Today new writer Harry Eckersley, who has something of an inside track when it comes to the county game, discusses the lack of state-educated cricketers in England’s first-class structure.
As the dust settles on another Ashes defeat down under, England fans searching for a crumb of comfort could point to another whitewash averted. In reality, this was 5-0 in all but name. The handwringing has begun and the inevitable autopsy into The State of English Cricket™ is well underway.
Let’s be clear, there are several compelling reasons that help explain the decline of England’s Test team. One issue in particular, though, has gained more airtime than any other in recent weeks, and it centres on the country’s dwindling talent pool.
To be blunt, English cricket has a class problem. The vast majority of its male Test players hail from a group of privately educated, white men. A Whiteposh, you might say.
It was this thorny topic that reared its head ferociously once again last week, with three twitter exchanges in particular painting a neat picture of how English cricket is getting it so wrong.
The first, from ex-England cricketer Matt Prior, drew our attention to the alarming price of putting one child through a county pathway in the UK. The combined cost of fees and kit comes out just shy of £1,000.
The wider point? That in the UK, professional cricket is fast becoming the preserve of individuals fortunate enough to be supported by the benefaction of private money. A quick look at the scholastic make-up of male county cricketers underlines the point, with 45% the product of a fee-paying education. This despite the fact that just 7% of the entire population attends a private school.
The England Test team over-indexes further. In 2013, just 30% of England’s Test squad were state educated, down from 60% between 1960 and 1990. And that downward trend has continued in the intervening years.
Consider this: when Mike Gatting led England to Pakistan in 1987, just one member of the squad was privately educated. By contrast, when England hosted Pakistan in Southampton in 2020, nine of the first XI had come through the independent school system.
The problem is exacerbated amongst batters, the costlier of cricket’s two pursuits. And nothing tells that story quite so brilliantly as England’s forlorn hunt for a suitable opener over the past five years. Of the ten they have tried, just Joe Denly and Mark Stoneman are products of the state system. In other words, if you harbour hopes of opening the batting for England, then you better find a way into one its prestigious public schools.
Incidentally, it’s at this exact moment that the opposite shift is occurring in one of the game’s other great powers. As chronicled in James Astill’s wonderful The Great Tamasha, cricket is fast being democratised in India.
Between 1970-2010, one-third of Indian Test players came from the privileged Brahmin caste, despite accounting for under 20% of the general population. Now, driven in large part by the emergence of the IPL, that imbalance is levelling out. In the team that conquered Australia in 2020, you could find the sons of farm labourers, rickshaw drivers and railway clerks.
Once the domain of a middle-class Hindu elite, the professional game in India no longer discriminates along caste or religious lines. With expanded resources to choose from, it is little wonder they have improved so much.
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What unites the likes of Siraj, Shami, Rahane and Pujara is the circumstances they overcame to get to the top, bringing us on to our second tweet.
In a post-Ashes interview Joe Root took aim at the domestic system, highlighting its inadequacy in preparing his squad for an environment like Australia. England’s Test players, he claimed, were coming into his squad ‘in spite of county cricket, not because of it.’
To journalist Barney Ronay, though, these were just ‘the words of a sports person who has been cosseted through a system from boyhood.’ It was a sentiment echoed by Michael Vaughan who talked of a dressing room that was ‘too comfortable.’
Indeed, not only has the pay-your-way pathway in English cricket produced a shrinking talent pool, it has simultaneously cultivated a culture of over-indulgence; where the easy option is the best option, and being challenged is intolerable.
Quite a leap, you might argue. Can you really draw a straight line between the UK’s education system and England’s limp display in Australia?
Well, when the majority of your players come from the same background – each with a similar mentality, there is a distinct lack of diversity in thought. Such groupthink was evident in the muddled-thinking that characterised England’s decision-making, as it was in the collective inability to confront its batting fragility throughout the tour.
Coincidence it may be, but it was not lost on many that England’s leading light was a certain Mark Wood – alumni of Ashington Secondary School and a man who honed his craft at the sharp end of the Northumberland and Tyneside League.
James Anderson, Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, three more of England’s state-educated contingent, have long been known for dragging England out of a top-order shaped hole. The product of tireless years of hard graft, each of them approaches each test as if it may be their last. And how it shows.
