Club cricket in England and Wales is at a watershed. As many clubs deliver on past participation and growth strategies, the ECB appears ready to walk away from further material support as the big challenges to clubs’ ability to thrive in future get too hot – and potentially expensive – to handle.
The Cricket Club Development Network surveyed its members and leaders of other mainly Clubmark-accredited clubs on behalf of The Cricketer, resulting in 527 responses from 4,000 clubs invited– making this one of the most detailed investigations into the current state of recreational cricket.
Growth, diversity and capacity challenges
Club cricket shows remarkable resilience and growth. Contrary to the perpetual ‘death of English cricket’ narrative, our survey shows stable or even higher adult men’s playing numbers in two-thirds of clubs since 2019, with expectations of possible further growth over the next five to 10 years.
That pattern is also reflected in the current and future number of men’s teams, even on Sundays and in non-league cricket. Given the declining trend for individuals to turn out every week, a larger pool of players is required to fill any XI.
The survey indicates that resilience is usually the result of clubs’ efforts in building junior cricket – although no one underestimates the barriers to converting teenagers to the generally longer-form adult game (certainly not the 69 per cent of respondents who consider it an “extremely” or “very” high challenge).
Forty-five per cent of clubs report higher numbers of 9-13-year-old boys since 2019, with 32 per cent projecting even further growth in the next five to 10 years. Thirty-one per cent of clubs even report retention of higher numbers of notoriously hard-to-retain teenage boys, and a similar number expect that growth to continue as younger age juniors feed through.
But it is the explosive growth in women’s and girls’ cricket that is the standout feature of the playing survey. And expectations of continued high growth even before recent ECB target-setting and the imposition of onerous requirements on Premier League clubs.
Women’s cricket is recognised as a vital driver of future club development and an “extremely” or “very” high challenge for 63 per cent of respondents.
However, the overall growth brings with it significant capacity challenges. Our survey reveals that around one third of clubs have short leases and even shorter rental agreements on their current main ground facilities. Many will need to be renegotiated in the next five to 10 years, while others are also desperately seeking additional space.
That is exacerbated by the disappearance of many school and municipal facilities, and the spiralling costs of grounds and clubhouse maintenance, at a time when development land prices are now well beyond £1m an acre in large parts of the country. Many cricket grounds are likely to fall under the new Labour government’s new greybelt designation, pushing prices and rents even higher.
Seventy per cent of clubs anticipate needing to invest in facility improvements over the next decade, but only 35 per cent of those with short-term leases or rentals feel confident in making such investments. Ann Willemstein of Winchcombe CC points out: “We’re bursting at the seams, but without secure tenure and the ability to get grants, we can’t justify major expenditure. It’s a catch-22 situation.”
Say hello or Wavertree goodbye
You would think that one of the few recreational sports facilities thriving in inner-city Liverpool would be an obvious candidate for support and funding, especially given the increasing focus of the ECB and major funding agencies like Sport England on diversity and inclusion. But Phill O’Brien’s phone is not exactly ringing off the hook with offers since Wavertree CC, the club in L15 that he chairs, were made an offer it could be problematic to refuse. They have the opportunity to buy in to their landowner’s company and secure the long-term lease they have sought, unsuccessfully, for years. It’s just the small question of a £200,000 price tag asked for the available 40 per cent share. The value that puts on the site is supposedly justified by the proposed ratcheting up of the club’s rental from £6,000 to £20,000 per annum. “It feels a bit like heads they win and tails we lose,” says O’Brien. “I think we can do something on the proposed rent increase but I’m not sure that is going to get the commensurate freehold price tag down.” And nobody seems to have scope to make grants for buying into land, especially a minority holding, and the ownership is a bit complex. The company is a trust set up in 1921 to protect the land, but is largely owned by one family involved in the formation of the overarching sports club of which the cricket club is the surviving remnant. Not all the remaining family shareholders are quite as philanthropic towards cricket and not all the other original community shareholders are known. “We have one in the club who inherited a share but many others took theirs to the grave” adds O’Brien. “We could end up relying on passing the cap around once more, or its modern-day equivalent, the crowdfunder, but unless Paul McCartney’s granddad left a legacy, we’d struggle to raise anything like £200,000 in a designated area of multiple deprivation. Liverpool City Council are sympathetic but have no money for sport and, if they did, it would likely have to be spent on something blue or red!”
Ground maintenance emerges as a critical issue, too, with 50-55 per cent of clubs anticipating a move towards more remunerated support in the next five to 10 years, potentially straining their club’s finances. The average annual ground maintenance cost for surveyed clubs is £15,000, with 13 per cent spending over £30,000. Peter Robinson, chair of the clubs’ grounds consortium in Kent, remarked: “The expectations for ground usage and quality are increasing, but volunteer numbers are decreasing. It’s an unsustainable model for many clubs.”
