At least five county cricket clubs face having their funding cut because their boards fail to meet diversity quotas that include having one ethnic minority director and 40% women. The Telegraph has the story.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) threatened to withhold critical funding from first-class domestic cricket clubs that have not appointed an ethnically diverse director and achieved 40% female representation on their boards.
The affirmative action has been described as an overreach on behalf of the national governing body, which critics say has become too powerful.
Leicestershire, Essex, Sussex, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire are among those counties falling short of the quota for female board members.
Gloucestershire confirmed it had failed to meet the diversity targets. It said the club’s nomination committee was “currently meeting with prospective board members, and therefore the board makeup is very likely to change (and increase in number) in the coming weeks”.
It says it aims to meet the targets set out by the ECB.
ECB game-wide strategy
For 2025-2028
What we will do:
- Deliver our new Ethnically Diverse Communities Action Plan.
- Continue our partnership with the ACE programme, engaging 7,000 young people from Black communities across seven cities.
- Work with counties to further integrate the talent identified by the ACE Programme, SACA and the MCC Foundation.
- Improve our ability to evidence the impact of cricket to attract funding to grow the game.
- Invest in transformative projects through the Game Changer Fund.
- Diversify revenue into the recreational game by supporting network of Trusts and Foundations and national partners.
A spokesman for Essex cricket said it “fully supports the ECB’s drive to ensure that county boards are fully representative of all sections of the community and to have high-quality directors with the right skills to ensure that county clubs are run in a professional and effective way”.
He added: “We will continue to work closely with the ECB to meet the targets it has set.”
The other clubs did not return a request for comment.
Glamorgan county cricket club also appeared to be at risk of having its funding cut for not having enough female board members, but after being contacted by the Telegraph, a spokesman said the BBC’s Ella West was a board member, and she was then added to their website.
The ECB launched a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) drive after the racism scandal which engulfed Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC) in 2018.
Azeem Rafiq publicly accused English cricket of being “institutionally racist” as he recalled “inhuman” treatment at YCCC.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I guess, if Gloucester manages to find a black, lesbian, dwarf it will have ticked all the boxes with just one Didn’t Earn It appointment.
Previously, it was illegal to appoint people because of their sex or race.
Now, in the brave, new systematically racist and sexist world that the Left and so-called “Conservatives” have ordained for us, if you are not sufficiently racist against white people, and sexist against men, you get punished.
And yet we see the strange phenomenon that those perpetrating this specific type of racism and sexism are most often white men in positions of leadership, no matter which sector you care to examine. They discriminate against their own kind time and time again.
It’s interesting how this undeniable fact doesn’t seem to sit well with certain individuals. Probably because it doesn’t support their narrative and refutes their biased world view.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s almost as though, by sacrificing the prospects and ambitions of people like themselves, they feel they’re appeasing the gods of DEI and boosting their own moral credentials in the process.
Apparently it isn’t racism against white people, it’s “positive action” in favour of non-white people, and that’s OK.
Leicester not diverse enough??
🤣
Pure anti-white racism combined with a dose of misandry.
Surely for representation to be balanced and not just a knee-jerk response to the current fad.then the board should be representative of the cricketing community within the catchment area of the club, rather than of the entire country, most of whom, I would guess, couldn’t give a toss about county cricket.
That is my gripe with all these diversity quotas being imposed across the whole nation, regardless of local demographics. Just look at the number of mixed ethnicity couples and black people in adverts. That might be a normal mix for a densely populated urban centre such as London or Birmingham, but it certainly wouldn’t be applicable to somewhere like Tavistock or Dundee.
I wonder how the one ethnically diverse person on the board feels knowing they’re only there to meet a quota?
They won’t mind at all, because of their Bloated Sense of Entitlement.
They might get fed up of walking into meetings and being greeted by a chorus of “Good morning Token”.
🤣🤣🤣!!!
Well guess who’s behind all this, relentlessly shoving DEI into British Cricket? The ECB board has plenty of women, and an Ethnic Indian Subcontinental man in charge of the finance (the place where you will usually find Ethnic Indian Subcontinentals comfortably ensconced in every western organization), so what is the problem?
The problem is the Ethnic African Marxist Harpy with a Bloated Sense of Entitlement appointed as “Board Lead” for DEI, because she founded the “African-Caribbean Engagement (ACE) Programme, creating opportunities for young cricketers from Black communities”. Her name is Ebony Rainford-Brent (notice the double-barrelled name also popular with the England World Cup squad Third World Ethnics, and so easy to just cobble together to sound English and posh). “Diversity” to her doesn’t mean more White Women or Ethnic Orientals or Australians, for example. It means more Ethnic Africans from the Caribbean, like herself. A vested interest, you might say.
The easiest way to stop all these outrageous demands and extortion threats is by SACKING HER and ABOLISHING HER POST.
Bye-bye, DEI !
Yours sincerely,
Heretic Smedley-Totherington
You may call me “Smedley” for short. 🙂
Where is Kerry Packer when you need him. Time for the clubs to withdraw from the ECB. Where do the ECB get their money from?
Essex Cricket Club say they support this tosh but I don’t. The English game needs as much talent a they can find, not players or Directors chosen for their sex or ethnicity.
Exactly. Surely the most important thing for any sporting organisation is to have a team and management that will work together to win as many matches as possible. Are they really expected to diminish their chances of winning just so that they can fulfil some artificially imposed diversity quota?
The clubs should simply restructure to have a board of one, appoint a single “director”, a non-white woman, then carry on as normal.
Et voila, both “diversity” requirements met!
Better still, “JUST SAY NO!”
Both the CEO of ECB and the Chairman of the Board are white men. Imagine my surprise…🙄
https://www.ecb.co.uk/about/who-we-are/our-board
When was it decided that indigenous white people are obliged to make space for people who do not look like them and why is this so important? That is to ask, to what end? Replacement of the majority native population is the only possible explanation.
You are absolutely spot on!
It’s replacement, one increment at a time. That’s now the clear policy.
And the anglophobes claim that the Great Replacement is a “conspiracy theory”.
Glamorgan county cricket club also appeared to be at risk…but after being contacted by the Telegraph, a spokesman said the BBC’s Ella West was a [token] board member,
As I have stated before, it is the forever woes of victimhood – mainly feminism, sexuality and race – that fuels the machine. Without it it grinds to a halt. No, that’s not ‘misogyny’, it’s a perfectly valid observation that runs contrary to machine-driven beliefs. And if you’re unable to make the connection between the machine and the fuel for the machine then you are part of the machine.