Lord’s has promised to open its doors a little wider next summer. The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) has announced the Knight-Stokes Cup, a nationwide T20 competition for state-educated Year 10 pupils – boys and girls, aged 13-14 – with the winners to be crowned on the main ground in September 2026.
First things first, the format is straightforward. Local festivals start next April, regional knock-outs follow through the summer and a four-team finals day rounds it off at St John’s Wood. The trophy carries the names of Heather Knight and Ben Stokes, both state-educated captains who, in very different ways, have shifted how England play the game.
The idea came out of long hours between Michael Vaughan, now working with MCC on youth projects, and Mark Nicholas, the club’s chair. Both were spurred on by the 2023 Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report, which accused the sport of being “sexist, classist and elitist”. One specific recommendation was a national under-15 finals day for state schools. The Knight-Stokes Cup ticks that box.
MCC was also asked to reconsider two of the game’s oldest fixtures, Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cambridge, both on the Lord’s fixture list since the 19th century. The club has parked that decision until 2028, but Nicholas insists the direction of travel is clear.
“We’re an open-hearted body,” he said. “People who say, ‘oh, we’re the Augusta of cricket’, we’re not at all. Augusta is a fabulous exclusive place. Its mystery comes from its exclusivity. We want Lord’s and MCC to be inclusive. The fact that children can come here is very important for the future of cricket, and very important for the future of MCC and Lord’s.”
The numbers behind the concern are stark. In 2021, 58% of England cricketers came from private schools, even though those schools educate roughly 7% of pupils nationwide. Kit costs, grass pitches and packed summer timetables all play a part, but there is also a talent-drain once promising state-school players win scholarships elsewhere. Harry Brook, for example, left Ilkley Grammar for Sedbergh on a sports bursary before going on to England honours.
“It’s not absolutely right to say that there’s no state-school players involved in the England team,” Nicholas noted. “But state schools have other priorities, and it’s not easy to fit cricket into the curriculum, especially when there’s pressure on GCSEs in the summer term.”
Vaughan, whose own playing days still carry a 2005 Ashes glow, believes visible role models remain essential. “If a 14-year-old sees Knight lifting a World Cup or Stokes turning a Test, the spark is there,” he said last week. “Give them a realistic route to Lord’s and the motivation doubles.”
The MCC hopes the new cup will cost schools very little. Equipment grants, transport subsidies and volunteer coaches are being lined up with county boards. A girls’ pathway sits alongside the boys’ one from day one – a deliberate choice after the ICEC highlighted gender gaps at almost every level.
There are still practical wrinkles. State-sector staff already juggle packed PE rotas; not every school has a grass square; and September finals must avoid clashing with the start of Year 11. Nicholas accepts the challenges but is bullish about the symbolism. “Children walking through the Grace Gates with kit bags in hand – that tells a wider story,” he said.
For Lord’s, the optics matter. The ground has been compared, often unhelpfully, with Augusta National, golf’s famously closed shop. Nicholas rejects that parallel outright and points to record community-day footfall and expanded free-ticket schemes. The Knight-Stokes Cup is presented as the next step, not a final answer.
Early reactions inside the game have been cautious but supportive. One academy director described it as “a sensible test-bed: if it works, grow it; if it struggles, learn and adjust”. Another suggested Lord’s will need buy-in from mainstream teachers rather than solely cricket enthusiasts.
The competition begins in just under ten months, which is tight in school-calendar terms. Yet the ambition is simple enough: more state-educated teenagers in sight of the Home of Cricket, and in the medium term, more of them in professional dressing rooms. Whether that reduces the 58-7 divide is impossible to predict, but at least there is a measurable target and a date in the diary.
In the meantime, those heritage fixtures stay on the Lord’s slate, and that decision will rumble on. Progress in cricket is rarely linear; it tends to be a series of nudges rather than a single leap. The Knight-Stokes Cup, imperfect and still being sketched out, is the latest nudge.
