Widening the Wicket: Tackling Barriers and Supporting Cricket Participation for Women of Ethnic Minorities

There is plenty of evidence for inequalities in physical and mental health. A recent Birmingham City Council (2025) report showed lower healthy life expectancy for women in Birmingham compared to the national average. In addition, the Birmingham Community Health Profile Report showed higher occurrence and severity of poor mental health in ethnic minority communities. To address these inequalities, it is important that behavioural programmes to improve health are tailored to meet the needs of communities who need these programmes the most. Physical activity is a commonly used behavioural intervention to support improvements in physical and mental health. Like poor health, levels of physical activity are not equally distributed in society: people from ethnic minorities, especially women, are less likely to be physically active enough to achieve health benefits. Further, women from ethnic minority communities were deemed to be less active than women of white or mixed ethnic groups (Race Disparity Unit, 2021). Therefore, there is an urgent need to enhance our knowledge on how to overcome the specific barriers preventing women from ethnic minorities from being more physically active. Additionally, to support continued engagement, we need to explore how individual factors influence the outcomes of these programmes. The Warwickshire Cricket Foundation (WCF – the community division of the Warwickshire County Cricket Club) is a dedicated charity that uses cricket to engage and inspire people in Warwickshire to have positive experiences. The foundation runs a range of cricket-based community programmes. Given the low levels of physical activity in women from ethnic communities in Birmingham, WCF has a specific focus on programmes for this population. WCF have recently received funding from the England Cricket Board for the ‘Cricket Cities’ programme to expand their programmes for girls and women from ethnic minorities. The Cricket Cities programme offers novel sessions and events providing a unique opportunity to evaluate a range of community-based cricket programmes for this population. Previously programmes have received positive feedback; however, WCF are aware many women invited do not take up, or complete, the programme. WCF is keen to get a better, evidence-based understanding of the reasons why women do or do not take part, i.e., their barriers and facilitators to participation, as well as identify ways to enhance the effectiveness of their programmes for overall health in this population. Theory (COM-B; Michie et al., 2011; 2014) will be used to guide the development of methods for coaches and WCF to better assist specific aspects of a behaviour to support the needs of women from ethnic minorities within the community. The aim of this fellowship is to develop a toolkit to enhance the uptake of and continued engagement of community-based physical activity programmes to improve health in women from ethnic minorities. This aim will be achieved by the following objectives: 1. Explore reasons why women from ethnic minorities do, or do not, take part and engage with cricket programs; 2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the cricket programmes to improve health, and explore individual characteristics that could influence the effectiveness of the cricket programmes; 3. Co-develop with coaches and participants a toolkit to support women of ethnic minorities to take part and engage with cricket programmes; and 4. Review and adapt a toolkit for coaches to support continued engagement with sports-based physical activity programmes for women from ethnic minorities.