After a Test which ended up being both exciting and one-sided, it might not be everyone’s first thought as to whether the Marylebone Cricket Club will (or should) host matches next year. However, I have not forgotten about the ICEC report into discrimination within English cricket unlike most people in the media. At points within that publication, the MCC was singled out for particular criticism and the notion of withdrawing international matches from outdated and recalcitrant host grounds is presented as a key recommendation. It is difficult to name a cricket club in the whole country more outdated and recalcitrant than the MCC.
Before considering the grounds of equality, diversity and inclusion for this move, there are at least a few other reasons why the ECB might want to move men’s Test matches away from Lord’s on a permanent basis. The first and most obvious is England’s form at the ground: Lord’s is the only ground where England have lost 50% or more of their home Ashes Tests since 2005. England have not lost a English Ashes series in that period (at least until now), and yet they do not perform well in North London. Conditions clearly favour the opposition there in a way that does not occur at other grounds. Australia would never schedule matches at a ground where they felt their opponents had either a psychological or technical advantage. Nor would India. Part of being a strong Test team is using home conditions to your benefit, and England playing Tests at Lord’s does not achieve that.
One explanation for England’s record might be the MCC ground staff’s repeated preparation of ‘chief executive pitches’ which are slow, flat, and almost guaranteed to require five days of play. The second Test in this series certainly conforms to that pattern, in spite of Ben Stokes specifically asking for quick pitches in order to suit both England’s batters and bowlers. Aside from not helping England teams achieve victory at the ground, these kinds of pitches can also produce long stretches of play which are relatively boring in Test matches.
There is also the slope. Test cricket is a 21st Century professional sport and not a PG Wodehouse-esque sketch about a match on a village green where hitting the the post box at midwicket is a four. Lord’s is a multi-million pound sports stadium and the MCC can well afford a spirit level. Dig up the tall side, dump it on the short side and even it up. It’s an embarrassment.
The real reason why Lord’s losing its customary two men’s Tests per year is even a remote possibility is the ICEC report into discrimination within English cricket. There are two recommendations in particular which could (or should) alarm the MCC and its members. The first, which gained some amount of media attention, is that Lord’s should no longer host the annual match between Eton and Harrow. It is notable because this makes the MCC the only organisation other than the ECB which is specifically named as having to make changes within the document, with all of the other recommendations applying broadly to every county team or all cricket clubs in the country.
Recommendation 18 – We recommend to MCC that the annual fixtures between Eton and Harrow and between Oxford and Cambridge are no longer played at Lord’s after 2023. These two events should be replaced by national finals’ days for state school U15 competitions for boys and girls (see Recommendation 38) and a national finals’ day for competitions for men’s and women’s university teams.
Previous attempts to pressure the MCC into no longer hosting these matches led to the members revolting, and forcing their leadership to retain them by calling a Special General Meeting on the topic. Failure to change course now would place the club in the position of openly ignoring the advice of a report into discrimination, which might present very poor optics for the game but the MCC’s members can be very stubborn.
The more serious threat to the MCC hosting future matches might be recommendations about adding EDI criteria to selecting international hosts going forwards:
Recommendation 19 – We recommend that the ECB revises and clarifies its processes and criteria for allocating, suspending, cancelling and reinstating high profile matches to place greater emphasis on EDI. There is clear evidence that being allocated such matches, or having the right to host them withdrawn, is a powerful tool to encourage compliance with EDI. The current process for match allocation (via a tender process against six criteria) expires in 2024 and we have not identified any formal process for deciding to suspend or cancel matches. The revisions should:
a) Ensure greater emphasis on EDI in the criteria for allocation, giving EDI criteria equal status to the most important of the other criteria.
b) Consider making a bidder’s performance on EDI a ‘gateway criterion’ requiring hosts to meet stretching minimum EDI standards in order to be able to bid for a high profile match.
c) Introduce a clear and transparent decision-making process for suspension, cancellation and reinstatement of high profile matches.
d) The Cricket Discipline Commission (or any future adjudication body if it is replaced and/or renamed) should have the power to suspend or cancel the right to host high profile matches for regulatory breaches, in particular related to EDI
The reason why such a change to the ECB’s process would disproportionately affect the Lord’s Test matches is that it is arguable that the MCC is the least equal, diverse and inclusive cricket club in the country.