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Yet, it’s the final tweet that is the most concerning. When one cricket blogger made the intentionally glib correlation between Zak Crawley’s well-funded youth and his spot in the England team in Melbourne, the reaction of his Kent and England teammate, Sam Billings, was telling.
How exactly, Billings asked, could you pay your way to a double-hundred at Test level? A fair question, to an extent. Yet, whilst the content of Billings’ tweet is less problematic, what it represents certainly is – encapsulating, as it does, the general unwillingness for those in positions of power to recognise the damage this issue is having on the wider game.
No one is doubting Zak Crawley’s raw ability, nor his desire to make it at the elite level. But pretending his privileged upbringing has in no way influenced his journey to the top is unhelpful.*
After all, this phenomenon is nothing new. The most astute cricket journalists have long been pointing to the sport’s elitism as an obstacle to its progress. A 2008 YouGov report found that just 10% of state school pupils were playing cricket in the UK, whilst in 2014, Chance to Shine revealed that only 2% of children aged 7-15 listed cricket as their favourite sport. Seven years later, what has changed?
We’ve been fed countless reports and initiatives designed to redress the balance. Cricket Unleashed. Inspiring Generations. The South Asian Action Plan. All Stars Cricket. They all look and sound good. But none so far have been effective.
And for all the talk of introducing quotas, demanding extra government funding, better sharing resources between private and state schools, and improving access to the game through community work, the topic continues to fall on deaf ears. How seriously are we taking this?
As the popular phrase goes, the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is one. The ECB and the wider cricket fraternity urgently needs to grasp this fact. In the wake of the Azeem Rafiq scandal, it can ill afford another head in the sand moment.
Harry Eckersley
* I write this as the brother of a current county cricketer who also attended a fee-paying school. And whilst the school he attended was by no means a production line for first-class cricketers, he would be the first to admit that he benefitted from the regular one-to-one coaching he received growing up, funded by our ever-supportive parents.
The similar mentality/groupthink point is very interesting. I once worked for a company where 90-95% of the middle and senior management had been there since the start of their careers. While it was commendable that the company looked to promote from within, it meant that things were done in the same way they always had been, because those managers had no other experience to draw on. It does seem like English cricket is suffering a similar issue, and I wonder where the outside change/alternative viewpoint/necessary kick up the backside is going to come from. If it’s even possible. There’s only so much an imported coaching team can do (if they go down that route) if the basic infrastructure is working against them.
It’s a pretty well documented thing that if you have to struggle to get anywhere in early life you’re likely to carry that forward, which can be a good influence or just result in an obsession with making money to keep you out of the mire you grew up in. There’s no doubt the ‘Johnny Foreigner’ mentality of the privelidged in this country is still an active influence on attitudes in the ivory towers of the public school system, where cricket’s roots are strong. I came through the youth selection system at Warwickshire as a grammar school boy and was clearly disadvantaged for that in the 70’s. Fortunately dad was able to afford private coaching at the county ground, so I got noticed there. No coach ever came to talent spot at our school as the private schools provided most of the trial personnel. Hopefully things aren’t as bad now, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find there’s still vestiges of it in the system. Ironically many of the private schools now have as many Asian boys and girls as white English, but there’s still precious few Afro-caribbeans finding their way in. This has a lot to do with the Asian culture of prioritising education which the Afro-Caribbean clearly doesn’t.
As you mentioned James the cost of kit has always been a prohibitive influence and home and school, whereas soccer and Rugby have negligible overheads. This has got worse with the Heath and Safety obsession of today where small kids are often forced to wear expensive helmets.
Until cricket finds a way of tapping into the vast pool of unobserved talent that many kids won’t even be aware they have, we will have the same problem.
Yes most of this is correct. But it’s a fact of life almost in anything that if you are rich and privileged doors open for you. It may be unpalatable but it’s true.
The problem with the lack cricket in state schools is due to chronic underfunding of education over recent decades, teachers not willing to stay on after school, the price of kit and the deficit health and bloody safety culture cricket has all but gone. Add to that school selling off playing fields to developers to boost their coffers….well the problems are huge.
