May 23, 2024

Maia Bouchier does not shy away from a challenge.

Cricket became her passion at a very young age, despite growing up at a time when very few girls in England played the sport. So, she played with boys and excelled, despite not being welcomed with open arms. Throughout secondary school she struggled to find where she fit in being the only girl playing cricket at the school, however. But this did not stop her from eventually reaching the top tier of a nascent women’s cricket league,as well as being called up to the English national team.

Now Bouchier has decided to jump in to the #ClimateComeback, despite there being relatively little interest in the topic among her teammates. Did that stop her? Of course not. Wanting to learn more about climate change so she can inspire other players and cricket fans to take climate action, she decided to become an EcoAthletes Champion.

“Maia brings so much what we call ‘EcoAthetes Action’ to the Champions roster,” EcoAthletes founder and CEO Lew Blaustein extolled. “She’s curious, persistent and wants to challenge the status quo that says ‘athletes should just shut up and dribble’…or shut up and bowl to be more accurate. That didn't sit well with her and so now she’s an EcoAthletes Champion who will no doubt play a leading role in the #ClimateComeback and we’re all the winners!”

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Bouchier’s journey to the top of the women’s cricket pyramid and to being an EcoAthletes Champion started in London’s Little Venice neighborhood. Cricket played an important part of her life almost from the time she learned how to walk.

“My dad, who worked in sport management, is a huge cricket fan,” she reported. “To give my brothers a better opportunity to play, he started the Primrose Hill Cricket Club with some of the dads from my brothers’ school. I tagged along, starting to play at age six. I was the only girl as there wasn’t a lot of girls cricket in my area at that time and what there was wasn’t very good from a coaching standpoint. So, I was lucky.”

A quick learner, Bouchier quickly became a star among the boys — she played with them through early secondary school. Ironically, she attended Rugby School — the school where the sport of rugby was invented — for cricket. She eventually became the first girl to play in the starting XI on the school team. While playing with the boys at school, Bouchier garnered the attention of the coaches at the higher levels of the girls game. She was called up to play for the Middlesex U15 County squad. That was mere prelude to bigger jumps: playing for the County U19 women’s team when she was all of 16 and earned trials with the England U15s and U19s.

After finishing secondary school, Bouchier decided to pivot.

“I was dropped by the England team — I wasn’t fit enough, and my mindset wasn’t right,” she admitted. “I had fallen out of love with the cricket scene in England. So, I took a gap year and went to Auckland, New Zealand to coach girls cricket in schools. I loved the country, made great friends there, and found my love for the game again. I worked hard, got fit, and ended up playing for the Auckland State women’s cricket team for the 2017-18 season.”

Bouchier returned to England and played one of her best seasons at Middlesex, however it was not rewarded with greater opportunity. After lengthy discussions, she decided to move to Hampshire County Cricket Club, around 90 miles from where she lived.

“The Hampshire County team was coached by Charlotte Edwards, who had played for England, and she had seen me play for Middlesex,” she offered. “I played a match winning performance on my first game back after New Zealand, which spurred a call from her asking me if I wanted to open the batting and bowling at Hampshire. “It was a no brainer. I had to jump at the opportunity.  It is also important to know that as of mid-2016-17, female county cricketers did not get paid, and there was no professional club league. It was only the England national team who were paid to play, so things needed to change, or I was going to have to become a coach or find another career path during my prime as a player.”

Fortunately for Bouchier and scores of other women cricketers, change had started with the inaugural Women’s Kia Super League which kicked off in late 2016, the year before she left school. The Southern Vipers, based in Southampton and coached by the very same Charlotte Edwards, called and offered her a contract to play in the Twenty20 competition, which is the shortest format of cricket. She jumped on the offer, even though it was a modest one.

“My first Southern Vipers contract in 2018 was for around £3,000 for a four-week season,” she recalled. “Still, the standard of cricket was a lot better than in the county leagues — we had international players from all over the world coming to play, and it was so clear they had all worked so hard to get there. It was amazing to be considered as one of those players.”

Over her six years in the Super League, Bouchier has helped spark tremendous progress.  “It is so exciting to see how much the women’s game has grown in the last five years or so,” she marveled. “The salary and match fees in the domestic women’s game have increased exponentially since then because of the league’s popularity. It is a very exciting time for more girls to be able to choose cricket as a career path.”

It was also an especially exciting time for Bouchier as she made her England Women’s debut in September 2021 versus New Zealand. (“It was both exciting and nerve-wracking”). What followed were solid seasons with the Vipers, culminating with a stellar 2023 during which she helped the team win both domestic league trophies, the Charlotte Edwards Cup and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy. This ultimately led to a deserved contract with England for the 2024 season.

That looks like a wise decision as she has shone in her now solidified spot at the top of the order for England, batting number first or second, mainly in the T20 format. On a tour of New Zealand in March, she earned player of the match against the home team. This helped her win the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) global Player of the Month award.

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While Bouchier is nearing the top of the cricket world, her work as an EcoAthletes Champion is just beginning thanks to the seeds planted by her dad.

“He had launched his own business producing and distributing short educational videos for children,” she shared. “The idea was to encourage kids to learn about what most interested them. There was English, maths, geography and a couple videos about the environment. We traveled a lot as kids as our parents wanted to expose us to different cultures, to help people, and to help preserve nature. Camping or staying in remote houses in the middle of nowhere in North America, South America, Australia, and Europe became the rule. We were so lucky to explore so many amazing places. It resulted in us learning how our society has fallen away from protecting our home and I became passionate about doing something about it.”

Bouchier’s singular focus on her cricket career put her environmental education on hold for the better part of the last decade. Yet climate and environmental degradation were too obvious to ignore. Cricket matches were being impacted by flooding and excessive heat. And no one she knew in the sport was talking about it. By 2022, she could no longer stay on the sidelines.

“I decided to use my voice as a cricketer to make a difference,” she asserted. “So, I began by posting on social media, encouraging people to start reducing their plastic consumption through buying single use stainless steel bottles as well as promoting sustainable clothing, which are two of the most damaging industries destroying our environment. I then proceeded to buy carbon offsets, support environmental nonprofits, and then I finally went to the cricket board with my ideas on how, as a community, we could act.”

Joining the #ClimateComeback was a logical next step for Bouchier.

“Becoming an EcoAthletes Champion came at the perfect time in my journey,” she noted. “The organization will help me speak more powerfully on climate and provide me with opportunities to do so. You know, women’s cricket is relatively new. How great would it be if we became the climate leader among all sports? I want to help make that happen and so I am really glad to have EcoAthletes in my corner!”

You can reach Maia on Instagram