Danielle McGahey is set to become the first transgender cricketer to play an official Twenty20 international. The 29-year old Australian-born opening batsman has been named in the Canadian women’s squad that will take on Brazil, Argentina and the USA next week in Los Angeles. The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Americas Region Qualifier is hardly the Ashes, but at stake is a place in the 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.

McGahey moved to Canada in 2020 and, it seems, promptly transitioned. Is there something in the Canadian water? But joking aside, Justin Trudeau’s Canada has, it seems, garnered a reputation for yielding to transgender ideology. Now, a Canadian woman has lost out, and the integrity of women’s cricket is at risk.

If men’s cricket is good enough for the women who take part, then it is surely also good enough for McGahey

While other sports have woken up to the folly of allowing transwomen to compete in women’s sports, cricket has been asleep at the wheel. Over the past three years, rugby Union, athletics, swimming – and now even chess – have brought in new policies that protect female competitions for the female sex.

But the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) player eligibility regulations still allow ‘male-to-female’ transgender players to participate in a women’s international if they ‘provide a written and signed declaration, in a form satisfactory to the designated medical officer, that her gender identity is female’. How could anyone possibly prove – or falsify – such a subjective declaration of feelings?

Those players also need to suppress their testosterone below an arbitrary level of 5 nanomoles per litre of serum, and have kept it there for 12 months. But that is still far higher than the normal adult female range of 0.5 – 2.6 nmol/l.

Besides, there is far more to male advantage than blood testosterone. We are bigger, faster and stronger than women, and we stay that way when we medically transition. The science is clear: in 2021, Hilton and Lundberg found that ‘the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed’.

The difference between the sexes in cricket is exemplified in the recent development of The Hundred. This new format might not be to everyone’s taste, but the double-headed fixtures showcase women’s cricket immediately before the men play. Last month in Cardiff, I saw the Welsh Fire take on the Southern Brave. Between two cracking games, I also watched the ground staff move the boundary rope out by several metres in all directions. The coaching is also different. While male fielders routinely returned the ball to the wicketkeeper, the women threw to the nearest end.

My transition did not affect the distance I could throw a cricket ball. Unless I played women’s cricket, that is, when I would hope to throw it faster and further – women play with a ball around 16 grams lighter than the men. Quite frankly, it would be wrong for me to take part in women’s cricket and it is also wrong for McGahey to do so.

The irony of course is that men’s cricket is open to both sexes already. Women can – and do – play in men’s teams for all sorts of reasons. A former pupil of mine was a junior county cricketer, but at school she played in our boys’ team where she found stiffer competition. Meanwhile female colleagues played in our one and only staff team. At the elite level, Test Match Special’s Alex Hartley suggested that bowler Sophie Ecclestone was good enough to ‘play first-class cricket for a men’s side’.

If men’s cricket is good enough for the women who choose to take part, then it is surely also good enough for McGahey. While it is arguably acceptable in cricket for an Australian to self-identify as Canadian, nobody can change their sex – the ICC needs to change their transgender policy to make that clear.