The 100 and the T20 are in part meant to encourage youngsters from all cultures to get involved, but the infrastructure isn’t there for it to happen so it just attracts more beer drinkers which is fine for the ECB and sponsors, but it’s no wonder we have a huge % of 10 year olds overweight with diabetes. The McDonald’s generation, symptoms of “modern” life eh?
Live with the public school boys because it won’t change without a major review of where cricket and other sports should be in society. Let’s start with the ECB….
I’m afraid that any solution to Cricket’s problems that requires any meaningful input from state schools is almost certainly going to fail. As a teacher from 1981-2013, mainly in state schools, I saw the cricket become first marginalised by the industrial action of the mid-1980s, then largely destroyed by the introduction of the national curriculum, and OfSTED inspections. This meant that non-PE teachers (like myself) were to be judged solely on the lesson observations of our teaching and our exam results, not on any contribution we might make to the wider life of the school (such as running a cricket team). Unless OFSTED and the National Curriculum go, this was an irreversible change.
Then there were the sell off of (some) sports fields in (some) schools – which certainly didn’t go to help schools ‘boost their coffers’ – no state school I worked in (and I spent nearly a decade in Senior Leadership roles) had any ‘coffers’; the money would have gone to help avoid the worst consequences of budget cuts. However equally important was the short sighted decision to end ‘free-to-view’ live cricket – I saw the interest in cricket decline amongst pupils from a high point in 2005 almost immediately afterwards.
So cricket can’t rely on changes in state schools, but I’d also warn against relying on the Public schools as well – just pre-Covid I had a chat with a former Test player who had recently retired as i/c cricket at a Public school.He told me it had become increasingly difficult to persuade parents even there to allow their sons/daughters time to train & play in case it damaged their exam results, especially in years (Year 11 & Year 13) with major exams. Given the cost of a Public school education, that is hardly surprising perhaps.
So I’d suggest that the future relies even more on the 18 first class clubs to search out talent and provide pathways into the professional game than ever before. The bone headed suggestions from some former players that franchises could replace the counties would rapidly lead to the decline and further marginalisation of the game.
Spot on Giles.
” teachers not willing to stay on after school… Add to that school selling off playing fields to developers to boost their coffers….well the problems are huge”.
The following is based on my experience teaching in the state sector for nearly a quarter of a century (quit in 2012):
The teaching load increased enormously in the early 1990s, by about 25%. I had been helping in after-school cricket before then but the burdens of marking, preparation and general exhaustion/pissed-offedness meant I stopped being willing to do so. There definitely was a growth in a mentality that if we were going to be micro-managed and have professional autonomy eroded then anything not contracturally required could go hang. I wouldn’t blame OFSTED – teachers can go for years without seeing them. It’s only going to get worse with the rise of tele-education and teachers being expected to be available at all hours on-line. Teachers have some rights to a life outside work as well – unless people want them burnt out look before retirement.
The playing fields’ argument is a misnomer in my experience – I never played/umpired in a match on my own schools’ grounds but played on local clubs’ or local authority facilities. This wasn’t in inner cities where it may be different but iy was partly in Outer London and there was never any problem.
Where do girls come from? I get the impression that something is being done right in the lower echelons of women’s cricket, and I wonder whether it’s something the men’s game can learn from.
Christine
I did an (admittedly rather cursory) analysis of the women’s squad a while ago and the nearest things to common factors I could see were not educational but that they had been interested in cricket from an early age and had played in mixed sides early in their careers.
I really think a great deal depends upon what the male PE teachers are interested in.
At the comprehensive school where I taught maths our school field was just about good enough for the boys to play football on.
The PE staff were not interested in teaching the boys to play cricket so I was approached by a group of young lads who asked me to be their Manager so that they could play against other schools.
They informed me that I just needed to turn up and umpire.
We didn’t win one game but we were not bottom of the Leagye because we always turned up for our Matches when other teams did not.
Thanks Janet. Good effort that. Great to see the commitment from your youngsters.
Totally agree Janet. We had more cricket at our junior school than we did at the senior as a direct result of teacher interest. We had great hockey at senior school because we had a couple of enthusiasts on the staff, who were not PE teachers atall, but were willing to take on running teams and even entering us in tournaments. Though it has to be said soccer and rugby were pretty well marginalised to house matches rather than inter-school. It was athletics that dominated summer sport for us. Rugby needs special coaches, it being such a potentially dangerous sport left to non specialists. We had a number of quite serious injuries in the house matches as a result.