The survey indicates a growing trend towards club partnerships and mergers as a solution to capacity challenges. A quarter of clubs report being in discussions about potential collaborations or mergers with neighbouring clubs.
Diversity and inclusion emerge as key priorities, with 94 per cent reporting active efforts to engage underrepresented communities. However, only 78 per cent would say performance has been adequate so far.
Clubs’ reliance on state school educated players will come as a surprise to those who erroneously see club cricket as the preserve of the wealthy and privileged. More than half of clubs say that 76-100 per cent of their junior players – irrespective of age or gender – are state-educated and fewer than 10 per cent acknowledge that state school pupils represent less than 50 per cent of their junior cohort.
The data shows a clear link between school engagement and club health. Clubs with active school outreach programmes are 40 per cent more likely to report growth in junior numbers compared to those without. However, maintaining these links is challenging, with 55 per cent of clubs reporting difficulties in sustaining long-term relationships with local schools. It’s why recent increases in ECB funding for Chance to Shine’s schools work is welcomed but one of the most frequently used key terms in the survey comments is around creating a “conveyor belt” (from school to club).
Necessity the spur to creative innovation
Wollaton CC is a successful and growing Premier League club in suburban Nottingham, close to the greenbelt that has hemmed in their further growth ambitions. Their three Saturday teams need to become four, or the risk of losing good development players will rise if they can’t get enough regular games. The availability of local school pitches has declined over the years and some of the municipal grounds are no longer of sufficient quality even for a 4th XI. Searching for a solution has been a long, drawn-out saga but the club finally found a village 45 minutes’ drive away where a past merger left a now thriving village club with two grounds. In a complex triangular deal, they have vacated one and consolidated resources at the other, allowing cricket every week and a business case for investing in facilities including a clubhouse and bar, on that site. It means Wollaton have taken over the second ground owned by the third party, the village sports trust, who in turn benefit from cricket on their site every week and a square maintained by Wollaton’s ground team. Wollaton get a good-quality ground for their development teams as well as the ability to build outreach to young people and women in in an expanded catchment area. As club secretary Rob Kirkwood says: “The result is no net loss of clubs, three viable grounds with scope for growth and investment, more teams for more players of all ages and gender and a long-term solution we were beginning to think would never materialise. Any initial concerns about the distance between the two grounds has not arisen as an issue. I think people can see the win-win-win… win!”
Reframing the ECB’s role in recreational cricket
The survey reveals a significant disconnect between clubs’ universally high expectations of ECB support for club cricket and perception of their performance.
Eighty-four per cent of clubs rate the importance of the ECB’s role to nationally promote the game in all its forms as “extremely” or “very important”, but only 21 per cent rate the ECB’s performance in this area as “high” or better. Similarly, three quarters rate the importance of the ECB supporting community cricket participation as “extremely” or “very important”; only 43 per cent rate the ECB’s performance in this area as “high” or better.
When it comes to ECB national programmes like All Stars Cricket for 5-8 year-olds, 56 per cent of clubs acknowledge its positive impacts on junior and wider family membership. But the 28 per cent of clubs not participating at all and a further 16 per cent believing it has simply rebranded existing club programmes, perhaps reflects falling participation in recent years, growing dissatisfaction with the widely perceived drop-off in central marketing by the ECB and a general dislike of the financial settlement (even after this year’s better club share, following problems with equipment supply related to excessive chemicals in some of the plastics).
The gap is most evident in facilitating club/school links, with 91 per cent of clubs seeing it as a priority – our data suggests this is the one factor with strongest correlation to club long-term performance – but only 27 per cent were satisfied with the ECB’s efforts. The ECB’s recently published State School Action Plan is perceived as too little, perhaps too late, and overly reliant on expensive regional indoor hubs for which the £35m promised by then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is on hold.
Clubs are particularly critical of the ECB’s approach to funding recreational cricket. Only 28 per cent of clubs rate the ECB’s performance in funding club development as “high” or better. What’s more, club leaders know that the ECB’s commitment to investing 30 per cent of net broadcast revenues in grassroots sport – the current Sky contract worth a reported £800m over four years – has been missed in past years.
Fanos Hira, the former Worcestershire chair and author of a report into ECB county funding, suggests the target has been reached by a reallocation of central costs to the recreational game not done for any other area of ECB expenditure. The actual cash granted to clubs by the ECB vehicle for club funding – the England and Wales Cricket Trust – fell from £14m to just £7m in its last full financial year.
Clubmark accreditation, once the cornerstone of ECB’s club development focus, is now subject to a game of pass-the-parcel with county boards under proposed revisions of the County Performance Agreements. The counties are reticent to take back more onerous club support activities without financial cover.
