The ECB ducks & weaves State School delivery.

Today’s England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) State of Equity Report 2025 shows fewer state school girls in County Age Groups than last year and a lower percentage in Emerging Player Programmes for both boys & girls. While percentages increased at the Academy level no progress was made for professional cricketers.  

The trouble with many ECB action plans is that they simply say what they intend to do and then sit back and hope for the best. But while some people at the ECB & counties do amazing work, often 5 or 10 years pass and the opportunity for real change is missed as the plan drifts on unaccountably, unchecked and unchallenged. 

Other people come along and pick up the pieces, such as the African Caribbean Engagement programme (ACE), who set targets, track delivery and do better. With three current professional cricketers ACE are on track to meet their target of ten by 2030. 

ECB Board member and founder of the ACE programme, Ebony Rainford-Brent recently described class as being the biggest barrier to entry into cricket. Bigger than sexism, racism or any other structural bias. Yet much less money has been invested into the class issue and the following evidence shows little progress is being made.

In 2022 the Independent Commission into Equity in Cricket (ICEC) found institutional racism, sexism and classism in cricket, with an official apology made by the ECB. Central to the ECB’s response to the ICEC report’s recommendations on class is to support the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) by scaling up a programme of free training for state school kids, run by its charitable arm, the MCC Foundation (MCCF). Based at Lord’s cricket ground in London the MCCF’s mission is to open up access to the talent pathways of the UK.

This long running programme aims, in 2026, to deliver winter training and summer match play to girls and boys at the U14 & U16 age groups at around 220 hubs across the UK. This will be a quadrupling of the annual number to well over 8000 kids since the start of the decade.

In parallel, the 18 professional counties and 21 national counties run their own talent pathways. From around age 10 to 18 boys and girls join County Age Group squads for winter training and summer match play. A small number of these will be selected onto Emerging Player Programmes for further training from around age 13 which can lead to Academy selection at around age 16. Virtually all professional cricketers are signed from professional county Academies at the age of 18.

The goal of the MCCF hub programme is to improve their players enough for them to be selected into a County Age Group squad and join the talent pathway, which is proving to be difficult.

The published accounts show that 200 MCCF young cricketers joined county pathways in 2022. For a national programme that isn’t that many and represents little more than 1% of the approximately 18,000 kids on talent pathways in England & Wales. This number fell to just 180 in 2023.

That same year the ECB announced an investment of £1million in conjunction with the MCC into the MCCF programme over the next two years. A 64% increase in the number of hubs from 77 in 2023 to 126 in 2024 led to just 206 talent pathway sign ups, simply a recovery to the position achieved two years earlier. This despite the introduction of a further regional ’Springboard’ programme for the most talented kids.

Why does it seem extremely difficult to deliver any linear improvements in numbers with large amounts of extra funding? Why the apparent ‘plateau effect’?

Perhaps a 10 week programme is too short to genuinely improve performance? Is U16 too late to provide a sufficient volume of cricket? Perhaps concentrating on the U10-12 age group, alongside the county’s new Early Engagement Programme, would be more appropriate?

Are the MCCF encountering longstanding resistance from counties to select more state school cricketers? After all, some very close partnerships have been created with local independent cricketing schools, including sponsorship, advertising and sharing coaching resources.

The programme will largely be judged by how many state school professionals there are in the coming years. Even if the CAG numbers were to rise there is a further hurdle in an apparent glass ceiling for state school cricketers to reach EPP/Academy level. According to the ECB’s Talent Pathway Action Plan, published in October 2024, only 32% of state schoolers were in Academies compared to 55% in CAGs. Perhaps state school hubs who replicate what is done at the best cricketing independent schools, is an alternative to counter this issue? A recent ECB website article promoted Canterbury Academy as an exemplar of this. 

Deputy CEO at the ECB, Clare Connor has led the ECB response to the ICEC report. As an MCCF trustee and former MCC President she has a long standing relationship with the Lords based club and has spent almost 19 years at the ECB. Her knowledge of the MCCF hub programme and the ECB’s use of many charitable partners as solution providers such as Chance to Shine and the MCCF, would presumably have led to the £1million investment.

Alongside judges and diplomats, English cricket is the only sport included in the top ten professions of this year’s Sutton Trust Elite Britain report. With figures having risen to 59% male and 50% female independently schooled professionals, the ECB is struggling to progress its mission to be the country’s most inclusive sport with the Sutton Trust declaring the figures to be worse than last year.

While the MCCF does wonderful work across the globe, its UK mission is to ‘open up access to the talent pathways’ so that every young cricketer has the opportunity to reach their full potential. While the experience for these boys and girls is undoubtedly beneficial, with a lucky few having a chance to play on the hallowed turf at Lords, it is highly questionable that simply replicating this model, for over 7500 pupils next year, the stated goal will be any closer.

Cricket isn’t the only sport with issues of classism. Around a third of the Paris 2024 GB Olympic team attended an independent school for example. But for cricket it feels a deeper, more ingrained problem. Perhaps this is just too big for the ECB to take on. Perhaps their will is too lacking to find a way?

The Government is not going to suddenly find millions of pounds to throw at state school sports. The ECB needs to face this reality and the reality of their current underachievement on this pressing issue.