The Club's response:
https://edgbaston.com/news/warwickshire-welcomes-milestone-report-on-cricket-inclusivity/

I imagine there will be a lot of similar statements from counties today, pointing out all the brilliant initiatives and projects they have.

Whenever it’s anything fluffy or exciting it’s “Edgbaston” or “the Bears” - as soon as it’s a tricky subject and the back foot we revert to Warwickshire County Cricket Club!

In fairness, I think the club have been ahead of other clubs on the diversity and inclusivity front for a few years now. I’m sure there’s more that could be done though.

Putting right the wrongs of cricket that span 50-60+ years is important and long overdue. However we ought not let club and ECB hierarchy off the hook for some of the short term decisions over specifically the last 25 years that have led to the game's invisibility within inner urban areas, schools workplaces and the culture of these islands. Sure belatedly they come up with ideas and lead on funding for diversity as Warwickshire is almost certainly ahead of most in this respect.

Let's not forget the hiding of the game behind a paywall in 2006. There are people still at the ECB and in positions at county clubs who remain culpable for this and plenty of other decisions besides
It's rather convenient for them to point the finger at an ageing, declining, out of touch membership and the volunteers - suits their agenda down to a tee that does. Playing increasingly greater proportions of the county championship in rugby season hardly helps either - you're not going to see much more than the die hards continue to hand over hard earned cash to follow that up close let alone tootle along to Portland Rd with it's wholly inadequate facilities for spectators to watch the women's teams in the freezing cold.

How about they put lots and lots of county mens and women's cricket matches on in mid-season and give diversity a bit of a chance. Just a thought like...

David Hopps said it better than I. Just read his tweet.

I've spent 40 years vaguely at odds with English cricket because of its lack of diversity. Now things are finally changing I'm no longer trusted because I'm a bald 64-year-old white middle-class bloke. From Yorkshire. No hope really.

I've been plodding through (some) of the 300-ish pages in this report and have come to the conclusion that it is a missed opportunity that will hinder rather than help progress towards inclusivity. Amongst the recommendations, there are many that involve further investigations; data gathering; preparation of reports; a new regulatory body; (or meaningless "apologies"). These will add to bureaucracy and divert attention from making any actual progress. Recommendations for practical action are few and somewhat unrealistic. Booting out Eton v Harrow might be achievable although no more than symbolic. Calling for equal pay for women's cricket simply ignores commercial reality. And so on.
There's a lot wrong with the culture of cricket which we "type K" blokes who have rejoiced in cheering ethnic minority cricketers since Rudi Webster and Billy Ibadulla know very well. It didn't need a Commission to write it all down. It needs some achievable actions - and the money to back them up.

I stopped following Hopps on Twitter because of his support for Yorkshire during the racism crisis, so when he says "vaguely at odds" he really does mean "vaguely". Reactions to the report don't shock me. I've long thought that county cricket is incredibly conservative, resistant to change and very unwilling to consider itself part of the problem, if it accepts there are problems at all. It's no surprise that people with those attitudes don't like the report's findings.

ODI World Cup on free to air would be quite a nice achievable quick fix and show intent - that's if any terrestrial channel will have it

Have we as members been complicit in Warwickshire getting away with not really bringing through local talent?

Relegations in 2008 and again in 2017. Each occasion followed by a quick recruitment process because we as members/supporters demanded instant return to Division 1 so we could compete for the title again and again - so in comes, Barker, Wright, Rankin, Chopra etc... and then Sibley, Rhodes, Norwell, Miles - instead of Warwickshire using the resources at it's disposal to do the hard yakka and bring players through - and really develop their skill set and maybe spend a few more seasons in Division 2 while they get the hang of things. Think of the talent in the local area that's gone to waste or not reached its full potential. Instead we mine the Surrey and Hampshire public school system and cherry pick some talent from other counties and hand them to Graham Welch etc... to fashion into quality seam bowlers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fxl5b2

Stuart Cain is on towards the end of this BBC podcast and again sounds well meaning.
Thank god ex-umpire John Holder was on just beforehand as he corrected the BBC reporter Dan Roan who tried to suggest that the county members who opposed the Strauss Review last year would be a similar hurdle for the ECB in implementing the findings of this report. Absolutely inapproprate conflation of the two things. Tackling these issues of embedded racism and elitism is on a totally different level to opposing the dreadful half baked Strauss Review that had little to no support going for it by the end of last year

Unfortunately people on both sides of the debate trying to fight their culture wars via cricket.

If you look at things logically commercial interests have been far more of a threat to the game and linked to the findings in this report than people who watch cricket.

It’s commercialism that has ostracised WCCC from its members as has happened with other counties. It’s commercialism which drove the ECB to take cricket away from free to air and to cannibalise the game via the Hundred. Commercialism which made Board members forget why WCCC exists and who it represents. Literally no one on the current board represents our clubs best interests. The non exec Board members will pay lip service to the reports findings whilst patronising members never realising for a minute that their ideology of chasing sponsorship and pounds and ripping out heritage has created this situation.

Please don’t name call fellow cricket watchers but call out the real cause of the issues in the game!

I agree with much of the above.
I hope that there will be increased focus on those initiatives that genuinely support inclusion in cricket, like Chance to Shine which does fantastic work in schools. Warwickshire's Issy Wong is the first cricketer who started on a Chance to Shine scheme to play for England.
To be fair, the ECB puts about £2.5m into Chance to Shine each year but it needs a lot more than that to continue its work, let alone to expand it.

