langston will be a key asset for Yorkshire with ball and bat.
There are a number of points for this season.
By the end of it, I want us to have a real clear identity in terms of how we go about things and how we play. The team values are part of that, so is a strategy on how we play our T20 and 50-over cricket.
We want each individual player to know their role within the squad.
We need to find some leaders. From the Northern Diamonds team who were here at Headingley, a lot of senior players have left. We have a lot of young players, and we need to find a group of leaders.
We also need to find out about the girls. Where are they at cricket wise?
At the beginning of this winter, I didn’t want to pigeon-hole where they played in terms of roles. I wanted to give them an opportunity to explore and improve. They’ve done that brilliantly so far.
Earlier this winter, you did an interview in which you talked about a five-year plan for Yorkshire Women, which brings us on to the long-term. Please can you explain more?
Yes, there is a five-year plan.
We are where we are for Tier 2 this year.
Tier 1 in a year’s time, we’re not just going to go out and sign seven or eight new players. We will look to sign where we can to strengthen the team. But the way things have worked, everybody’s signed long-term contracts elsewhere and players aren’t going to be available for two, three or even four years.
So we’re going to try and build on what we’ve got by bringing some Academy players through. But it’s not just the playing side, it’s the infrastructure as well.
We will look to build the support staff around the professional team and also the Academy and Pathway.
At the minute, there’s only myself and Chris Brice full time, so we need to grow that side of things and bring in more skill specific coaches rather than just general assistant coaches. That will feed right down to the Academy and Pathway.
We want leads in fast bowling, spin and batting. At the minute, it’s quite general. We also want more strength and conditioning coaches.
“It’s not just success on the field in five years. We’e building a legacy where we’ve got players coming through for the next 10 years, and it’s about putting the right things in place to be able to do that.”
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Chris Brice is Rich Pyrah’s assistant coach and also the lead Academy coach.
What have you been working on with the players this winter?
There are a couple of key things.
One, we’ve asked the girls to be open-minded when it comes to exploring and developing their games. We haven’t wanted to pigeon-hole them in any way.
Two, a lot of our work has been around shifting the mindset.
When we first came in, a lot of the players’ back lifts with the bat were quite short and with no follow through. Our language as coaches has been around trying to strike the ball and to get their hands up, taking away a bit of a fear of failure.
You can see now when you come to a training session that they’ve got a nice, full back swing.
With the ball, we’ve done some technical work, but a lot of it has been around mindset – run in that bit harder as a seamer and attack the crease. Bowl it quicker rather than keeper up, bowl it straight and set straight fields.
Someone like a Grace Hall, for example, you will see her bowl and it will be a bit different to last year or the year before. She’s put on five or six miles an hour in pace this winter through her training and technical work.
With the spinners, instead of taking the pace off the ball, which has been successful in women’s cricket, we want them to spin it hard.
And they’ve enjoyed it.
It’s about enjoyment. Like I said before, the environment the girls have created has been great. It’s been one of the best I’ve ever been involved in. They’re there for each other and they have fun.
At the end of the day, they’re playing sport, and I want them to go out there, express themselves, enjoy it and have fun playing for Yorkshire. You’ll see the best out of them for doing that.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Homegrown star Grace Hall has progressed through the Northern Diamonds Academy onto a professional contract with Yorkshire.
Do you agree that this is a really exciting moment for the Women’s game in England?
Absolutely. There’s a real excitement around it.
The game is growing so fast.
I’ve watched a lot of women’s cricket this winter – I’ve watched a lot of the Women’s Premier League in India. And you can see that scores are increasing quickly. Totals of 200 are getting knocked off, totals of 180 are consistently scored.
Going at nine an over was unheard of a few years ago.
That’s where I’ll go back to that change in mindset I was talking about.
We need to be scoring at nine or 10 an over in T20 cricket because things are changing so fast.
The skill level of our girls is really high, and our challenge as coaches is to get it higher.
Given England’s recent disappointment in the Ashes, it looks like a very important moment in the Women’s game?
The Aussies have a good team, and it was always going to be a difficult tour for England.
The change in domestic set-up is going to be an advantage to us, having a fully professional Tier 1 and other levels feeding into that. But you’re not going to see the difference this year, or maybe next. It will be in three or four years.
It will be a long process.
If we get the infrastructure right all around the country, I think you will see players coming through to push the girls who are in the England squad. That’s what’s needed, as much pressure as possible being put on those who hold the shirt.
Picture by Matthew Lewis-ICC/via Getty Images. Batter Erin Thomas has been on England Under 19s duty this winter.
While you are aiming to progress the club’s Academy and Emerging Players Programme players to challenge for senior places in the coming summers, you will have to recruit externally for 2026. When does that process start?
