No One Should Fear us as Competitors: FairBreak Founder Shaun Martyn | Exclusive – News18

In an exclusive conversation with News18 CricketNext, FairBreak Global founder Shaun Martyn talks about the Global Women’s T20, the challenges he faced during early years and what the future holds. The founder further talks about the decision to postpone the edition scheduled for US later this year, invitations to Indian players and more.

Excerpts:

How did the idea of Fairbreak Global Women’s T20 come to your mind?

Short story… It started 15 years ago or so when I was paying Australian female cricketers to play corporate matches. This was before they had annual contracts. Then I was doing management work for Lisa Sthalekar. I also wrote a book with her which was released in 2012. When she was retired in 2013, she was the highest-paid female cricketer in the world at 15,000 dollars a year. We started this called the WICL – Women’s International Cricket League – with a view to be doing what FairBreak does now. That pushed Australia to start the Women’s BBL and ECB to start Super League. We were seen as rebels but it wasn’t what we had proposed. We merely wanted better conditions for female players. We weren’t looking to compete with anyone.

Lot of time and hardwork went into FairBreak and it took us lot of time to get the necessary sanctions from the ICC. Lisa went the commentary way and I starting shooting a documentary series called FairBreak which was based on Australia’s idea of opportunity and equality. That was the premise. And then it took us seven years to get the sanction from ICC for the tournament. Initially we formed a partnership with Cricket Hong Kong for the two tournaments we have done so far. That really is the short story and now we have the plans to do some more tournaments and – USA is a big focus of ours.

We have just launched a US foundation in Hong Kong and have complete the structural work around the UK foundation. A lot of work we do is socially impact work with the opportunity we create for women. So our foundations will now support a lot of that work and the FairBreak touring team which we always had will now be a foundation touring team, representing the foundations. We will continue to run at least two tournaments a year, from next year.

It took you a long time to get the necessary sanctions and in very little time you got the recognition and appreciation from the ICC for your efforts in pulling off successful editions. How satisfying has it been to see the kind of results you have achieved in little time?

Incredibly challenging but it’s great to have the fantastic relationship we have with ICC now. They understand what we do and where our place is in world cricket. They appreciate what we do and they don’t fear us as competitors. No one should fear us as competitors. We are not here to compete with anyone, we are here to just help grow the game. We know have a great relationship with ICC and have put behind the challenges we had in the past. We are hoping to now take the FairBreak brand to a whole new level.

You said that FairBreak is not looking to compete with anyone but success of leagues like Women’s Premier League will surely act as a catalyst to your journey.

What we at FairBreak is do is quite unique. We have players from different countries assembled and then also showcasing the domestic talent. At times the players we find get the opportunity to excel in leagues like WPL, WBBL. It’s always great to complement each other.

How big a miss was not having Indian players in the editions you have had so far?

Indian players have always been invited. We can’t demand players as the respective boards have to release players. Every board in the world releases players to us. Invitations will always be extended to Indian players and that’s all we can do.

Why was the September edition of the tournament, scheduled in the US, postponed?

We are still going to play in the US next year but we took the break because US is a unique market. When you take a sport to the US market, you just can’t put on a game. You need to put on a show, a spectacle. We want to first spend some time establishing our brand in the US. We want to spend some time educating the American audience about women’s cricket in particular before we launch a full tournament there. So it was purely a strategic call. We are going to get one good shot establishing ourselves in the US and we want to do it properly.