Beyond Bazball: are class and culture the root cause of England's Ashes failure?

Despite England’s first Ashes Test victory in Australia since the 2010/11 tour ‘down under’, English cricket - and the playing style known as ‘Bazball’ in particular  - has come under increasingly hostile scrutiny.

This is nothing new of course. English cricket’s habitual failures when results, as far as public interest is concerned, really matter have long resulted in administrative and journalistic navel-gazing without ever, it seems, getting to the root of the problem. 

In recent years, this introspection has largely focussed upon racism, following Azeem Rafiq’s campaign for accountability that led to a DCMS enquiry and, ultimately, the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) in 2023, which investigated all forms of discrimination.

For an all too brief period the ICEC Report engendered discussions that placed social class - as yet, not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 - at their heart. While encouraging, these discussions soon petered out and left the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to make largely scrutiny-free decisions in response.

While it is too early to assess the true outcomes of changes made since the ICEC Report was published (to the talent pathway, for instance), it is objectively true that the ECB’s previous ‘reforms’ and ‘action plans’ have achieved little to address discrimination in cricket. Indeed, the elitism that has marked the game’s development since the mid-nineteenth century has become greater over recent decades.

In this regard, the recruitment process that led to Bazball proves illuminating. For the ECB, despite a vow to immediately adopt the ‘Rooney Rule’, which guarantees at least one qualified Black or South Asian candidate is interviewed, for any England coaching position as part of their South Asian Action Plan (2018), has failed to deliver on its promises. Leaving aside the ECB filling the post of elite performance pathway coach, in 2021, without ever advertising the role, Sir Andrew Strauss’ - then interim director of men’s cricket - appointment of his friend Rob Key, and his subsequent appointment of his close friend Brendon McCullum is the embodiment of ‘jobs for the boys’.

The fact is, English cricket is run by, and in the interests of, the privately educated and repeated Ashes failures should be examined, and solutions found, in this context. It is no historical accident that cricket is elitist. Unlike football, which became ‘the people’s game’ thanks to overtly meritocratic competitive structures (first, the FA Cup and then, most importantly, the Football League), cricket’s administration and playing structures - that ultimately form English cricket’s culture - have been designed to hinder competition and, in turn, exclude the working classes as players and spectators.

If the exclusion of others is the true, and rather mean, ’spirit’ of English cricket at the so-called ‘first-class’ level, the ECB, like the MCC and the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) before it, are all too successful in this endeavour despite many (both paid and unpaid), at the recreational coalface, working hard to achieve the ECB’s stated aim of making cricket the UK’s ‘most inclusive sport’.

And yet, matters keep getting worse with the Sutton Trust’s Elitist Britain Report (2025) revealing that, 59 per cent of men’s first-class cricketers (a rise of 16 per cent since their last report of 2019), and 50 per cent of women (a rise of 15 per cent) attended an independent (fee paying) school. Indeed, the Sutton Trust cited cricket (and journalism) as the British institutions having the most significant increases.

Conversely, the percentage of politicians who attended private schools is declining. But the extent this demographic change will influence policy decisions is, on current form, highly debatable. Nevertheless, it seems clear, if English cricket is a guide, that many of the professions (or institutions) examined by the Sutton Trust are incapable of reforming themselves. 

Broader issues, such as the selling off of state school playing fields over numerous decades, are undoubtedly contributory factors beyond the ECB’s control. And yet, the ‘behavioural changes’, and ‘clear set of values’, called for by the authors of the ICEC Report are, from an institutional perspective, hard to encourage, and all but impossible to police, as long as the ECB remains a limited company, receiving millions of pounds of public money, to which freedom of information requests do not apply.

Ultimately, any ECB strategy to deal with discrimination or inequality, no matter how well intended, will fail as long as they continue to ‘misalign’ with an administrative and structural culture specifically designed to privilege white middle class men. 