It starts with the pre-season tour. We’re going away with 12 professionals and four Academy players. It’s the first opportunity I get to see us in game mode. Where are we strong? Where are we lacking? Where’s the leadership coming from?
For Tier 1, we need a minimum of 15 players contracted. That means we have to sign three more players as pros.
I have a real good idea of what our strengths and weaknesses are now, but I want to let it ride out through some game time.
Recruitment is going to be key, clearly. It’s not just about skill, it’s about getting the right people in because, as I said earlier, we have a real good group now who have created a fantastic environment.
It will be tough because all of the players in Tier 1 are contracted for two or three years. It will be a long process.
In terms of player movement, it seems there is going to be fluidity throughout the tiered structure. While some of your players may go out on loan to get Tier 1 cricket this summer, others may come into your squad from Tier 1 or even Tier 3?
Yes. We have to have a real open mind this summer.
I think there will be quite a lot of chopping and changing around the circuit before it settles down a bit in a couple of years.
With no guaranteed second-team cricket in Tier 1, the teams with the bigger squads such as Durham and Surrey will have girls who won’t play a lot of cricket. They will try and fit them in with friendlies and second-team games, but it’s not going to be every week.
There could be opportunities for those girls to come and play a bit of Tier 2 cricket.
During the Hundred, we’ve lost four players to the Hundred already. That puts us down to eight contracted pros.
We will have to look outside the box a bit.
Picture by Ben Hoskins/Getty Images. Off-spinner Claudie Cooper has signed for Yorkshire having played her cricket with Surrey and the South East Stars.
Derbyshire are your round one opponents in the County T20 Cup – an FA Cup style competition which puts all three tiers together. How much are you and the players looking forward to that?
That will be fantastic. You speak to the girls, and they’re very excited about that.
It’s like the old school C&G Trophy in the men’s game, isn’t it.
We’ve all put a lot of time and effort in – players and coaches – and it will be fun.
Yes we have an inexperienced team, and we might have some Academy players in, but why can’t we go and beat a few of the top teams? It would be great for the group. But we have to get past Derbyshire first at Harrogate (May 5).
Earlier this winter, the club announced their new One Rose, One Club, One Yorkshire branding. What are your thoughts on that and how it has affected the Women’s team?
It’s not just words. There are actions to it.
I was head coach of the first Yorkshire Diamonds team, and there wasn’t a great deal of collaboration even though it fell under the same umbrella, technically.
Now this is properly part of the club.
The girls are getting their own dressing room.
The away dressing room is going to be fitted out with how they want it.
They’ve had an input into it. We train with the men in terms of the physical side of things. We do the spin classes with them, yoga as well. We’ve seen a real connection between both teams.
A pre-season tour is part of that, so is playing at Headingley.
I know we have a couple of games at York and Harrogate, one at Weetwood, but a good number of our games are at Headingley. That’s really exciting, and it means a lot to the girls. It makes them feel a part of it. ‘This is our home ground’.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Wicketkeeper-batter Maddie Ward is hoping to kick on from a senior debut for the Northern Diamonds last summer.
It hasn’t been all plain-sailing for you this winter because there is some frustrating injury news to report on fast bowler Jess Woolston. Can you bring us up to speed, please?
Jess has suffered a stress fracture in her right foot – her landing foot – and will be out for a period of time.
It was unbelievable, really. She had done so well with her bowling through the winter. She’d put on five or six miles per hour, which is a big jump for a seamer, and was getting to a decent intensity.
But she ran into bowl one day and said her foot hurt. And it turned out that she’d broke her foot. But it wasn’t just a regular break, it was a stress fracture.
There were so signs before it – it was so unfortunate.
She’s had it pinned.
Jess will come on pre-season tour with us. She will be moving then, and we’ll see what she can do. But she’s great around the group, and it will be so valuable to have her.
She’s got the full backing of us all, and we’ll get her back fit.
It’s hard to put a date on it yet. She has a few x-rays at various stages, which will dictate the exact timescale. Fingers crossed, everything goes well and her return is more mid-season than later on.
And finally, have you got a message for Yorkshire’s supporters ahead of the new season?
Please come down and watch us. Your support will be invaluable.
Look, there needs to be an understanding of where we’re at, and we need to back the girls.
It’s a brand new team. You will see some skilful cricket, some good cricket, but there will be ups and downs given we’re a young team. We might be playing a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old Academy player at certain times.
But what you will see is people, who understand the history and size of this club, fighting for the White Rose.
Yorkshire’s opening game of the new season is against Worcestershire Rapids at Headingley on Saturday April 19 (10.30am) in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup, League 2.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Fast bowler Jess Woolston has been sidelined with a stress fracture of her right foot.
