The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
For those who don’t follow cricket closely, there are a few significant rule variations for women’s cricket - namely a smaller/lighter cricket ball and reduced field\boundary dimensions.
There are also implicit limits in the upper end of cricket performance- Elyse Perry holds the record for the fastest womens cricket ball bowled ag 130.5 kph, while Shoaib Akhtar holds the overall record at 161.3 kph. There’s an interesting article here that goes into more detail on the precise physical characteristics that influence bowling, where they define male fasf bowling at >122.9kph and female fast bowling at >97.8, a 30% ish difference: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35259727/
This is all to say that there are very clear and established differences between men and women’s cricket in the interest of safety and fairness already baked into the laws of the game. If you accept that male puberty leads to a disproportionate advantage in bone density/muscle mass vs cis women, then this decision is sensible. The exact numbers are hard to quantify, skill and natural technique plays a huge part in cricket, but on the bell curve of something like pace bowling the risk of a trans woman significantly outperforming cis women is undeniable.
Recently in the uk didn’t a football player have thier knee broken by a transgender woman and then all the women refused to play that team again ?