Game Wide Commitments

Game Wide Commitments to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Cricket should be a game for everyone. Everybody involved in the game should be treated with dignity and respect, and there should be no place for discrimination of any type.

In November 2021 the Derbyshire Cricket Foundation, along with all the other County Cricket Boards, the ECB, the MCC, the Professional Cricketers Association, the National Counties Cricket Association, the First Class Counties, and the Women’s Regional Hosts, pledged to support to a set of game-wide commitments to help create a culture to eliminate discrimination.

These commitments are listed below:

Understanding and educating more

1. Adoption within three months of a standardised approach to reporting, investigating, and responding to complaints, allegations, and whistleblowing across the game.

2. Full promotion of the aims of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) through proactive engagement with its investigations and recommendations.

3. Ongoing EDI training for all those who work in cricket, including all staff, volunteers, recreational club officials, umpires, directors, and coaches.

Addressing dressing room culture

4. A full review of dressing room culture in all men’s and women’s professional teams, both domestic and international.

5. Delivery of a redesigned programme of player and coach education, addressing any gaps identified through the dressing room review.

Removing barriers in talent pathways

6. Action to aid progress into professional teams of people from diverse backgrounds (especially South Asian, Black and less privileged youngsters) through measures to address i) talent identification and scouting, ii) education and diversity of coaches and iii) targeted support programmes for players from diverse or under-privileged backgrounds.

Creating welcoming environments for all

7. A full-scale review, in advance of the 2022 season, into the detection, enforcement, and sanctions against discriminatory and abusive crowd behaviour at each of our professional cricket grounds.

8. Delivery of plans (tailored to local communities) to ensure professional cricket venues are welcoming to all, including provision of accessible seating, food and beverage offering catering to all faiths and cultures, and the availability of facilities such as multi-faith rooms and alcohol-free zones.

9. Upgraded education in recreational cricket to ensure players, volunteers and coaches understand and champion inclusion and diversity in the game.

Publishing localised EDI Action Plans within six months

The ECB will today publish its 2021-2023 Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Action Plan with clear actions and targets. The ECB will then work with any of its members who do not yet have an EDI plan in place to create (or revise) their own localised version within six months, with actions to include

10. A commitment to best practice governance with targets for Board diversity (30% female, locally representative ethnicity by April 2022) and plans to increase diversity across the wider organisation.

11. The introduction of fairer recruitment processes through measures including the immediate adoption of anonymised recruitment tools for senior roles, open appointment processes for all roles and the use of balanced and diverse panels to assess interviews.

12. Every senior executive employed across the game will have personal EDI objectives as part of their annual performance targets, driving leadership accountability.