Whether by accident or design, the long-awaited report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket has landed in the very same week England are taking on Australia in a must-win Ashes Test match at Lord’s where the champagne corks will be popping and the chinos burgundy. It certainly feels apposite.
Marylebone Cricket Club features heavily in the 317-page report that looks into racism, sexism and elitism in cricket – and not in the most flattering light. The MCC Foundation is praised for its work, providing 3,000 state-educated cricketers with free-to-access training and match play through a network of 74 hubs. But Lord’s is “still a home principally for men” and a symbol of “prestige” and “empire”. The fact that debate still rages over the Eton versus Harrow fixture, at a venue which has never hosted an England women’s Test match, “alarmed” the panel.
But then change has tended to be glacial in NW8, with the MCC secretariat often stymied by the membership. The ground owns up to it, at least, with the timeline behind the Mound Stand reminding folks it was 1998 when the club voted to admit female members – some 70 years on from victory for the suffrage movement. Clare Connor, deputy chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board and former MCC president, made the point on Monday that during her first match here in 1997, she was barred from entering the Long Room. It seems incredible, looking back.
While many of the findings of the ICEC report should come as no great surprise to English cricket, given the voices who have spoken out and for some time now, the sport still needed this latest dose of formalised medicine. Whether it works remains to be seen. The report does note areas of progress – the situation is not beyond hope – but on the subject of racism, it is also worth remembering the ECB commissioned a similar study back in 1999, welcomed its findings, and yet here we are again.
It probably needed it to be administered ahead of a marquee men’s Ashes clash at Lord’s, too, where despite attempts to broaden the audience through the Hundred (itself an add-on, not a solution), the walls for Test cricket often feel so high. Last year, before the so-called “Bazball” revolution started here against New Zealand, Ben Stokes called for prices to be “looked at properly” when it cost between £70 and £160 a ticket. This year? For an adult seeking an unrestricted view, they ranged from £140 to £180.
Stokes was in a broadly engaging mood 24 hours out from Wednesday’s first ball, even if the England captain had not yet read the ICEC report in full and so kept his views on this subject to a pre-prepared statement. In this he expressed he was “deeply sorry” to hear of people being made to feel unwelcome or unaccepted by cricket and his pride at having played in some diverse England teams since his debut in 2011.
Stokes continued, highlighting a journey to the top of the game that cuts against the thrust of some of the report – English cricket’s reliance on the public school sector. “I am Ben Stokes,” he said, eyes-sharpening on the sheet of paper in front of him. “Born in New Zealand, a state educated pupil who dropped out of school at 16 with one GCSE in PE. I needed help with the spelling and grammar in this speech and I am currently sitting here as the England men’s Test captain.”
Addressing such matters comes with the job and so far, Stokes has done well. The primary aim is to win Test matches, of course, something he was keen to stress remains the priority amid some misinterpretation of the team’s mantra that the outcome is not the focus. Sitting 1-0 down to his champion Australia side, and knowing that 2-0 down has settled the destiny of the urn in all but one of the 72 men’s Ashes series since 1882-83, his team can ill-afford to settle for entertainment alone.
To that end, and faced with a Lord’s pitch that is tinged with green and thus promising more life than Edgbaston, where the slips need not have taken hands out of pockets, Stokes has opted for an all-pace attack and a return for Josh Tongue. Moeen Ali’s sore spinning finger has healed but clearly presented a risk, while Mark Wood, absent since April, felt he was still a week of training away from being able to bowl full throttle across two innings. The third Test at Headingley is now the plan for him.
Australia were once again waiting for the toss to name their XI, Pat Cummins still to decide whether Scott Boland, taken for 5.65 runs per over in the first Test, should be replaced by the quicker, left-arm angle of Mitchell Starc. Whichever path they take, and with Stokes promising no let-up on his team’s aggressive tactics, it should be an electric contest for those with deep enough pockets to attend.
Just on this. Back in 2018, as part of a hopeful (possibly naive) proposal to get one Test per summer back on free-to-air television, I suggested that Lord’s open up its Nursery Ground with cheap tickets to create a quasi-Henman Hill for the general public. Five years on, for the first time this summer, MCC has indeed set up an “Ashes Lounge” on the practice area. The cost? £1,399 plus VAT per person each day. The more things change, etc.
