ECB keen to stem decrease in number of people playing cricket

The England and Wales Cricket Board will act quickly to try and rectify a significant decrease in the number of people playing cricket recreationally.

A series of initiatives are being put in place to promote participation and address the seven per cent drop off in the number of people playing for a team last year.

Those initiatives include a £96million investment in recreational cricket over the next four years which will help clubs improve their grounds and facilities, as well as attract more people to key volunteer roles such as umpires, scorers and coaches on top of the playing side.

This year’s research showed the total number of players playing cricket in teams was down from 908,000 in 2013 to 844,000 in 2014.

Males represented 93 per cent of the participation base with females representing seven per cent – the same gender breakdown as in 2013 - and the survey also revealed that 30 per cent of grassroots cricketers are drawn from ethnic minorities, while 53 per cent of cricketers would like to play the game more often.

The ECB Cricket Partnership team's remit also includes:

• Active engagement with the South Asian cricket community to provide more support for their clubs and leagues
• Targeting development activity at five major urban areas where there are high concentrations of ethnic minorities; London, Leeds, Leicester, Bradford, Manchester
• Developing a new U19 T20 competition which is designed to keep more youngsters in the game as they progress from junior cricket into adulthood
• Promoting shorter forms of cricket such as the eight a side Last Man Stands competition which has more than 7,500 players nationwide
• Encouraging all our clubs to widen opportunities for women and girls to play cricket – as this is one of the fastest areas of growth at present. The number of clubs offering women’s cricket has risen from around 60 a decade ago to nearly 600 in 2014.

The body's chief operating officer Gordon Hollins said: "ECB recognised the participation challenges that have been facing all team sports and we were determined to gain a greater insight into those issues and find long-term solutions.

"To do that ECB changed the way in which it measured participation last year and introduced the new National Cricket Playing Survey as part of our wider efforts to gain a greater understanding of what drives grassroots cricket participation.

"Thanks to an excellent response ECB now has a much clearer picture than ever before of who plays recreational cricket, what type of cricket they prefer to play, when they want to play it and we are now setting about finding ways in which we can best address their needs going forward.

“We are already working in partnership with our 39 County Cricket Boards as part of a detailed participation review. We will join them in working with their respective cricket leagues to tackle key factors which affect participation such as match end time, travel distance to matches, playing format, length of game and club/school links.

“This year, we’ve run a pilot ‘player communications’ programme in four counties targeting current and lapsed players which has produced encouraging results. We’ve also launched a programme of engagement and development with South Asian communities which has been backed up by capital and revenue investment in five major cities with a high South Asian population.

“Our recreational game also experienced greater frequency of rainfall on Saturdays in 2014 than in the wet summer of 2012 and in the New Year we’ll be announcing further plans to support clubs in their efforts to mitigate the impact of wet weather which had a significant impact on the number of fixtures completed.”