This action plan is an earnest attempt, thanks to one man more than any other; Kamlesh Patel - or the Lord Patel of Bradford – who has changed the attitude of ECB since joining the board. The Rooney Rule mean at least one candidate holding the necessary qualifications from a black, Asian, minority ethnic background will make the shortlist of every ECB coaching job from junior to senior men's and women's cricket.
The ECB will also hold talks with the countries, urging them to adopt the Rooney Rule over the next two years. The ECB also plans to deliver 'unconscious bias' training for county academy directors to educate them about the needs of ethnic minorities, award financial assistance to players from poor backgrounds and appoint ‘Community Talent Champions’ to help Asian cricketers to come up to the national level.
Twenty ‘Urban Cricket Centres’ will be established over the next two years putting the women’s and girls’ game at the forefront. The report reveals that cricketers from the south Asian community make up a third of the sport’s participants at amateur level but the figure drops to a shocking four per cent in the professional game. A lack of talent identification and decent facilities in urban areas, where the majority of south Asian communities live, are blamed for the failings.
The ECB is also aware that south Asians re obsessed with cricket but not engaged with the English game. It states that 42 per cent of Sky subscribers are South Asians and that 30 per cent watch the Indian Premier League, but the figure drops to just four per cent for the county Twenty20 Vitality Blast competition. “We know that cricket is central to the identity of being south Asian, but this doesn’t currently include traditional ‘English cricket’, which has a very different image in the minds of south Asian cricket fans,” says the report. “Whilst they see south Asian cricket, such as IPL, as being fun and a game of entertainment, they see English cricket as serious, less important and old fashioned, creating a significant cultural and practical challenge for us to engage the south Asian audience through our current media outputs and channels.”
The ECB has identified 10 core areas in which to work with South Asian communities: Birmingham, Bradford, Kirklees, Leeds, Leicester, London, Luton, Manchester, Sandwell and Slough. Role models have been identified as being crucial and the launch of the new Hundred competition announced last month is part of the process, although it is still referred to in the report as a Twenty20 tournament due to print deadlines. It is reported that 58 per cent of south Asian cricketers prefer playing T20 or an even shorter format of the game.