The problem with insurance has largely marginalised organised inter-school sport along with the reluctance to encourage competition. No one can be a loser these days for fear it damages their self esteem. It amazes me how these minority ideas so often take hold in establishment thinking.
Janet
That’s interesting. Well done. Our P-E teacher was rugby through and through and really didn’t care about cricket. Fortunately we had on the staff two teachers who played Minor Counties cricket (one of whom dismissed a young Boycott twice in the same match, for 1 each innings!) who organised nets and coaching for those of us who were interested, two evenings a week. They also managed to get money for kit. I realise that there are numerous issue nowadays which weren’t in play then, but without enthusiastic teachers – and pupils – there really is no hope.
I think just as big a problem is that we have had a whole succession of senior administrators in the game from ‘top’ schools, who have all seemed very comfortable in their positions (remember Giles Clark’s very chummy comments about Cook and his family). I made this point iin a comment in The Times Online recently and was quite surprised to be shouted down by Mike Atherton himself, who told me we are too ‘obsessed’ in this country with where people went to school and, in effect, that schooling did not have much of an impact on where people end up in life. The cricket evidence seems to point to the contrary…..
That’s ludicrous from a massively out if touch Atherton. You’re not going to end up in some chavvy council flat with a dead end job or unemployed if you get a degree and how many do that in your average comprehensive. If education didn’t have much effect on lifestyle why bother with it.
Would that be Mike Atherton, Manchester Grammar School and Cambridge, Barry ?
That would be him! Still a great admirer of his writing though.
Me too. I really admired him both as a player and captain and he’s certainly one of the best, if not the best, cricket analyst, broadcaster and writer around at the moment.
This seemed promising, after years of giving the ECB a free pass the corporate media finally call for Harrison to go:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jan/27/tom-harrison-cant-talk-good-game-why-is-he-still-in-charge-ecb-cricket
Hang on though, what is Harrison’s great crime. It turns out to be this promise: “On the talent pathways we want to get at least 30% of young boys and girls from ethnically diverse backgrounds”. Let’s say “ethnically diverse” is 10-15% of the population if everyone who’s slightly mixed race is included and some allowance is made for the census possibly understating the UK’s ethnic diversity. That means the official ECB goal is to massively over-represent ethnic minorities. If one group is over-represented, someone has to be under-represented and who do you think that’s going to be? The majority of this country’s population is white working and middle class. The problem the Guardian has with Harrison’s 30% figure is… it isn’t high enough. In other words, the ECB’s stated policy is to exclude working class children and the media, if they notice it at all, want more of it enabled by ‘woke’ types who are so petrified of being called “racist” they won’t stand up for themselves or those they won’t get virtue-signalling points for highlighting.
Now no doubt some would argue this reflects interest levels among different populations, especially among those of Asian background. The trouble is “interest levels” don’t just happen organically, they are to a very considerable extent engineered. The ECB has made very little effort to engage certain populations, indeed it seems to have made active efforts to put them off. To quote Basil Fawlty who they so often resemble, they might as well put up a big sign “no riff-raff”.
Really, grow up Simon. You’re like a small child with an obsession with these pathetic diatribes. Do you think they’re somehow intelligent?
And it would help if you could actually read the source material you’re quoting properly, without it just being a peg on which to hang your own self-pitying complaining–which yes, comes across as pretty racist.
Simon
I agree with your basic proposition but, if Andy Bull’s piece is the one you’re referring to, and if I have understood it correctly, the Committee’s criticism of the 30% target was not that it was too high or too low, but that, at the time ECB targeted themselves to reach it (and, by implication, be awarded the bonuses that go with it) they had all but done so, so it wasn’t exactly a challenging target !
It’s almost like there’s a cultural difference that underpins Australia’s superiority.
Cricket has been a symbol of white privilege since the heady days of Empire. This has been exacerbated by the virtual elimination of cricket in state schools and putting cricket coverage behind a paywall, another preserve of the privileged. So the blame is not the lucky rich kids, it’s politicians and game administrators.