The ICEC report focused on three broad areas which English cricket needed to improve upon: Class & wealth, women & women’s cricket, and ethnic origin & religion.
I don’t believe that it would be hyperbole to suggest that the MCC is the poshest cricket club in the country. Possibly even the world. Whilst there may be clubs which have a higher membership fee (although £500+ per year for members within London is plenty high), there are surely none who are able to command a membership of 18,000 at such prices.
The very structure of the MCC has been created and maintained specifically in order to keep the ‘wrong sort of person’ out. You require the endorsement of three existing full MCC members and a senior MCC official simply to join the (currently 29 year) waiting list. Once there, you have to continue paying £200+ every year as an associate member for those 29 years until enough full members move on and a vacancy opens for you.
Except of course that there is a shortcut available to the very wealthy. When wanting to raise money, the MCC offers life memberships for the princely sum of £80,000. A fortune to most people, a year’s tuition for their kids to others. There is no pretence of fairness or egalitarianism from the club when there is money to be squeezed out of its members.
As an aside, the 29 year waiting list to attain membership also inhibits the MCC’s role as being in charge of the game’s laws. With a minimum age of 16 to even join the waiting list, the youngest people to become members will be 45 (and most will be much, much older). Because of their age, it is unlikely that most MCC members will be active cricketers or have even played a cricket match in the past decade. And yet it is this group of elderly men, disproportionately coming from English public schools, who govern the rules of the sport. Perhaps with a broader membership, closer to the game as its played in clubs around the country, the laws could be made clearer and with less need for the MCC to release statements about their interpretation after high profile events.
Every county cricket club began as a private Victorian gentleman’s club, but it is only the MCC which has been allowed to continue its practices into the 21st Century. In fact, the MCC’s membership policies would see them banned from every ECB league in the country. Every team from the Middlesex County Cricket League Premier Division to the Middlesex 3s Division 6B has to abide by an accreditation scheme known as ClubMark. Originally run by Sport England, ClubMark gives every cricket club in the country a checklist of policies which they should operate in order to ensure the safety of people at the ground and prevent discrimination. One of these (Criteria 3.4) specifically bars cricket clubs from requiring applications to be approved by existing members. There is good reason for this. The people who already know three or four MCC members move in the same social circles as them, are quite possibly related to some of them, and so this severely limits the diversity of new members as they likely share similar backgrounds, views and ethnicities as those already in place. This is why I suggested that MCC being the least equal, diverse and inclusive cricket club in the country is at least an arguable statement. Every single cricket club in every single ECB-affiliated league has to meet the minimum requirements of the ClubMark programme, but not the MCC.
This system of requiring an invitation in order to become a member may have had an effect on racial diversity at the club. London’s population is 48.2% non-White according to the 2021 census, and that certainly does not appear to be reflected in terms of those MCC members who attend matches at the ground. This may not be emblematic of the entire membership, but the Lord’s pavillion is often presented as being the least representative group of the local population within English cricket and this portrayal is probably not without cause.
One key area of the ICEC report was with regards to women’s cricket and its lack of support from the ECB and their members. In the professional era of women’s cricket, beginning with England central contracts in 2014 and the Kia Super League through to the regional teams and The Hundred now, it’s hard to see how the MCC could have put in less effort in terms of hosting women’s matches. In fact, if you exclude The Hundred (since the non-hosting counties are unable to compete for them) then the only one of the eighteen county grounds to have hosted fewer professional women’s cricket matches since 2014 is Cheltenham.
