Nothing worth doing comes easy: Fair Break founder, Shaun Martyn

CHENNAI: At a time when the growth of women’s cricket seems inevitable with several boards coming up with their own franchise-based T20 competition, Fair Break Global have set themselves in a unique position.

The global invitational T20 tournament has grabbed the eyeballs of everyone including that of the ICC. They and Cricket Hong Kong were awarded the ICC Development Initiative of the Year for the Asian Region for their role in delivering the tournament in 2022. Shaun Martyn, Founder of Fair Break Global, spoke to this daily about the journey, the ICC award, the tournament in the USA and what lies ahead. Excerpts…

On the ICC award…
It’s an incredible achievement in receiving that award. But it’s really an award for a lot of people who have worked with me for a long period of time to get to where we are now. So it’s certainly not an individual award. It’s an award for every player and person that’s been a part of what we’ve done over a long period.

On how it began…
It probably started 15 years ago when I was paying some Australian players in corporate matches because they weren’t getting paid. And then with my work with Lisa Sthalekar and the book we wrote together and her retiring in 2013, We then set about creating what was WICL (Women’s International Cricket League) which is really what you see on the ground now. And that sort of pushed Cricket Australia to start the WBBL and the ECB to start the Super League. We were perceived as sort of rebels and radicals when we weren’t really trying to do that. We were just trying to create a space for women so that they could be rewarded for their efforts more fairly. I was filming a little documentary in which I’d called Fair Break and then I decided that I would change everything into that and that’s really the only smart thing I ever did really was change the name.

On the impact the tournament has made on players’ lives…
I always felt it would make a difference but when I find that players from more remote areas, they’ve used the money to go back and build their own home, and change the education status of their families and their children. The two things that I think are crucial is the quality of the cricket has to be very high. And then what impact that has had on communities. I suppose the other thing that the sporting diplomacy around what we do. I mean, we had a game here this week where the Falcons team was fielding 11 players from 11 different countries. I mean, there’s not a greater example of how countries can come together under one banner to support each other.

Does it bring more responsibilities?
I certainly feel more pressure than I did even to get it off the ground now, to maintain the quality and the standards that we’ve set. What we need now is more corporate support and corporate backing for what we’re doing. And I think that’ll come, I think the more awareness there is of what we’re doing and the difference it makes and we’ve seen it in the quality of the players as well.

On challenges…
It’s about the product that we produce and the results of that product are important. I mean, nothing worth doing comes easy. So, yeah, there are lots of challenges, but look, we’ve got to a position now where the ICC has sanctioned us for two tournaments a year. We’ve just been part of a wonderful ICC award. So, I think credibility for me is really important and the integrity of what we do.