The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have unveiled a series of sweeping measures designed to tackle the racism, sexism and classism entrenched in the game, as it vowed to “deliver meaningful change and rebuild trust among the communities we serve”.
In a scathing report published in June, the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) issued a grim assessment of the systemic discrimination rife across all levels of the game, with ECB chair Richard Thompson promising on Monday that his organisation’s response would “accelerate and intensify our work to make cricket a game for everyone”.
The pledges laid out in a 34-page document include multi-million-pound investments in the women’s game and projects to engage neglected Black and Asian communities, as well as a revamp geared towards making the sport’s talent pathway more accessible and the creation of a cricket regulator to carry out investigations in areas such as anti-discrimination.
“Cricket hasn’t got it right in the past,” said Thompson, who took up his post last August, after the review had been commissioned. “But this is an opportunity to move forward together.”
The ECB says it is acting upon 94 per cent of the ICEC’s recommendations either entirely or in adapted form, though a small number are either on hold or have been rejected outright. The most notable measures to which the ECB has not yet committed surround the gender pay gap in the professional game.
England Women’s’ match fees have been raised to level those paid to the men’s’ sides, a change which came into effect during the recent white-ball series against Sri Lanka, but with costs already spiralling year-on-year and the value of its major broadcast deal set until 2028, the ECB says “further analysis” is needed before it can deliver on the ICEC’s ambitious proposals around pay parity.
They include that of equalising salaries in The Hundred, where the leading female players earn just £31,250 compared to £125,000 at the top of the men’s tournament, and achieving equal average pay across men’s and women’s domestic cricket by 2029.
The ECB says it wants to “plot a path to sustainable domestic player pay parity in the future” but while the body’s CEO, Richard Gould, said it would “have a good go” at matching the 2029 target, he also warned it is “something we cannot necessarily do within those timescales”.
“We know we need to accelerate the growth of the commercial element of the women’s game, whether that’s ticket sales or broadcast values,” Gould added.
In order to do so, a minimum of £25million will be invested in the women’s game each year, on top of forecast annual revenues, and there are aims to triple the number of recreational girls’ teams in the country by 2026.
"That will mean there will be a pot of money that we have to find but we have to find it because there has been under-investment in women’s team sport for decades," Gould said.
Funding the ICEC’s recommendations remains a huge challenge for the ECB at a time when it is being forced to drastically increase the value of central contracts for its men’s players in a bid to stave off the growing threat of lucrative franchise leagues, with leading stars last week offered multi-year England deals for the first time.
“We have two priorities at the moment in terms of finances for the game,” Gould said. “One is ICEC, to ensure we can deliver on those [recommendations] and the wider discussion on EDI.
“The other is to make sure that we don’t lose all of our best players to a variety of different franchise tournaments around the world.
“[Spending on ICEC recommendations] will be in the tens of millions of pounds over the next couple of years and well beyond that. It’s an investment and it’s what we should be spending our money on. We should be spending our money on making sure the game is as accessible and welcoming as it can be.”
The ICEC had been heavily critical of the sport’s existing talent pathways, which it found remain dominated by private schools and include costs prohibitive to those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
In response, the ECB says it will work with counties in planning an expansion of the structure to reach more children from across a broader demographic, with the target of ensuring affordability is not a barrier to pathway participation by 2025. It will also raise the age at which youngsters are first selected to play representative county cricket.
Organisations from across the game will also be consulted during the development of “action plans” targeted specifically at increasing participation within state schools and Black and Asian communities, with £2m worth of additional funding for existing projects such as Chance To Shine, MCC Foundation and the African Caribbean Engagement (ACE) Programme already announced this month.
The new cricket regulator will be “ring-fenced” as separate from the ECB, though its chair will be appointed by the body, and will also include issues of misconduct and safeguarding under its remit, after the ICEC declared the existing complaints system not fit for purpose.
