Contracts boost for England's women

	England's Ashes-winning side celebrate in Sydney © Getty Images

England's women have been rewarded for retaining the Ashes with central contracts.

The win in the one-off Test in Bowral was Australia's first home series defeat in 36 years, although the fact that only one Test was scheduled took some of the gloss off the achievement.

Ten of the England squad, who currently rely on Lottery funding to help offset their costs, will get the contracts and that should enable them to turn professional. Although the demands on them as players is nothing like the same as for the men, they will be used between series coaching on the ECB's Chance to Shine programme.

The ECB also announced that eight teams will be invited to participate in a Twenty20 competition to run alongside the ICC World Twenty20 in September 2009. The final will be the curtain raiser for the men's final at Lord's.