The pledges specified by a 34-page doc embody multi-million-pound investments within the ladies’s recreation and tasks to have interaction uncared for Black and Asian communities, in addition to a revamp geared in direction of making the game’s expertise pathway extra accessible and the creation of a cricket regulator to hold out investigations in areas akin to anti-discrimination.
“Cricket hasn’t got it right in the past,” stated Thompson, who took up his put up final August, after the assessment had been commissioned. “But this is an opportunity to move forward together.”
The ECB says it’s performing upon 94 per cent of the ICEC’s suggestions both totally or in tailored kind, although a small quantity are both on maintain or have been rejected outright. The most notable measures to which the ECB has not but dedicated encompass the gender pay hole within the skilled recreation.
England Women’s’ match charges have been raised to stage these paid to the boys’s’ sides, a change which got here into impact throughout the latest white-ball sequence towards Sri Lanka, however with prices already spiralling year-on-year and the worth of its main broadcast deal set till 2028, the ECB says “further analysis” is required earlier than it could possibly ship on the ICEC’s formidable proposals round pay parity.
They embody that of equalising salaries in The Hundred, the place the main feminine gamers earn simply £31,250 in comparison with £125,000 on the high of the boys’s match, and reaching equal common pay throughout males’s and girls’s home cricket by 2029.
The ECB says it needs to “plot a path to sustainable domestic player pay parity in the future” however whereas the physique’s CEO, Richard Gould, stated it could “have a good go” at matching the 2029 goal, he additionally warned it’s “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 take action, a minimal of £25million will probably be invested within the ladies’s recreation every year, on high of forecast annual revenues, and there are goals to triple the variety of leisure women’ groups within the nation 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 stated.
Funding the ICEC’s suggestions stays an enormous problem for the ECB at a time when it’s being compelled to drastically enhance the worth of central contracts for its males’s gamers in a bid to stave off the rising risk of profitable franchise leagues, with main stars final week provided multi-year England offers for the primary time.
“We have two priorities at the moment in terms of finances for the game,” Gould stated. “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 closely crucial of the game’s present expertise pathways, which it discovered stay dominated by personal faculties and embody prices prohibitive to these from decrease socio-economic backgrounds.
In response, the ECB says it’ll work with counties in planning an growth of the construction to succeed in extra youngsters from throughout a broader demographic, with the goal of guaranteeing affordability just isn’t a barrier to pathway participation by 2025. It may even increase the age at which children are first chosen to play consultant county cricket.
Organisations from throughout the sport may even be consulted throughout the growth of “action plans” focused particularly at rising participation inside state faculties and Black and Asian communities, with £2m price of further funding for present tasks akin to Chance To Shine, MCC Foundation and the African Caribbean Engagement (ACE) Programme already introduced this month.
The new cricket regulator will probably be “ring-fenced” as separate from the ECB, although its chair will probably be appointed by the physique, and also will embody problems with misconduct and safeguarding below its remit, after the ICEC declared the present complaints system not match for function.
