England bowler Bell says new fund will encourage more girls to pick up a cricket ball

MANCHESTER, England : Lauren Bell had no women role models in cricket while growing up, so the England bowler gets a kick out of the young female fans she meets who tell her they plan to wear their hair in plaits exactly like she does on game days.

Building on the success of last year's record-breaking Ashes series, Metro Bank and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have teamed up to launch a fund that Bell said will help grow the girls' game.

The Metro Bank Girls in Cricket Fund will focus on recruiting, educating and supporting people working in girls' cricket, with a goal of tripling the number of girls' teams at clubs by the end of 2026.

"When I was younger, I'd get asked 'Oh, who's your role model? Who did you watch growing up playing cricket?' I had no woman that I was like 'I want to be like her when I'm older'," Bell said in an interview with Reuters.

"It's getting a lot better and us as an England team, our biggest thing is to inspire and entertain and be role models and the more girls that can see us and be like 'I want to be like her,' I guess the more people will get involved."

Bell said she has seen huge growth in visibility for the women's game since the 2022 World Cup where England finished runners-up and last year's Women's Ashes in England, which sold a record-94,000 tickets, nearly three times the 32,000 total attendance for the 2019 series.

"There's moments that have stuck with me," Bell said. "I was playing at the World Cup and would meet a girl that wanted plaits, or a mum would say 'I've had to plait (my daughter's) hair every day since you started plaiting your hair,' stuff like that.

"You obviously don't realise (the impact) and then you meet these girls, it's nice. We're having quite a big