Throughout its history, cricket has been a pretty accurate barometer of the social and political mores of the country in which it was being played, and has evolved as those have done.
Recent England squads simply reflect the fact that social mobility in England has slowed and is now declining, a process which began with the large scale closure of Grammar Schools.
Excellent article. We’ve heard a lot about a racism problem in English cricket, but it’s really a class issue (which disproportionately affects children from ethinic minorities). There’s been a massive change since the Eighties, when I started playing cricket. Then, the vast majority of kids in representative teams in which I played, went to “normal” schools.
The arithmetic is simple. If you have fewer children (and adults) playing, you’ve got a far smaller talent pool to choose from. The ECB must stop thinking about the short term (and trying to justify their bonuses), or the game will die.
This is a really interesting topic in cricket at the moment reading Duncan Stone’s book on the subject as a whole. As a club cricketer from Age 11 and a big of the youth county system in big difference occurs at the ages of 16 plus. When younger if anything club lads who are in the 5th team by age 12 are slightly ahead because they play mens cricket. But its the county coaches and faculties that really pull away later in the development cycle. One thing that I’ve cant say i have ever seen is the scouting of club cricket and especially ECB Prem Leagues for young talent, the likes of Derbyshire near me has a really high standard Prem League but a first team squad littered with the demographic described which is a shame. One finally point is on the push back our point as fans isnt a political one its a sensible cricket one, pro cricket much be deminished because of the current system just on pure statistics alone, if England’s next top batter is landed gentry and Eton educated so be it I just want the best players there but its about equal opportunity for all that has to strengthen the game we don’t want to shut down Private School or steal their grounds more the people not fortunate enough to go there to have as much chance of playing for a county and England as them.
I think this is relevant upto a point but also an oversimplification. Cricket is a sport which has always been strong in a couple of counties, notably yorkshire and lancashire, and have always had quite a few players from toffish backgrounds. The issue of different communities is also complicated by the fact that many more recent immigrants come from cultures with no history or interest in cricket. A sport which can last several days in its highest form is always going to struggle with youngsters given how many different social options they have nowadays. If it wasnt for posh white boys and men our test team wouldnt exist. Maybe we should be grateful that someone wants to play cricket at least?
The team for the first t20 international had an irish captain, two black players and three of asian extraction. Cricket may have an issue with race in this country but it doesnt seem to stop at least some players from different backgrounds getting to the top? Just think how it would be if we got rid of that racism.
I coach U11 at a local club in Wiltshire and there is little to separate those kids who go to Private schools from those who don’t in terms of skill or indeed parental support.
The one thing that is noticeable is that the Private school kids get cricket at school during the week and the state school kids don’t.
Many of both groups go into the county system but this is fed from the local clubs not the schools. We are fortunate in Wilts that the kids are not charged for county coaching and so it’s all pretty even.
The bottom line is that those kids with ‘cricket club’ parents that are prepared to schlep around with cricket bags in the car 3/4 times per week to club and county events are generating cricketers. The school doesn’t make much difference. Those kids that are being invested in by their parents have more success.
The answer as ever isn’t quotas and stopping people playing and is recognising and nurturing talent whenever you find it. Telling people this is a posh boys sport is absolutely not helping.
Getting cricket back into state schools is the only thing that matters because the kids have to want to play the game. If they have never played and don’t come from ‘cricket club’ families you will never get them in to cricket.
It’s absolutely right to say that cricket in state schools has all but died. As a cricket-mad teacher in a boys’ comprehensive school, I noticed that cricket just wasn’t part of the conversation. Indeed, to many children cricket has attained a kind of strange and peculiar cult status, a baffling activity open only to dedicated eccentrics. A sort of morris dancing, without the bells.
Despite Sky’s excellent coverage, I really believe that taking cricket away from free view television has been an absolute disaster for the sport. Much though I enjoy Sky’s coverage- the podcast discussions involving Rob Key, Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain are quite superb- the fact is that, with only a minority of households having Sky Sports, cricket has just fallen further and further down the list of children’s interests. When was the last time the country was really excited by cricket? I’d say when we won the 2019 Cricket World Cup. The whole game was also shown live on free view Channel 4. Coincidence? I don’t think so.