Canada women’s international cricketer Danielle McGahey has announced her retirement from international cricket following the changes announced to the ICC’s gender eligibility criteria.

The ICC board met yesterday (November 21) and announced that “any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken”.

McGahey became the first trans woman to play international cricket earlier this year when she represented Canada against Brazil in a T20I. She has played six T20Is in her career with a high score of 48. She met the ICC’s previous criteria for trans women to play international cricket, which was that players had to keep their testosterone levels at “less than 5 nanomoles per litre continuously for a period of at least 12 months, and that she is ready, willing and able to keep it below that level for so long as she continues to compete in the female category of competition”.

However, following the announcement from the ICC, McGahey released a statement on her Instagram account announcing her international retirement.

“Following the ICC’s decision this morning, it is with a very heavy heart that I must say that my international cricketing career is over,” McGahey wrote. “As quickly as it begun, it must now end. Thank you so much to everybody who has supported me in my journey, from my all of my teammates, all of the opposition, the cricketing community.”

“While I hold my opinions on the ICC’s decision, they are irrelevant,” she wrote. “What matters is the message being sent to millions of trans women today, a messaging say that we don’t belong. I promise I will not stop fighting for equality for us in our sport, we deserve the right to play cricket at the highest level, we are not a threat to the integrity or safety of the sport.”

In the ICC’s statement releasing their new rules, the Board’s chief executive Geoff Allardice was quoted as saying: “The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and is founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players.”

While the ICC has effectively banned trans women from playing international women’s cricket, individual boards are free to make their own criteria for inclusion. The ICC regulations will be reviewed within two years.

*Image credit: Cricket Canada

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