A fresh, independent stock-take of cricket in England and Wales has arrived a year earlier than expected – and its verdict is cautiously upbeat. Sport Structures’ 53-page State of Equity in Cricket Report, commissioned by the ECB as a follow-up to the searing 2023 ICEC findings, concludes that “genuine progress” has been made on inclusion. Yet it also says – in fairly plain terms – that much more is still required, especially in the game’s senior corridors.
Key points first. The report:
• notes wider entry to talent pathways,
• confirms the number of women’s and girls’ teams has doubled since 2021,
• highlights a sizeable uplift in professional contracts and salaries for women,
• welcomes the creation of a ring-fenced, independent Cricket Regulator, and
• tracks £50 million of new facility spend, including two indoor domes in Bradford and Darwen aimed at year-round access.
Kate Percival, Sport Structures’ chief executive, believes the mood music has shifted. “Cricket is not yet where it aspires to be, but the tone has changed,” she says. “Inclusion is now seen as central to the game’s health and future.” For a sport still wrestling with charges of racism, classism and sexism, that’s a significant pivot.
Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, ordered the review to make sure the governing body could not hide from hard numbers. He said in the foreword that it would “hold us to account” and, in later comments, added: “The State of Equity in Cricket Report holds us to account in relation to our ambitions to become the most inclusive team sport. It shows us some areas of excellent work and progress, as well as where we need to go further.”
Where exactly is that “further” required? Leadership is the big one. Female non-executive representation on ECB and county boards has risen to 37% – it was just 11% in 2019 – and ethnically diverse non-execs now sit at 18%, up from 5%. Even so, only one of the 18 first-class counties currently has a woman chair, Dame Sarah Storey at Lancashire, while Black representation at senior level remains stubbornly low. The abrupt exit of Essex chair Anu Mohindru, after mis-statements on his CV, has not helped the overall picture: ethnic diversity among county chairs and chief execs is stuck at 6%.
Coaching pathways show a mixed picture too. Introductory courses attract varied candidates, but the Specialist course that feeds the professional game skews heavily white and male. Disability cricket, meanwhile, “requires deeper integration” inside county and club structures; much of its current activity still sits on the fringes.
On the recreational front the report says disciplinary systems are improving but still under-resourced. A new Recreational Discipline Panel – made up of external specialists – will now handle the most complex discrimination cases. It is an early attempt to give club players confidence that complaints will not vanish into the ether.
There are, inevitably, caveats. The document offers limited new data on social-class barriers, an area the ICEC flagged as urgent. Some campaigners argue that combining private-school domination and the spiralling cost of age-group cricket poses as big a hurdle as race or gender. The report acknowledges the point but stops short of firm targets.
Still, the tone is less defensive than two years ago. One county CEO, quoted anonymously, calls the work “uncomfortable but necessary”. A senior women’s player interviewed for the study simply says, “We can feel the shift, even if it’s slower than we’d like.”
None of this is headline-grabbing stuff – and perhaps that is the point. Cricket has taken some practical steps, measured them, and put the numbers in the public domain. For a sport long accused of patting itself on the back too quickly, that is progress of a different sort.
Where next? Gould’s answer is pretty direct: hold the line, measure everything, and accept that real cultural change “won’t be sorted by the next Ashes cycle”. The ECB will now sift through Sport Structures’ detailed recommendations and publish an action update in the spring. Whether the counties, recreational boards and myriad voluntary committees move at the same pace remains to be seen.
For now, though, English cricket can point to evidence – not just warm words – that the needle has started to move. The challenge, as ever, is keeping it there.