Scheduled Days Of Play (2014-2023)
| Ground | Women’s Tests | Women’s ODIs | Women’s T20Is | KSL | RHFT | CEC | Total |
| Taunton | 8 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 35 |
| Bristol | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 2 | 29 |
| Southampton | 0 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 7 | 7 | 27 |
| Chelmsford | 0 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 26 |
| Hove | 0 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 23 |
| Worcester | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 4 | 21 |
| Leeds | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 20 |
| Loughborough | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 18 |
| Beckenham | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 3 | 17 |
| Manchester | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
| Birmingham | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 14 |
| Guildford | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 14 |
| Leicester | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 14 |
| Derby | 0 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 13 |
| Northampton | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 13 |
| Chester-le-Street | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 4 | 12 |
| The Oval | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
| Nottingham | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Canterbury | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 |
| Arundel | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 7 |
| Blackpool | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Liverpool | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Scarborough | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| York | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Cardiff | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Chester | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Sale | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| Wormsley | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Lord’s | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Cheltenham | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
The MCC’s decisions on which games it does (or doesn’t) host can be directly attributed to the way in which they have restricted who is able or feels welcome to join. In 2022, less than 2% of their full members (the membership category allowed to vote on issues relating to the club) were women. That means fewer than 366 of the 18,315 full members. There are almost certainly a lot more members who attended Eton and Harrow than women members of the MCC, so it should be no surprise that the match between those two schools has more support within the membership than hosting Sunrisers or the England women’s team. In fact, the MCC even has a special full membership category for staff members at certain schools which accounted for 520 of their members (roughly 200 more than women) in 2022.
Compare the number of women’s games grounds have hosted to how the ECB has awarded lucrative England men’s matches in the same period. The ground which has hosted the fewest days of professional women’s cricket has received almost double the number of men’s Test matches as the next-closest ground, whilst the two grounds which have hosted the most women’s games have been given virtually none.
Scheduled Days Of Play (2014-2023)
| Ground | Men’s Tests | Men’s ODIs | Men’s T20Is | Total |
| Lord’s | 89 | 9 | 1 | 99 |
| Manchester | 45 | 10 | 8 | 63 |
| The Oval | 45 | 9 | 1 | 55 |
| Leeds | 45 | 7 | 1 | 53 |
| Birmingham | 40 | 5 | 4 | 49 |
| Southampton | 30 | 10 | 8 | 48 |
| Nottingham | 30 | 8 | 3 | 41 |
| Cardiff | 5 | 6 | 7 | 18 |
| Chester-le-Street | 5 | 5 | 2 | 12 |
| Bristol | 0 | 5 | 4 | 9 |
| Taunton | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
The MCC does not separate how much money it generates from England games from its other income (such as Middlesex and London Spirit matches) and so it is difficult to say exactly how much they receive through hosting two guaranteed Tests plus a white ball match every year. Surrey earned £8,313,000 in 2022 from one Test and one ODI, so the MCC probably makes in the region of £15,000,000 (not including sales of food and drink) in a typical year just from those three men’s games. Thanks to that England match day income, the MCC boasts a higher turnover than counties such as Surrey or Lancashire who have non-cricket revenue streams such as hotels and concerts in order to fill their coffers.
It would not be unreasonable for each of the seventeen other county hosts to look at the MCC and ask why they receive such preferential treatment from the ECB. Their counties host more women’s matches, they abide by the ECB’s guidelines regarding new members, and they have more diverse memberships in terms of gender, age, wealth and ethnicity. Why is the one club which comes bottom in all of these metrics rewarded inordinately with the most valuable prize that the ECB can offer: Hosting men’s Tests?
The first, and perhaps most important reason is money. Whilst the ECB has repeatedly made proclamations about ensuring cricket is a game for everyone, that women’s cricket is a big part of the game’s future, that racism is abhorrent and must be excised from the sport, the single constant which has run through its 26 year history is greed. Lord’s has the most capacity of any English cricket ground and can charge the highest individual ticket prices of any English ground whilst still selling out. It generates the most revenue of any host, and that’s all the ECB has ever really cared about.
The other, more pernicious reason is that the English cricketing establishment and the MCC are intertwined in a way which is virtually impossible to separate. The ECB’s headquarters are at Lord’s, which effectively makes the MCC their landlord. That in itself would appear to be a colossal conflict of interest for a sport’s governing body, and a significant risk if the ECB were to take action against the MCC.
Perhaps the greatest reason why the MCC feel no pressure to make any changes is the person that the ECB have put in charge of responding to the ICEC report, former England captain Clare Connor. Prior to being appointed ECB deputy CEO, Connor was President of the MCC in 2021-22. She was also given an honorary life membership to the MCC in 2009 (worth up to £80,000). It seems vanishingly unlikely that last year’s MCC president is going to propose taking men’s Test matches away from Lord’s, regardless of the strong arguments in its favour.
