Author Archives: swannick

I have been asked to explain why I say the much quoted data on playing numbers is ‘spurious’. Any number of articles refer to the loss of 150,000 regular players since 2005. The ECB hierarchy were questioned on it again this week in a parliamentary appearance before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.Continue reading “The strange death of English cricket”

Bolton v. Stone [1951] is a leading House of Lords case in the tort of negligence, establishing that a defendant is not negligent if the damage was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of their conduct. Mrs Stone was hit by a cricket ball which had been hit out of the ground; Mr Bolton was aContinue reading “Are you negligent or just a nuisance?”

You will no doubt have seen regular media stories of the ‘slow death of recreational cricket’ variety in recent years. These are often based on spurious data on the number of playing recreational cricketers or disappearance of local town and village cricket clubs. Ahead of a forthcoming article in The Cricketer on the health ofContinue reading “Perhaps the most definitive survey yet on recreational playing numbers”

Ask anyone who runs a cricket club what preoccupies them and the list will look little different to the concerns of anyone running a small (or not so small) business: cashflow; finding the capital to invest in maintaining and improving facilities; recruiting and retaining good people; developing and differentiating a quality product to confront ever increasingContinue reading “Cricket Club Development Network: doing what it says on the tin”

You have probably heard about GDPR at work or in the pub. But have you considered how it will affect your club? The recent ECB guidance was, at best, a holding operation. I am told more definitive and practical advice is in the pipeline. But, judging by the time it took to get the firstContinue reading “Is your cricket club GDPR ready?”

For those unable to make tonight’s webinar with ECB Participation & Growth team’s head of (Digital) Marketing, James Nickson, the full 62 mins recording is here https://fccdl.in/Zdn6Dc4mF3 There is an overview of the survey results and James’ response to the findings and subsequent discussion of key themes including ECB communications and marketing strategy, upcoming plansContinue reading “Marketing and communication survey”

This is the recording of the webinar with the ECB’s Participation and Growth team last night https://fccdl.in/BPT7mxkFc. It addressed, to some extent, most of the issues and recommendations emerging from our Network consultation. But some were not addressed completely or in any concrete way, we didn’t get some of the definitive assurances we were seekingContinue reading “All Stars Cricket webinar with Matt Dwyer”