I do see the racism and sexism issues as a reflection on wider society. I think that affects all sports. You see it in all sports.
I remember, I think it was last year, Michael Chopra questioning why so few from Indian and Pakistani backgrounds played organised football and there were zero English born professionals from those backgrounds in English leagues.

The class issue I lay purely at the feet of the ECB. They’ve left a huge gulf develop in terms of coaching and funding around the age of 13. State schools don’t have the funding, and coaches will always follow the money like any other profession. And the money is in private schools because the ECB hasn’t helped keep the game alive in state schools. So players from those backgrounds develop faster, they play more, they have more access, and quite frankly kids are competitive, they want to win. And if one team of kids is training all winter, got dedicated cricket coaches, getting the best talent in scholarships because that’s the only way kids can make it professionally it seems, why would state school kids want to keep playing and getting beaten. Easier to write it off as a sport for posho’s and play football. Because they have coaches in their schools who are very good at coaching that and doing training for that.

I saw a wonderful point from someone on another site, how many dedicated cricket coaches salaries could be paid for from the wages of the players alone in the hundred. Even without the marketing and other crazy costs involved with setting it up, just the players wages could pay for hundreds of dedicated coaches to be kept in state schools and keep the game alive and a wider player pool.
But the coaches are in private schools, those same coaches are often the “pathway” coaches, and it’s easy to see how we get to where we are.
You could agree with local clubs for schools to use their nets and pitches.
Because as good as clubs are when players get to 16 upwards and adult cricket. You need to get to the players when they’re younger, and not have to make parents drive them to training at a club or to matches. Get them whilst they’re at school, they have to be there, get them into the game there. Because some parents won’t consider cricket, won’t take them to a cricket club, so you’ve got to get them into the sport at school age.

Out of interest does anyone know the general make up of our squad in terms of private vs state educated?

Out of the locally developed lads,

Woakes, Johal, Moeen, H Brookes, E Brookes, Hamza Sheikh and Amir Khan are state educated.

Yates, Garrett and Hain private. Bethell too I think.

Not sure on Mousley.

Apologies if I've got any wrong.

Dan Mousley attended Bablake School in Coventry which is a private school.

BristolBear wrote:

The class issue I lay purely at the feet of the ECB. They’ve left a huge gulf develop in terms of coaching and funding around the age of 13. State schools don’t have the funding, and coaches will always follow the money like any other profession. And the money is in private schools
I saw a wonderful point from someone on another site, how many dedicated cricket coaches salaries could be paid for from the wages of the players alone in the hundred. Even without the marketing and other crazy costs involved with setting it up, just the players wages could pay for hundreds of dedicated coaches to be kept in state schools and keep the game alive and a wider player pool.
But the coaches are in private schools, those same coaches are often the “pathway” coaches, and it’s easy to see how we get to where we are.
You could agree with local clubs for schools to use their nets and pitches.
Because as good as clubs are when players get to 16 upwards and adult cricket. You need to get to the players when they’re younger, and not have to make parents drive them to training at a club or to matches. Get them whilst they’re at school, they have to be there, get them into the game there. Because some parents won’t consider cricket, won’t take them to a cricket club, so you’ve got to get them into the sport at school age.

Excellent point. The elitism has just meant we have a narrower pool of players to pick from than a country with smaller population like Australia. Because in Australia it has mostly been kept on free to air and not seen as a posh boys sport so it is a viable option for hundreds of kids in all sorts of backgrounds even kids who are from non cricket families - Yugoslav and Greek and Italian communities in Australia from the 1970's onwards have clearly not faced the type of barrier to entry that working class kids of all descriptions have in the UK since the playing fields were sold off, large works were split up so there aren't the factory workplace leagues anymore - miners welfare clubs etc...and then to exacerbate that the promise of 2005 ashes series was squandered when in 2006 the sport hid itself behind a paywall. A generation lost

None of this will make a jot of difference. The very people who have run the sport for the last 15 years will say they've done better than those who ran it the previous 25. Have they???? Sky TV, BBC, ECB, county chief execs at big county clubs all will try to suggest they got a handle on the issue so trust them to come up with the plans to fix the problem. The problem they will suggest rather rudely is the existing members of cricket clubs and the very existence of 'county' cricket itself

You just know they are keen to link this to the rejection (eventually nobody thought it was a good way to reorganize the schedule not even the Warwicks chief executive seemed convinced) of the Strauss Review. We all know it is THESE administrators that allowed the sport to fester in this mess in the first place

Sam Hain, and his brothers were at a private school, as their father was head of sport there, Dan Mousley was on a sports scholarship at Bablake.
Jacob Bethell was at Rugby School, both the Maddy boys are at Solihull school, their father is head of cricket there.
Of recent former players, Ed Pollock attended RGS Worcester, Tom Banton was at Bromsgrove school, then moved to Kings Taunton, both schools gave him cricket scholarships.
The majority of players in the clubs U18 side are from state schools, and that side is very ethnically diverse, the same is true for the U15 girls & U12 boys sides.
(I have umpired all 3 in the last few weeks.)

Thanks, Highveld. It's good to know that the next generation coming through is ethnically diverse. Let's hope that at least some of them come through to the top level in the next few years.

I see that worcestershire have just given a first class debut to a 19 year old, originally from Wolverhampton.

However, he has committed the "sin" of having a private school education!

Cricket in Warwickshire & Worcestershire is actually very diverse, not only ethnically, but also in terms of players backgrounds and occupation.

Perhaps we should be celebrating all the good things that the local cricket community is doing, including clubs providing a venue for local community groups, of all types, to meet and the good work that the clubs do in delivering cricket coaching to children that the state funded education system is failing to do.