Meet Katie Levick, Yorkshire cricket and Northern Superchargers’ unsung heroine

If International Women’s Day is about shining a light on the unsung role models within society then get the biggest spotlight you can find and point it at Katie Levick.
Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick. (Picture: Tony Johnson)Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick. (Picture: Tony Johnson)
Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick. (Picture: Tony Johnson)

The 28-year-old cricketer from Sheffield certainly deserves a little limelight.

For Levick is the epitome of an unheralded sporting hero. She is a role model and a trailblazer.

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She has been terrorising batters for years; from the age of 12 her leg spin was snaring victims in men’s cricket for Upper Haugh in the South Yorkshire League, right up to the present day as the leading non-international wicket-taker in the Kia Super League over a four-year span.

Yorkshire's Katie Levick celebrates taking the wicket of Lancashire's Emma Lamb in 2018 (Picture: SWPix.com)Yorkshire's Katie Levick celebrates taking the wicket of Lancashire's Emma Lamb in 2018 (Picture: SWPix.com)
Yorkshire's Katie Levick celebrates taking the wicket of Lancashire's Emma Lamb in 2018 (Picture: SWPix.com)

With a pedigree like that, Levick should have been in England’s team at the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 in Australia this past month.

Not so. For Levick’s story is one of what might have been, of a girl and then a woman ahead of her time, who might finally get caught up in the acceleration of the women’s game and reap the rewards of her years of sacrifice.

“There’s a running joke with my dad, that if I do anything it’s just before something happens,” Levick smiles, ruefully.

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“England created an Under-19s when I turned 20. They created an academy once I’d passed 21. I missed out on both.

Ready for The Hundred: Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick at Headingley. Picture: Tony JohnsonReady for The Hundred: Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick at Headingley. Picture: Tony Johnson
Ready for The Hundred: Yorkshire cricketer Katie Levick at Headingley. Picture: Tony Johnson

“It became a running joke, it’s not meant to be for you. I’ve always fallen just the wrong side of it.”

There are no regrets, though. After all, it was Levick who took the decision aged 21 as a promising player on the England pathway, to withdraw from international contention because even just seven years ago, women’s cricket had very little future.

“I don’t think regret is the right word,” she says. “I was very realistic at the time. I was 21, fresh out of university. I didn’t have an affluent family.

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“My parents had supported me since day one, and it wasn’t that they wouldn’t support me any more, but I’d been raised in a way that it was time for me to support them.

“At the time, there were maybe 12, 15 centrally-contracted players. That’s not a life to live by. So I don’t regret it. I wish I was given the opportunity to play at that stage, who wouldn’t, but I’m absolutely fine with it.

“I’ve loved cricket all my life, I’ve played it all my life. It might not have got me opportunities that other people think it should have done, but it’s given me other opportunies.”

Levick grew up in a cricketing family. Her elder brother Adam played for Upper Haugh and it was there where she first learned to play. There was no girls team at the Rotherham club, even her public school Ecclesfield Comprehensive did not play boys cricket, so the only way to learn was to play against men.

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“I’m a big advocate of girls playing in boys teams. That’s where you develop your best cricket,” says Levick, who became a spinner because her fast ball was too often swatted away by batsmen.

“Women and men’s cricket is so vastly different, if you can perform and do a job in men’s cricket then women’s cricket is an easier beast.

“Women’s spinners are not much different to men’s spinners, whereas with seamers there’s an obvious difference in pace because of biological reasons.

“Men want to, and will, hit you further so you have to come up with a plan to negate that. There might be a big fella on a Saturday afternoon who can muscle me into the boundary without trying, so what am I going to do?”

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That problem-solving approach served her well, as did a thick skin. Sledging in cricket can be merciless between men, let alone grown men to an adolescent girl.

“I got comments like ‘is the team short this week?’, ‘are you doing the teas, love?’, ‘is your dad not here?’,” she recalls.

“That made me more determined. I’m not the most confident person so even getting out of the car with my cricket bag was really hard.

“But I was lucky to have a team that supported me and would do anything for me. ‘Say what you like, she’ll get you out’, they’d respond.”

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She invariably did. Levick says her brother was a better cricketer but she advanced quicker because of the lack of depth in the women’s game. County and country appearances followed, often seeing her squeezed into the back of a team-mate’s Citreon Saxo as they travelled the country playing matches. Then came that life decision at 21, when Levick chose work over chasing the international dream.

While England’s women were winning the World Cup in 2017 and becoming household names, Levick was continuing a career working at the Pro Coach Cricket Academy in Headingley, a chip over mid-wicket away from the network of coaches at Yorkshire CCC who helped keep her eye in.

When Yorkshire Diamonds was launched as a Kia Super League team in 2016 amid a fanfare of familiar England names and expensive overseas recruits, Levick was among those who made up the numbers, playing for free, but taking wickets.

“I do genuinely believe my performance and my skills have improved in the four years I’ve worked there because I’ve got access to the greatest coaches and they’re always saying come down and have a bowl.

“They’re not shy in telling me what I’m doing wrong.”

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In four years of Super League, Levick took 29 wickets at an average of 6.6. She only started getting paid two years ago.

“My dad always said to me ‘please play until you get paid’,” she says. “So I’ve managed that.

“And finishing as the leading wicket-taker, that is my accolade. Because of the England situation, I always feared I would finish with a what-if, but I feel like I don’t have a what-if any more.”

What’s next may finally see Levick and her generation get greater recognition and appreciation.

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This summer, The Hundred replaces Kia Super League, and Levick will wear the shirt of the Northern Superchargers with Yorkshire Diamonds disbanded.

The Hundred may be gimmicky, it may grate with traditionalists, but for a female cricketer like Levick it offers a degree of parity.

The average contract for female players may be £8,000 compared to £66,600 for the men, but the tournament offers equal prize money (£150,000 to the winners, £75,000 to the runners-up) as part of an ECB pledge to invest £20m in the women’s game in the next two years, including 40 professional contracts.

“I think it’s great that with The Hundred we’re in line with the men, it’s absolutely the way I wanted it to go,” says Levick, who signed with the Superchargers eight months ago but had to keep the news quiet.

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“There’s been so much backlash against the men’s Hundred that it’s not been taken into account that it’s the only option the women have of playing.

“If you want the women’s game to succeed and flourish then you have to suppport this format.

“And I think it’s going to be fantastic. Gary Ballance is not a Supercharger this year, but I am. He’s a lot more famous and professional than I am but he’s not playing in the same competition.

“That’s crazy to think, but it’s great for the women that we have this opportunity.”

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Levick has not given up the day job either, to do so would go against all that has gone before. Her wage is still a long way from parity, after all.

But she does hope The Hundred proves a watershed moment for women’s cricket.

“The women’s game is almost unrecognisable from what it was 10 years ago when I was cramming into the back of cars, so I’m not going to complain that The Hundred doesn’t pay me as much it pays the men,” she says.

“If my generation has to be the one that doesn’t quite get what it deserves, then that’s fine by me.

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“But it’s time to acknowledge that women are sacrificing just as much as the guys. We don’t love the game any less.

“I cannot advocate highly enough the playing of cricket to young girls. Cricket has given me opportunities and friendships I never thought I’d have.

“Knowing that it’s getting better, knowing you’re part of the process and that, while I might not see the benefits of it, we are doing it for you guys, the next generation, that is the legacy.”