The degree to which the ECB will act with regards to the ICEC report probably comes down to external pressure, which appears to be almost non-existent at this point. The report was released in the middle of two exciting Ashes series, which has distracted the entire English cricketing media, whilst the UK Government and Parliament are already preparing for next year’s general election and have no time to spare regulating the UK’s eleventh most popular sports team if there are no votes in it. Absent any outside involvement, it seems probable that the ECB will enact the smallest and most cosmetic changes possible just as they did after Azeem Rafiq’s testimony in 2021. In which case, the same issues will continue to dog the sport and we will have to hope that the next review in twenty years or more will create real change.
Hopefully I’m wrong, and even the threat of losing matches might move the MCC into modernising and becoming a 21st Century cricket club with an inclusive and broad membership. I would love for that to happen.
But my lifetime of being involved in cricket has made me very cynical, and I sadly just can’t see that happening.
Thank you for reading this post. If you have any comments or corrections about the post, or just want to talk about the Ashes and Bazball, please do so below.
Being Outside Cricket 
Interesting argument – defo worth addressing. (I speak as an MCC member) – Your % of female members is not right – but it is woefully low regardless. I’ve argued for fast tracking.
England won in 09 and 13. Could easily have won this year but for some strange batting decisions 1st innings.
Why do you assume all members are ‘posh’? How do you define ‘posh’? I watched the Test with dozens of members who if you met in any other walk of life you’d struggle to describe as ‘posh’. Of course there are many from the upper middle classes but plenty who are not. I don’t think there are stats for this and probably difficult to accurately identify. An egg and bacon blazer is not the right identifier..
You also assume Associate Members pay the £200+ from the moment they’re on the list but that isn’t the case (candidates have to wait a few years until they’re offered Assoc Membership).
Worth mentioning application process has changed to encourage more women and playing members.
Full membership annual fee is approx £580, but I note a Man City season ticket is betw £490 and £1030.
You mention the waiting list is 29 years which is right for most but playing candidates (those that make a set # of appearances for MCC) are fast tracked.
You mention the ICEC recommendation RE Eton Harrow but I was saddened the report did not recommend cricket return to free to air tv – surely a far more effective factor in encouraging young interest and participation. A real missed opportunity.
Finally – it’s no longer possible to purchase life memberships and it is a rare occurrence – and the fee quoted is an outlier, and the option has been available twice in approx 25 years.
I rather like George Dobell’s suggestion of flogging off the ground and building a new stadium with roof and increase capacity! Sacrilege to many of my fellow members I’m sure!
All the best and keep up the good work.
Ollie
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Thanks for your reply. To go through your points in order:
I took the percentage of female full members from the summary of the MCC’s 2022 AGM. Specifically, “Mr C.E. Hancock noted that female members represented less than 2% of Full members”. To be clear, the MCC separates honorary life members and associate members from full members, and so including these categories might increase the overall percentage somewhat.
I’m not sure the recent Lord’s Test was particularly close in reality. It required a generational innings by Stokes in order to come even remotely close to victory. England have won more consistently on other grounds, and so it makes sense in terms of cementing home advantage to play there instead.
I will concede that poshness is a nebulous concept. Most people would consider people who attend or work at Eton and Harrow as ‘posh’, for example. The MCC likely has at least a few hundred members who attended those two schools. In fact, they have a special membership category for people who work at such schools which accounts for 520 of the 18,315 full members as of 2022.
In order to calculate the average amount an associate member paid, I divided the total subscriptions from associate members (£1,320,000) by the number of associate members (5,910) listed in the 2022 annual report.
I would be curious to hear how the application process has changed. I know that Melinda Farrell posted on Twitter that she had recently applied to join after being encouraged to do so. The issue being that any improvements now will still take 29 year to even begin to have an effect.
The comparison with other sports is interesting. It’s difficult to directly compare them though as I assume most MCC members don’t attend any cricket matches in any given year. With 18,000 members and limited space in the pavillion, there just isn’t room. The MCC operates not just as an amateur cricket club, and a host to professional cricket, but as a social club and sports governing body. Of course, £500 might compare well to many golf clubs which have a similar social element to membership. I suppose my point is that it is the highest membership fee within English professional cricket, and anywhere where more money is required does exclude some people.
I am aware of playing memberships, but I am unsure how common they are. There were 526 new full members in 2022, how many of them came in through the expedited playing membership scheme? More broadly, I’m not sure it matters. Whether someone is waiting 29 years or 2, both are unacceptable. The use of waiting lists and endorsements are banned in English club cricket, and for good reason.