It falls, as the Sutton Trust wish, upon the government to follow through in implementing the ‘socio-economic duty’ set out in the Equality Act (2010) and force the ECB to act or, if necessary, withhold public money until they do. 

While such a path is not applicable to all professions and institutions dominated by the privately educated in the UK, the performance of the England team is a warning for civil society as a whole. For if the UK is to ‘remain’ a vibrant, creative, and globally competitive country it can no longer afford to allow seven per cent of the population to dominate social, economic, political, and cultural life.

 

‘Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast’: the ECB’s response to the ICEC

‘Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast’: the ECB’s response to the ICEC

 

By Dr Duncan Stone

 

Of the 44 Recommendations made by the ICEC Report, the suggestions below relate to ‘Culture’ (Recommendations 3 and 4), as it is hoped they will help make the game more welcoming and inclusive to a broader demographic than is currently the case. 

 

These may appear, in certain cases, a big ask. And yet, the introduction of a new set of overarching structural and cultural parameters, with meritocracy and inclusiveness at heart, are fundamental to the success of any future EDI initiatives.

 

In essence: to overcome well documented institutional discrimination, and save the game from itself, we must reform the institution itself rather than tinkering around the edges.

 

 

1.     Reform of the County Championship

 

Since the MCC’s County Cricket Council rejected the idea of a three-division County Cricket League in 1889, it is fair to say ‘first-class’ cricket in England and Wales has never been run in the interests of the public. Indeed, the County Championship has operated as a ‘closed shop’ ever since. This has not simply stifled competition, and the pursuit of excellence, it has, all too often, reduced the need to look beyond elite institutions for players.

 

As much as political decisions – most notably the sale of state school playing fields – over the last 40 years has exacerbated this situation, the mindset of the counties and those who work as coaches is unlikely to change unless more jeopardy is introduced to county cricket.

 

The qualified success of a two-division County Championship since 1999, and the three conferences (and Lord’s final) of the Bob Willis Trophy during the Covid lockdowns, notwithstanding, a three-division County Championship remains the best format overall.  

 

This concept may not be popular among certain counties – the ECB could mitigate this by ring fencing funding for every county for at least a decade – and more traditional supporters given the reduction in matches. And yet, with three titles to play for and two relegations to avoid, a three-division championship would undoubtedly provide a boost to the red-ball game by providing more meaningful and competitive cricket with fewer dead rubbers. 

 

Moreover, it creates space for shorter forms of the game, such as an expanded T20 competition that may include ‘International XIs’ (Ireland, Scotland, and Holland), national counties, or even SACA and ACE XIs.

 

If we look at the history of football, this new competitive structure should increase interest among the public, the media, and commercial partners. And yet, the most important outcome would be a change in mindset and a weaning of the counties off the public-school conveyor belt that they clearly rely upon too much.

 

While it is obvious, statistically speaking, that a good deal of talent is going to waste, the instant success of the ACE and SACA programmes demonstrate the prejudices or, shall we say, ‘laziness’ that currently afflicts the first-class counties. A new form of County Championship (and T20) would thus, one would expect, ensure any county that finds itself at the bottom of Division Two or Three will broaden their search for talent by looking beyond the public schools and the ECB’s recreational mainstream.

 

Like it or not, given a third of recreational cricketers come from this diverse community, an inclusive future for cricket in this country will likely be South Asian. Indeed, the ECB should express their gratitude to this community for saving numerous clubs (including my own) and, although debateable, ‘preventing’ the game from becoming a minor sport (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/137986/tp-adult-participation-sport-analysis.pdf).

 

And yet, any discrete efforts to integrate them – such as the South Asian Action Plan – will never fully succeed until the top of the game becomes more open and meritocratic.

 

 

2.     The ‘Spirit of Cricket’

 

There is no doubt that cricket has an image problem. Like the development of the County Championship, the game’s ‘posh’ or ‘stuffy’ image, culture, and orthodox history are the result of social engineering designed to privilege white, privately educated, men above all others (https://repeaterbooks.com/product/different-class-the-untold-story-of-english-cricket/).

