Sue Redfern able to blast stereotypes as standing umpire
When Sue Redfern walks onto the sector in Bristol on Sunday as the primary girl to face as an umpire in a Vitality Blast match, she is going to accomplish that hoping to make greater than one other vital step in her groundbreaking profession. She needs to make method for ladies in cricket, together with herself, to interrupt freed from stereotypes.
Redfern’s function standing alongside fellow umpire Ian Blackwell at Seat Unique Stadium as Gloucestershire host Middlesex represents an opportunity to make sure that she and different feminine umpires aren’t pigeonholed as officers for ladies’s cricket.
“This Blast debut is important because a lot of people know me as a female umpire in women’s cricket and yes, whilst that is really important and I hold that dear to my heart and I’m very lucky to be given the opportunity to umpire in World Cups and international women’s cricket, it’s so important that people see women in different roles throughout, in men’s cricket as well,” Redfern advised ESPNcricinfo.
“It’s about providing female umpires with steps in where they want to progress, not just in women’s cricket but in men’s cricket, like myself. I want to umpire for women’s and men’s games. One isn’t better than the other. It’s about different challenges, it’s about different opportunities across those pathways.
“Myself and different feminine colleagues have had the chance to umpire at excessive ranges in worldwide ladies’s cricket. Through the ICC improvement panel of umpires a variety of us have had the chance to umpire Associate Nations worldwide males’s cricket. I feel the following real step is that if a feminine umpire has the ambition that she needs to progress in a male enjoying pathway, there’s recognition that really it does not matter what gender you might be, so long as you’ve gotten the abilities related to excessive efficiency for umpiring in these environments.”
Redfern’s appointment also points to another equally important factor, as she sees it, visibility. It’s a theme prominent amid the seemingly explosive growth in publicity around women in cricket, and other sports, in England and beyond.
“We know that whenever you take a look at how ladies’s cricket has accelerated, it is had extra publicity, so if individuals see ladies umpiring, ladies will say, ‘cling on a minute’, the visibility is the important thing factor there,” said Redfern, a regular umpire on the women’s international circuit. “Once we have got that visibility it is ensuring it is clear what you are able to do to turn into an umpire – the programs, the coaching, employment – the place are you able to go and the help you get.
“My experience is I’ve worked hard across various platforms in men’s and women’s cricket to progress my way up to be a professional umpire and there’s no reason why other women can’t do that. What is really important is that they are being given the opportunity to do that and that continues and then if they’re good enough they should have exactly the same chances as any other candidate.”
In a weblog for the ECB about her upcoming expertise within the Blast, Redfern, 45, spoke of feeling lucky to work in a subject she loves and reminding herself that she has reached this level via arduous work and on advantage. But does she see a time when she does not really feel the necessity to remind herself that she deserves to be the place she is, when her job is simply one thing she does and enjoys?
“Every umpire that progresses has to work hard,” she stated. “Your performances will dictate the next opportunity which you get and the key thing here is making sure that there’s no bias in selection and there are opportunities whether you’re male or female and it is based on performance.
“We should not be stereotyping ladies into ladies’s cricket, males into males’s cricket. It ought to be about what talent units are wanted for this sport of cricket, who has bought these talent units, and we have to take away any bias that there could be throughout the pathways.”
Redfern, a former England player and now a regular official on the international women’s circuit, was an on-field umpire in a World Cricket League Division Five match between Oman and Nigeria in 2016. With West Indies-based umpire Jacqueline Williams acting as third umpire in the same match, it was the first time two women had officiated in a men’s ICC tournament fixture. Last year, Redfern became the first woman to officiate in an England men’s home international as fourth umpire during the first T20I against Sri Lanka in Cardiff.
“The subsequent real step is that if a feminine umpire has the ambition that she needs to progress in a male enjoying pathway, there’s recognition that really it does not matter what gender you might be, so long as you’ve gotten the abilities related to excessive efficiency for umpiring in these environments.”
Sue Redfern
In 2021, Australian Claire Polosak became the first woman to officiate in a men’s Test when she was the fourth umpire for the third Test between Australia and India at the SCG. Polosak had also been a standing umpire in a one-day match between Associate Nations Oman and Namibia in 2019. In April this year, New Zealander Kim Cotton became the first female umpire to stand in a men’s international between two ICC full-member countries in a T20I between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Dunedin.
Domestically in the women’s game, the inaugural season of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy in 2020 saw ten women work as standing umpires during the tournament. So there has been progress in developing female umpiring talent and providing opportunities in both women’s and men’s cricket. But Redfern believes there is more to be done. During the English winter she will work with the ICC to help male and female officials in Europe develop their skills.
During her preparations for Sunday, Redfern was additionally the TV umpire in Thursday’s Blast fixture between Lancashire and Yorkshire, and there is extra on her to-do checklist.
“The Blast sport developing is one other step when it comes to my ambition after which following that will be a first-class debut within the males’s County Championship, that will be an aspiration,” she said. “Then shifting on and upwards to the best stage I can officiate in. Obviously that would come with males’s worldwide cricket. But lots of people have gotten aspirations to umpire in that surroundings as properly. The key factor is I continue learning, I preserve growing and I preserve enhancing as an official.”
Valkerie Baynes is a normal editor, ladies’s cricket, at ESPNcricinfo