Nearly 75 per cent of surveyed clubs are Clubmark-accredited and over 90 per cent of them say the ECB’s club support role is “important” or higher. They are well aware that many of the past club development fundamentals of Clubmark, beyond safeguarding, have been diluted including some of the ‘critical success factors’ validated in this survey.
In one area where ECB performance is judged markedly higher than expectations suggests clubs think its regulatory and governance role may be overplayed. There was considerable pushback two years ago against the ECB’s imposition of General Conduct Regulations, which assumed powers of sanction on clubs and their members – playing or non-playing – that the ECB simply did not possess .
However, the ECB’s convening power and enabling potential is still strong, according to our results. But most clubs want a more collaborative approach, where the ECB focuses on the big picture, supporting clubs’ capacity-building efforts, embracing the evident expertise in running clubs that is in clubs and not just imposing ill-considered often knee-jerk top-down solutions to perceived problems.
Simon Lunn of Benwell Hill CC suggests: “We need the ECB to amplify the cricket brand, then let clubs innovate locally. One size doesn’t fit all in recreational cricket.”
New model army
Torquay & Kingskerswell CC is one example in a growing trend for clubs to merge or build strategic partnerships for mutual advantage rather than out of financial necessity. Torquay, like many resorts, is seeing a growing part-time population with less time to play cricket. The club found it increasingly difficult to put out the teams needed to maintain its heritage playing top-level Devon cricket. However, given its position – close to the original hotel used in Fawlty Towers – it is generating cash from a car parking business that serves the local holiday market. Kingskerswell was a small village club that grew, benefiting from good facilities in a pleasant environment only 15 minutes’ drive from Torquay. With too many players for one team and too few for two, but precious little available cash, the sense in a tie-up was obvious. Now the combined club is putting out three strong teams and aiming for more, building activity and the logic for investment in facilities at both sites. There is more space for a much-expanded junior offer. Now big investment is planned for women and girls’ cricket including potentially hiring an overseas woman professional coach, given difficulties in finding the right person to drive this development locally. T Treasurer Simon Rice says: “The synergies have worked perfectly and the obvious mutual benefits clear to all. The new combined committee is well supported by a number of stalwarts who used the opportunity to take a back seat.”
The future of club cricket
While 78 per cent of clubs report being financially stable now, only 45 per cent are as confident in their financial outlook for the next five to 10 years. As one puts it: “Clubs may be doing OK now, but the increasing costs of running a club, combined with uncertain income streams, make the future feel precarious.”
Innovation in funding and income streams emerges as crucial for club viability. Neil McGivern of Heaton CC, who has overseen significant growth, emphasises: “Diversifying income and engaging the wider community has been key to our sustainability. We’ve moved way beyond just relying on subscriptions and match fees.”
The survey shows that clubs with diverse income streams (including sponsorships, facility rentals, and community events) are 35 per cent more likely to report financial stability compared to those relying primarily on traditional membership and playing sources..
Collaboration between clubs is emerging as a strategy for resource-sharing and sustainability. Forty per cent of clubs anticipate developing some form of partnership with other local clubs in the next five to 10 years.
However, a leadership crisis is looming, with our 2022 survey showing 80 per cent of then-club chairs intended to step down within three to five years, and more recent evidence suggesting it was no idle threat. Succession planning and volunteer recruitment are critical challenges that need addressing for long-term club sustainability.
It’s why the ECB’s long-promised Volunteer Action Plan is so welcome. Now, in the close-season, when much long-term planning takes place, club leaders will have chance to reflect on its implications, especially the emphasis on youth volunteering.
Clubs reporting high levels of community engagement are 50 per cent more likely to report membership growth and financial stability. Chiswick CC’s Bernard Hughes suggests: “We’re not just running a cricket club; we’re building a community asset for future generations. This mindset has transformed how we operate and how the local community perceives us.”
As for climate change, one respondent said: “Climate change is already affecting how we maintain our grounds. Clubs that don’t adapt will struggle in the long run.”
But with only 31 per cent of respondents ranking climate change as an “extremely” or “very” high challenge in the next five to 10 years, you would be forgiven for assuming that clubs are complacent. Far from it. It’s probably a reflection on the scale of other challenges, many hoping to still have facilities in five to 10 years before they can worry about the impact of climate change.
The survey reveals varying attitudes towards the role of competitive cricket. While 88 per cent of clubs rate providing opportunities for competitive cricket as “very important” or “extremely important”, only 48 per cent give the same rating to identifying and fostering talent for winning games and leagues. This suggests a shift towards a more inclusive, participation-focused model of club cricket.
Most acknowledge that a diversity of cricket offering is a strength of the club network. Judging by the range of clubs represented in the survey – yes, 75 per cent are Clubmark-accredited, but Clubmark clubs traverse the entire spectrum from Premier League to village green – there is space and a market for all.
Cricketers are not homogenous, and catering for all tastes and appetites can be complex. But it looks like the best way forward.