 

Indeed, if we look beyond the game’s historical orthodoxy, the evidence strongly suggests such men have long believed the game is theirs, and theirs alone, with the MCC’s recent decision to preserve Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cambridge matches at Lord’s demonstrating how this attitude persists today. 

 

While the ICEC Report has made firm, and entirely correct, recommendations in relation to these fixtures and the ECB’s relationship with the MCC / Lord’s, their prominence, and the elitism they embody, puts people off a sport that fails to reflect modern society.

 

If cricket is ever to be a ‘sport for all’, this cultural baggage needs to be dropped as soon as possible, whereas others have questioned – with some justification – whether the ECB should allocate any Tests to Lord’s until significant changes are made (https://beingoutsidecricket.com/category/lords/).

 

Distancing the sport from this nebulous concept would not simply broaden appeal, it would also reduce the inevitable contradictions that occur when competitive sport (be it amateur or professional) – even when played within the Laws – collides with a set of unwritten ideals that were created, and exploited, as a method of social and racial distinction (https://www.phlexiblephilosophy.com/politics/englishness-and-the-mankad) .

 

Regrettably, this ambiguity also afflicts decisions made in relation to accusations of racism or other EDI matters. While an umpire needn’t consider if a batter was intending to hit the ball when caught, Gary Ballance was able to argue his comments, while clearly racist, were not intended as such (https://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12123/12459182/gary-ballance-admits-using-racial-slur-towards-azeem-rafiq-while-yorkshire-team-mates).

 

Indeed, it seems, in certain cases across many sports, that EDI training provides a ‘free pass’ to those guilty of racism. So clearer guidelines on and off the field, rather than some ill-defined and inconsistently applied ‘spirit’, would be welcome all-round.

 

 

3.     ‘Jerusalem’ and the Image of ‘English’ Cricket

 

Regrettably, the cultural baggage does not end there, as the decision, in 2003 (at sponsor Npower’s recommendation), to have England’s male XI take to the field to the strains of ‘Jerusalem’ promotes an idealistic notion of England and ‘Englishness’. 

 

More conspicuous than the spirit of cricket, thanks to its adoption by the Barmy Army, this overtly romantic ‘invented tradition’ places the game in a historical context that pre-dates immigration from the Commonwealth and is, therefore, inherently ‘white’ in its import and appeal.

 

The ECB (and certain media partners) should, therefore, distance itself from both ‘Jerusalem’ and the Barmy Army (a Private Limited Company since 1995). For instance, the official ECB / Barmy Army ‘sing-a-long’ (with the words to ‘Jerusalem’ flashed across the scoreboard) during the tea interval of day one of the Ashes Test match at the Oval does nothing to promote ‘inclusiveness’ unless you buy into English cricket’s dominant monoculture.

 

 

4.     Demographic Change – Administration and Media

 

Harsh as it may sound, many of those currently overseeing the administration of cricket in England and Wales will need to step aside. Although highly contentious, this is essential to ensure the game not only sheds its elitist pretentions, but also guarantees those running the game reflect and understand the game’s true constituency.

 

If this comes as a shock, it shouldn’t. For this issue has long been recognised. A quote from the cricket historian Major Rowland Bowen from as long ago as 1970 ably illustrates this point: 

 

“… the Victorian attitude towards [cricket], which amounts to near sanctity at Lord’s … has become … too much identified with an outmoded social division … which does not reflect the general outlook of the country in its perpetual half-strangled appeals for ‘proper behaviour’ and ‘good form’, and the rest of it. It does cricket no good to be identified with that outlook … but [cricket] has no chance of losing this identification so long as the higher administration of the game remains in the hands of people heavily imbued with that background and those ideas”.                                                         Bowen, Cricket: A History, page 208

 

More than 50 years later and nothing has changed. As the website BeingOutsideCricket.com revealed in 2017 (https://beingoutsidecricket.com/2017/10/04/is-english-cricket-too-posh/), “public school boys have accounted for 80% of the ECB/TCCB chairmen, 67.5% of the chairmen of selectors, and Test captains in 65% of the games” over the previous 40 years.