Certainly cricket being on free to air TV would be a huge boost to diversity within English cricket. I suppose the ICEC didn’t raise the issue because it was unrealistic to think the ECB would consider it. The Government could potentially add cricket (whether ICC events or Tests) to the ‘crown jewels’ list of sporting events which must be on Freeview, but the ECB and Sky would fight that at every step.
I too wouldn’t mind selling off Lord’s and building one (or more) grounds with the proceeds. Winter cricket in a roofed stadium would be a huge plus, and potentially offer a solution to the issue of England’s short cricket season. And, of course, the field would be level.
Thanks again, this was a very interesting response.
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Clare Connor ducking the women’s issue at Lords is going to be a very unedifying sight, isn’t it?
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The thing I’ve always thought with Connor is that she is very loyal and on message with her employer. Whether representing the ECB or MCC, she will steadfastly present whatever they ask her to. It no doubt makes her good and useful at her job, but I simply have no idea what she personally thinks or believes in. This, and the ECB’s track record with regards to women’s cricket when she was their Director of Women’s Cricket means I don’t necessarily expect much from her.
Hopefully she surprises me, in the same way the ICEC report did.
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In my view there is no such thing as “equality, diversity and inclusion.”
It’s just another tired attempt to repackage and impose failed Marxism. Can you sing like Adele? Can you play basketball like Lebron James? Can you bat like Viv Richards? Are you as clever as Stephen Hawkins? If you can’t answer yes to any of these questions then you are not equal in terms of those skills. Pretending otherwise is nonsense. It applies all down through society. Increasingly now people get jobs to tick boxes rather than the best applicant. Quotas have to be met. Standards fall. In the name of anti discrimination, we now openly support “positive” discrimination against talent and skill. Who could have imagined that the so called progressives would now openly champion discrimination as positive?
Should I be able to demand the same money as Adele to sing at the Royal Albert Hall based on equality? What a silly idea. Perhaps I should be able to play centre forward for Manchester City based on an ideology of “inclusion?.” One wonders how long before all Premiership football teams will have to meet other quotas? Perhaps every team must have at least one paraplegic playing in every match? At least one defender must be from the LGBT community? If you think this is absurd then that is pretty much what Hollywood now thinks all films should look like in the future. Worthless, unwatchable pap.
Most of the Wests old institutions were built by private money, with an emphasis on elitism and excellence. It’s is far from perfect, and won’t deliver utopia as promised by the dogooders. However, it dwarfs anything that the Marxists have ever been able to achieve. All they do is tear down excellence, and replace it with decaying mission statements and utopian nonsense. Even socialist institutions like the NHS are collapsing under the weight of all the box ticking silliness of “equity, diversity, and inclusion.” Once there was pride in excellence with wards run by ferocious Matrons and Senior sisters. Excellence and healing the sick was the mission statement. Now, so called Anti bullying rules means its almost impossible to fire anyone who is actually hopeless at their job. Wow, what progress in the name of inclusion. Nurses now spend their time filling out forms to make sure they comply with all the new obsessions. Haven’t got time to actually nurse the sick. But here is yet another costly seminar on making sure the hospital meets it’s absurd “green” targets.
Most of our institutions are now captured by the so called progressive Marxist ideas and have slowly been de generating for decades. Their purpose is now not the same as why it was built. Look at our once great universities, now reduced to flogging over priced worthless degrees in “studies.” No elitism or excellence required here. But to be fair to them what are they supposed to do when the “equality, diversity and inclusion” brigade demand that everybody be allowed to go to university? All they can do is slash the standards so everybody can get in, and everybody gets a qualification however meaningless. The only winners are the university alumni , which have strangely morphed into property companies acting as giant landlords, and bankers who sell the ludicrous loans to the suckers who think they are all now “educated. “
Here is an idea….why don’t the “equity, diversity, and inclusion” people get together and buy a piece of land and build their perfect stadium, and then create their own ethos of endless utopian ideas? Here is why, because they never create anything. They can’t ever get to agree on anything because of all the endless compromises they have to agree on with all their ever expanding diverse groups.
