Cricket's Governing Body bans transgenders from women's international cricket

As an outcome of the recently concluded board meeting, Cricket’s Governing Body banned transgenders from women’s international cricket, especially those who have been through any kind of male puberty or converted into a female from a male. The committee came up after a review from the medical advisory committee of the apex cricket council.

“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any male-female participants who have been through any form of male-puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” said Cricket’s governing body in a statement through a media release.

“The review, which was led by the ICC Medical Advisory Committee chaired by Dr Peter Harcourt, relates solely to gender eligibility for international women’s cricket, whilst gender eligibility at domestic level is a matter for each Member Board, which may be impacted by local legislation. The regulations will be reviewed within two years,” the statement adds further.

Here's what the Chief Executive said about new gender eligibility regulations

Other than this, there came a statement from the Chief Executive of the council, Geoff Allardice, in favour of women’s cricket. He staunchly advocated the principles for the development and upholding of the integrity of women’s international cricket, alongside the safety of women cricketers.

 “The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and are founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players,” said Allardice.

Apart from this big decision on gender eligibility regulations, cricket’s governing body also came up with a big decision around the suspension of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board from international cricket. In a recent turnaround of events, the council allowed Sri Lanka to take part in the bilateral and multi-team international cricket series but the funds of the Sri Lanka Cricket Team will be controlled by the apex body.