In terms of the current England teams (both men and women), the dominance of privately educated players is troubling. For while these sides represent us, they are not representative of us.

 

The ICEC’s recommendation to make the county pathways free is clearly crucial in helping to change the demographic of first-class and international cricket. But while I appreciate the adoption of the ‘Rooney Rule’ as part of the South Asian Action Plan, one is left wondering if it has been implemented? 

 

We know already the ECB failed to advertise the role of Elite Pathway Coach in 2021 (https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ecb-accused-of-ignoring-rooney-rule-in-elite-coaching-appointment-1253630). Moreover, over the last two years, the ECB have hired a chair, chief executive, deputy chief executive, director of men’s cricket and three England coaches – all of whom are white – with little or no detail relating to the procurement process being made public. 

 

Whether or not Black or South Asian candidates were / are interviewed, can we trust this process as anything more than ‘box ticking’? Certainly, Sir Andrew Strauss’ appointment of his friend Rob Key, and the subsequent appointment of his close friend Brendon McCullum smacks of ‘jobs for the boys’. And as much as it has worked out on the field (this time), these appointments look highly dubious in EDI terms.

 

 

5.     Marketing and Presentation

 

Beyond the ‘spirit of cricket’ and ‘Jerusalem’, Jarrod Kimber has suggested that cricket needs a wider variety of voices rather than the accents and attitudes synonymous with the BBC’s Test Match Special (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InCwvq-bjfQ). Certainly, the exclusive (and untendered) rights to radio broadcasts enjoyed by the BBC needs looking at. As does the habitual re-negotiation of TV deals with Sky earlier than needed. 

 

As obvious as it may seem, the ECB needs to diversify the ways in which cricket is accessed – rather than played – to broaden cricket’s audience (especially among the young). To do so, the ECB must stop dictating how we, the public, consume cricket and drop the ‘private club’ attitude, or what look like ‘gentleman’s agreements’, as well as being less precious in relation to the copyright of clips (Major League Soccer in America is an excellent example of a sport that wishes to be seen by as many people as possible globally).

 

As the history of the game and the findings of the ICEC Report ably demonstrate, exclusivity neither equals quality nor generates broader appeal.

 

 

6.     The Hundred 

 

As the TCCB, players and fans discovered with the Benson & Hedges Cup in the early 1970s, four formats is one format too many. 

 

Although designed to grow the game, the monopoly given to The Hundred during the summer has proved divisive. More alarmingly, it appears to have operated at a considerable loss having funnelled money up the game’s economic hierarchy. 

 

Can the ECB really justify what appears to be profligacy when the T20 Blast had achieved record crowds in 2019? Surely, these reserves (initially, £185million over four years) would have been far more productive in growing the game had they been used at the recreational level, or fund equity and diversity when a “top-end estimate for the cost of implementing all of the ICEC recommendations is £150m” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/66635447). One may also ask where the £62m + provided by Sport England between 2009 and 2017 to promote equality and diversity went?

 

While The Hundred has clearly proved beneficial to the women’s game, this has been a fortuitous ‘accident’ of the Coronavirus pandemic, which led to ground-sharing, rather than a consciously inclusive strategy.

 

In a similar vein, some have suggested The Hundred was a way to engage with the British South Asian community (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/hundred-can-new-format-help-ecb-engage-british-asian-population/). As much as this appears superficially positive, such a claim suggests the ECB would rather launch a new format than make the structural and cultural changes required to the existing game.

 

Indeed, The Hundred’s format, and other steps leading up to its creation, betray a fundamental issue within the ECB and English Cricket. To quote Danny Frankland of Being Outside Cricket: 

 

“There is a widespread belief that cricket is a complex sport, which means that cricket fans are smart people and those who don’t like cricket must, therefore, be stupid. The Hundred was intended to be a simpler format in both presentation and the game itself, and therefore more able to be understood by the idiots who could obviously not grasp the standard formats.”

