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• Durham chief insists issues with the ECB are in the past

  Chief executive Tim Bostock says Durham being given a tier one women’s team is the “most visible way” the England and Wales Cricket Board has put past issues with the county to bed.

  Durham were stripped of Test status and demoted to Division Two of the County Championship in October 2016 as part of a raft of unprecedented sanctions for accepting a £3.8million bailout from the ECB.

  While Durham are back in Division One this season, captain Scott Borthwick said last year there remains some bitterness towards the ECB from a lot of people at the club at how the situation was handled.

  But Bostock thinks relations, at least at hierarchical level, thawed some time ago and he argued Durham being awarded one of the eight professionalised women’s teams last week is a telling indicator of that.

  “I was always focused on fixing what was in front of me and rebuilding relationships everywhere but particularly with the ECB,” Bostock, who joined Durham in July 2018, told the PA news agency.

  “No matter what, if you’re going to war with your governing body, who are your main funders and your main decision-makers, you’re not going to get anywhere and that’s the same in any walk of life.

  “Our focus was on rebuilding our reputation and by doing that we got a place at the top table again, which meant we were in a position to influence in a positive way future decisions.

  “During the last period, the ECB has been very supportive of Durham. This isn’t the first time they’ve demonstrated it but this is the most visible way the ECB has demonstrated that the past is behind us.”

  The current women’s regional structure is being replaced next year as teams have been aligned with Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire.

  Bostock believes one of the biggest selling points in Durham’s pitch as they edged out rival bids from the likes of Yorkshire was that all their home games would be played at the Seat Unique Riverside.

  “The stability of the club is one thing and our vision for the future,” Bostock said. “Reputation-wise, we took a bit of a hit a few years ago but we’ve managed to rebuild that.

  “All of our games will be played at the main ground, an international ground and giving the women the stage to demonstrate what they can do and not have to play on outgrounds.

  “There will be the same effort and expertise going into making the women the best they can possibly be as what goes into the men. That is absolutely right.”

  The decision seemingly boosts Durham’s prospects of being involved in The Hundred from next year, with the ECB contemplating expanding the tournament from eight to 10 teams and pursuing private investment.

  One of the proposals under consideration and said to be favoured by the ECB is giving host counties 51 per cent of equity in their team that they could then sell off to receive a significant windfall.

  Indeed, the financial assistance could go a long way to paying off a £27million hotel complex at Durham’s ground, currently in the planning stage, which Bostock estimates will be a “game-changer” for the county, quadrupling profits and doubling turnover.

  “There’s no doubt having a professional women’s team helps with aspirations for a team in The Hundred,” Bostock added.

  “It’s critical we get a Hundred team here. Financially it’s going to be a massive boon. The difference between The Hundred teams and non-Hundred teams financially is going to be like chalk and cheese.

  “The proposed sell-off of the teams is a significant amount of money. It would put the club on a really, really strong financial footing which then goes all the way back into the development of cricket with the men and women, it all mushrooms from there.”

• Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould

  The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.

  The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.

  The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.

  Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.

  “We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.

  “When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.

  “You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”

  As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.

  “Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.

  “I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”

• Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement

  Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.

  Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.

  She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.

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  “I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.

  “I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.

  “But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.

  “I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.

  “I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”

  Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.

  “It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.

  “It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”

  Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.

  “I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.

  “I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”