IAN HERBERT: My heart sinks at state-school cricket dying… not England’s World Cup farce

• There are clues as to why England failed so badly to defend their World Cup title 
• Hard-ball cricket is not played at state schools, leaving it out of reach to millions

Precisely how England, a cricket nation bankrolled by a governing body which earned £440million in its last financial year, has managed to crash so spectacularly in defence of the World Cup is bewildering, but there are clues.

Complacency and disinterest in a form of cricket they’ve barely played: 42 ODIs in the past four years, compared with 88 between 2015 and 2019.

The rank incompetence of announcing new central contracts mid-tournament, meaning that Ben Stokes declares he would rather maximise his earnings elsewhere than take a three-year-offer, in the midst of the World Cup, while David Willey learns he is not good enough to receive any offer, as he prepares to bowl against South Africa. Imagine the backlash if the FA timed an announcement like that. Hubris – everywhere.

And then there is the problem which really requires vision, intelligence and the longer view. The fact that hard-ball cricket is beyond the reach of millions of our children because it is not played at state schools and is prohibitively expensive to those who might access it through clubs.

Only one of England’s top six and three of the entire team smashed by South Africa in Mumbai were state-educated – that one being Stokes who didn’t move to UK until he was 12.

State-school cricket is dying so we better get used to England’s World Cup woe

Hard-ball cricket is not played at state schools, leaving it out of reach to millions of kids. Ben Stokes is pictured in 2016 playing with primary school children in Newcastle

Of the 12 different English players to have scored centuries in ODIs in the past four years, a mere two went to non-fee-paying schools – Stokes and Moeen Ali. In the Test format, too, England select from a painfully smaller pool than other nations. Five of the 18 openers tried since Andrew Strauss’ retirement in 2012 have come from state schools, playing a combined 33 Tests out of 191.

Some with an indifference to such numbers will point to how the World Cup was won four years ago with the dice loaded in favour of private school pupils. Then imagine how powerfully England, currently operating at a far lower base level than others, would compete with the elitism taken out.

Those with an intelligent and active interest in the health of cricket have identified the sport’s inclusion problem in the past year. One of the widely overlooked aspects of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report – a broad and brilliant piece of work – was the stress it placed on the need to remove the barriers to working class children, priced out by the costs.

The ECB’s response to the report was big on gloss and words, yet maddeningly vague on detail. The report suggested county coaches working with 10-13-year-olds be given a remit to work in state schools.

It raised the prospect of free kit and coaching to all children identified as possible future talents through local clubs, removing the obvious impediments to a young player from a poorer background – the £65 cost of a helmet, the £80 bat, the £40 pads.

But none of this will be happening any time soon. ‘To tackle barriers for state school pupils, we will develop an action plan designed to increase the number of state primary and secondary school students playing cricket,’ the ECB declared in its response. And your heart sank.

England are all but out of the World Cup in what has been a disastrous defence of their title

Meanwhile, out in the real world, the number of state schools where cricket is played is disappearing off the edge of a cliff. One current England international has discovered that the sport is no longer played at his old state secondary school. The promising relative of another former international has recently drifted away from the pathway talent programme.

There have been successful ECB programmes like All Stars and Chance to Shine but this softball cricket is the relatively easy bit. Helping children making the step into hard ball cricket is monumental tough, particularly in the inner cities, where clubs need more coaches, more players willing to become coaches, more parents ready to get involved – and help to clear those barriers to inclusion.

The sport’s heroes are people like Shahidul Alam Ratan, whose organisation Capital Kids Cricket is trying to attract inner-city London children to the game. We met last year, when I was investigating why there’s a lack of racial diversity in the cricket set-up at Middlesex, though his crusade transcends race.

Ratan is a force of nature, constantly engaged in the fight to get a cork ball and a bat into the hands of kids. Any kids. Black, white, immigrant, British-born. The ultimate outcome just might be a renewal of that conveyor belt of players which produced Wilf Slack, Gladstone Small, Norman Cowans and others.

Our Mail Sport colleague Nasser Hussain helped Capital Kids Cricket launch a ‘Clubs in Need’ campaign a few months ago. What wouldn’t Ratan give for the financial help with coaching and equipment that the ICEC report suggested?

He is too polite to point out that the ECB found £1.1million to pay its disastrous chief executive Tom Harrison in the year to January 2023, despite him leaving the organisation the previous June. So is Rick Walton, a writer and tireless champion of the sport in Pembrokeshire, where he is a talent pathway coach for promising young players.

Joe Root is one of the few England internationals who were state-educated

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ybPdajehh5s%3Frel%3D0

‘There’s virtually no hard-ball cricket in our secondary schools now, because schools don’t have the pitches or the groundsmen for their upkeep. Hardly any even have Astroturf strips. They’re just reduced to softball games,’ Walton tells me.

Ratan recently introduced me to Bharath Rajamani of the Canons CC junior girls club, in North West London, which wants to offer its children affordable winter indoor venues to develop their skills. Most school halls are block-booked out to firms running holiday and after-school clubs. The only place Bharath could find this winter was a community hall at a local temple.

Out in India, the claims and counterclaims have started. England are ‘definitely unsettled,’ says Eoin Morgan. Not so says Chris Woakes, who’s just been carted around the subcontinent for around ten runs an over. ‘We’re all working together. There are no cliques.’

None of which is material to England’s blind spot. The base level of the national team’s cricket just isn’t that good and when the team are ignominiously eliminated from this tournament in the next few days, you would hope that the question of how to broaden the talent pool beyond the self-selecting middle classes just might surface. Don’t hold your breath.

They don’t get much right… but United have got Sir Bobby tributes spot on

If only Manchester United could organise a football team in the way they organised the remembrance of Sir Bobby Charlton. 

The past week’s commemorations have befitted the man, from the two beautiful images of him draped on the front of Old Trafford to the scarf placed on his seat on Sunday.

A permanent empty seat would be a fitting symbol of that remembrance. It was very good to see Manchester City uphold Sunday’s tribute, too. A minute’s applause extremely well observed. 

Manchester United have got their tributes to club legend Sir Bobby Charlton spot on

All Blacks live up to their name

It was as much of a thrill as ever to see the All-Blacks’ boots in Saturday night’s World Cup final. 

We live in a world of individualists, sporting boots of every colour and design which say to the world, ‘See! Look at me.’

No pinks or green fluorescence from these participants who, to a man, wore black boots, immaculately polished. A beautiful symbol of collectivism.

The All Blacks lived up to their name at the World Cup with each player sporting black boots

Jilly is spot on over diving 

It’s been a pleasure to get to know the writer Jilly Cooper these past few years, while she has been researching the football world for her great new novel, Tackle! Her unquenchable interest in the sport seems unaffected by the travails of her team, Forest Green Rovers, and it strikes me that also she very much has the measure of the sport.

She relates her enthusiasm for the Lionesses in one recent interview. ‘They’re brilliant because they don’t fall over and pretend they’re dead, do they?’ Jilly says. ‘If men even get touched on the shoulders, they fall over. They ought to be acting Shakespeare at Stratford.’

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