 

Not only is this elitist nonsense, it also manages to patronise the young, women, and ethnic minorities who – despite The Hundred – continue to be denied opportunities to watch Black British or South Asians due to the dearth of Black and South Asian cricketers in county cricket.

 

 

7.     The Recreational Game

 

While the ICEC Report has made numerous recommendations in relation to the recreational game and how it feeds into the first-class / professional game, the ECB should be seeking to reduce the distance between itself and the club game. In terms of EDI the ECB’s Cricket Discipline Commission has never, to my knowledge, dealt with a complaint below first-class cricket. 

 

If the ECB insists it is a national governing body, it should be more pro-active in governing all of the game in the more forceful manner requested in Point 2.

 

Beyond this, it would also be good to see the ECB encourage affiliated leagues (at every level) to be more open to the use of artificial wickets. 

 

This, under the guise of ‘facilities’, has been used, all too often, as an ‘institutional’ excuse for the exclusion of ethnic minority clubs from the ECB’s recreational ‘mainstream’ when, as I discussed with Jarrod Kimber, artificial, matting and grass wickets are accepted throughout Grade Cricket in Australia (https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/redinker/episodes/The-Fetishising-of-English-Cricket-with-Duncan-Stone-e1backs/a-a71offn).

 

Closely tied to the game’s bucolic ideal, the fetishization of grass wickets (that consume valuable time and money from clubs desperately short of volunteers) does not, ultimately, help to ‘get the game on’, let alone expand.

 

As a brief aside, the same may be said of longer formats and the ECB may wish to consider recommending the lower divisions of larger leagues adopt 40-over win/lose or even T20 formats to retain older players as much as recruit – equally time-poor – youth.

 

Although the onerous, and thus discriminatory, criteria of the ECB’s Clubmark are already under revision, it seems grossly unfair that the MCC, which no doubt receives millions of pounds from the ECB, is held to lower EDI standards than a village team.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The ECB must recognise that it, and the way it runs and promotes cricket in England and Wales *is* the game’s culture. It must, therefore, look at itself, how it works, and in whose interests, to first identify, and then reform, where this culture fails to promote equity and inclusiveness. 

 

The above are merely a starting point in that process. 

Seeing the ‘Big Picture’: a historical view of football, society and ‘fair competition’

 

 

The leaking of Liverpool and Manchester United’s 'Project Big Picture' to, amongst other things, shrink the Premier League (PL) to 18 clubs has, despite an offer to the English Football League to share 25% of future television revenue, angered many – including the PL itself.

 

With 14 of the PL’s 20 clubs unaware of the scheme, the PL has stated the plan could have a “damaging impact on the whole game” and their concerns were shared by supporters’ groups and, even, the government, which suggested this “backroom deal” would "create a closed shop at the very top of the game". 

 

Not known for the promotion of equality, the government – in the form of the Department for Culture Media and Sport – stated: "Sustainability, integrity and fair competition are absolutely paramount and anything that may undermine them is deeply troubling. Fans must be front of all our minds, and this shows why our fan led review of football governance will be so critical".

 

The finer details of the plan, and the ironic call for ‘fair competition’, notwithstanding it was the proposed abolition of the League Cup (currently sponsored by Carabao), and the Community Shield that most clearly demonstrates football’s disconnect with its own history, and the integral role that such competitions played in establishing the game's status as the ‘national game’ (at the expense of cricket). 

 

Without getting into the minutiae of each game’s historical development, both sports had relied on irregular, and unrelated, ‘challenge’ matches until the Football Association (FA) introduced the FA Challenge Cup in 1871. Although this competition was based upon this age-old concept, its elongation towards a cup final gained massive popular support because it created more meaningful matches.

