Should we be re-instituting an England U17 cricket team?

HEADLINES

ECB run matches for 15s/16s at Loughborough this month

Maturational selection bias and Relative Age Effect are high at these ages

History of promoting early developers to fail

Poor ROI for previous U17 programmes

Resources better spent on a Futures programme and/or coach education on growth & maturation

One suggestion from Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review of English cricket was the reinstating of an England U17 programme. Currently England national teams begin at U19 supported by annual national competitions between the four regions at U15 & U18.

The idea being lets give potential England players of the future a chance to gain experience at national level in many conditions around the world. While this objective is well meaning, it is fraught with problems around growth & maturation. It’s highly likely that early maturing and/or early born players will be over-selected. These players who have temporary advantages at these age groups often fail to ‘go on’ either physically or in skill development.

Players at Bunbury, the U15 national tournament of the regions, are 4 times more likely to be born in the first quarter of the year than the last. September born players will outnumber August born players 6 to 1. Why? Because relatively early born have had more time to develop cognition, emotional and social skills, as well as have more training experience.

These Relative Age Effects are high at U15, but they are still high at U19 too. In addition and probably more of a factor are maturational selection biases that are based around difference in physicality. We currently don’t have evidence in cricket yet but evidence in football shows at these age groups early maturers are over-selected to the detriment of late maturers. 

What happened last time we had U17s?

A quick look at the U17 squad of 2013-2014 as an example

Of 32 players 60% were born in the first half of the year*

56% went on to play 1st XI county cricket

34% are still in the game

4 players went on to play for England (any format)

2 of those players played 1 Test match only

1 player is realistically, currently in contention for England

Is it worth it? Are we throwing valuable resources at the wrong players? 

* 6 dates of birth were not available

What can we do instead?

Measure & monitor maturation and birth quarter to be more aware of selection biases.

Use age-ordered bibs for all coach observations of players.

Institute a Futures U19 programme instead of going backwards for national team age groups.