 

Central to this enhanced meaning was the fact this competition brought together different communities in competition. Cities such as Manchester and Liverpool had long been economic rivals, but improving death-rates and all aspects of cultural life – that now included sport – became important elements of civic pride. This was especially so once the dominance of public-school clubs (most famously the Corinthians and the Wanderers, who won the FA Cup five out of the first seven competitions held) was challenged by what the famous amateur and all-round sportsman, C. B. Fry, described as ‘provincial’ clubs. 

 

Essentially working men’s teams, the success of Blackburn Olympic over Old Etonians in 1883 marked a watershed in the game’s development. And yet, the likes of Fry reacted badly. As he bemoaned in The Strand Magazine in 1902, not only had Olympic abandoned the ‘old arrangement’ of six forwards in order to introduce a ‘centre half-back’ the Blackburn Olympic team had, he complained, trained in preparation for the match – something ‘never contemplated by those who instituted the Cup competition’. 

 

However, upper-class objections such as this could do little to halt the game’s professionalisation in 1885. Nevertheless, the FA Cup had its limitations as any club knocked-out then had to revert to individual challenge matches that were often one-sided affairs or, worse, frequently cancelled. Indeed, it was the all too frequent cancellation of fixtures that prompted the director of Aston Villa FC, a Scotsman named William McGregor, to propose the formation of a league in which all member clubs would be guaranteed a minimum number of fixtures. 

 

The creation of a structure that not only guaranteed a full season of fixtures, but revealed – in unambiguous terms – which team was best represented the final piece in a jigsaw that now depicted an entirely modern form of sporting competition. As such, leagues were rapidly established across a range of sports, including cricket, but the public-school elites who controlled British sport reacted so strongly to their meritocratic outcomes, many strived to subvert or hinder sports role as the ‘great social leveller’. 

 

For the most part this took the form of strictly enforced 'amateurism' that banished working class participants from competing in sports such as athletics or cycling and led, most famously, to the split in rugby in 1895. At lower levels of sport – specifically recreational cricket in London and the southeast of England – where amateurism was more difficult to apply, cups and leagues were essentially outlawed after the First World War. But, if village cricket became divided on class-based cultural lines in Surrey between the wars, league cricket in Lancashire embodied an egalitarian, and altruistic, community spirit. This was exemplified by all Lancashire League’s clubs banding together to keep the popular West Indian professional Learie Constantine at Nelson CC after an approach from the rival Central Lancashire League. 

 

League competition for most of the twentieth century was the best example of the ‘level playing field’ that sport is supposed to represent, but it has been (despite the re-introduction of cricket leagues to the South from 1968) undermined since the social-economic landscape was transformed by Thatcherism, which completed the abandonment of the post-war consensus. 

 

Like various public services and industries, football (and cricket) has been steadily parcelled up and sold off into private hands (the Indian Premier League being the most glaring example), whereas market-based economics and the classic doctrine of economic neoliberalism – internal competition and / or the introduction of league tables – have been imposed upon the education sector where the self-selected ‘Russell Group’ of universities appear to have their own ‘Big Picture’ agenda. 

 

Whether or not universities do, indeed, compete against each other (for students and / or funding or 'reputation') is open to debate, and yet avaricious capitalism, by its very nature, encourages consumption and exponential growth. But is everything ‘bigger and better’ for it? It would appear that this neo-liberal approach has reached a point – across all sectors of society – where it may only consume itself. Accordingly, this regrettable attempt by two of the game’s most famous and wealthiest clubs to grab an even larger slice of the economic pie is entirely predictable because there is, under such an ideological regime, nowhere else to go. 

 

Those in government, like those with influence over British sport, need to realise that the economic trajectory of the last 40 years has not only abandoned any pretence of a level playing field, it is – as the Covid crisis has ably demonstrated – no longer sustainable. If football’s pyramid or, dare I say it, civil society at large, is to thrive the people of Britain, and the institutions that shape it, need to re-discover the altruism demonstrated by the members of the Lancashire Cricket League during the 1930s because, ultimately, we rise and fall together.