Instead, like all so called revolutionaries they want to take power for themselves of institutions they would never have built in the first place by promising to be caring and sharing for all. Once having taken power however, they morph into just another form of reactionaries like the ones they once opposed. From Robespierre to the reign of terror, from Karl Marx to Lenin/Stalin and so on. Rinse and repeat. The revolutionaries always become the reactionaries.
Competition, hard work and striving for excellence is the only real solution in the long run for most things. Be they individuals or institutions. But it isn’t fair or equal or diverse, and the do gooders will always pretend there is an easier route, and that everybody can be Taylor Swift or Beyoncé.
So ban all the matches you hate, like Cambridge vs Oxford and fill Lords with cricket matches played by another new elite. It won’t amount to a row of beans in the end because the new boss will be like the old boss. Only this time with a phoney smile a meaningless mission statement and a pretence that they care.
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For a post that so repeatedly and at such length laments the demise of excellence, this really is remarkably free of such basic argumentational niceties as logical thinking, cliche-free expression, coherent reasoning and supporting evidence….:-)
I’m sure there are a few arguments that could be made as a rebuttal to Danny’s, but a vitriolic rant that misidentifies almost every issue it talks about and misunderstands some of the basic terminology in favour of a caricatured fantasy world of progressiveness taking over everything (heaven forbid that the human race should progess!), and which sounds copied and pasted from a poorly written guide to “all that’s wrong with the modern world”….aren’t those arguments.
As one of your strict old-fashioned teachers would say: must do better!
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Progressives are the good guys. If you’re anti-progressive you must be a bad guy!
You’re recycling GW Bush’s slogans – but that should come as no surprise as you people are also recycling Bush era foreign policies in Ukraine.
God forbid we might have a post about the last test. No, let’s politicise everything. Which is exactly what “progressives” do and exactly why every institution that isn’t captured by them is subject to these Blairite subversions.
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Or, alternatively, every single journalist and blogger is writing about the Test whilst no one is doing so about the ICEC report which came out less than three weeks ago. Where is the virtue in publishing the same stuff you can read anywhere else? The joy of being a writer on this site is that there is no pressure to post for the sake of posting, no need to chase page views to increase advertising revenue, or to write about topics which don’t interest us. If I had a novel idea to write about England and Bazball which couldn’t be contained within a 240-character tweet then I would write it, but everything I could think of has already been said elsewhere.
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…and having a post in those circumstances “just” about the last test to stay in the fantasy world that cricket doesn’t have any political dimensions would also be a very political post. It would express the highly politicised view that sport and politics shouldn’t mix. But it would still be political–just conservative politics as opposed to non-conservative politics.
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Well said Mark, couldn’t agree more. I also understand that overseas players want to play at Lord’s and would be desperately disappointed if there was no Test match there in their series.
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Atlas Shrugged
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(If the ICEC report at page 63 – para 4.2.29 – writes “there are c18,000 full members of MCC and in 2019, the most recent year when MCC published figures, 217 were women (1.2%); granted there is not much further detail in the 2022 report, why does Ollie above take issue with the numbers. Are the reports wrong – and if so – what am I missing. Or is this MCC misinformation?)
The 2022 report makes reference to the fact that the number of playing days at Lord’s has been reduced a season from above 90 to 60 – with august members like Mr ARC Fraser saying that this has resulted in improvements to the playing surfaces over the last few years – not that my untrained eye could see anything . (This explains why the school competition cannot be held on the full sized pitches – yet safety demands the Eton Harrow be played not on the Nursery ground). If I am correct, there are as many championship matches at Lord’s per season as there are Test matches now – 2. Surely if the pitch is not up to scratch, there should be a maximum of one Test a year there now.
(With the earlier withdrawal of last year’s Headingley Test on EDI grounds apparently allowed even before this report’s recommendations; the only reason for the panel to ask that that be made explicit probably means that the earlier use of that power was rather hypothetical, if at all now aimed at the “northern” form of racism. I am sure that other than the likes of Simon Heffer in the Guardian, no one at Lord’s is seriously worried about Danny’s rather mischievous suggestion.
(And one can at least be happy that the ICC has since 2005 decamped from Lord’s. Perhaps it is time for the ECB to move, say to Manchester – where Old Trafford appears to have unused Office space)
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Simon Heffer at the Guardian….made me laugh. As did the thought of Simon Heffer reacting to the idea that anyone might think he wrote for the Guardian…:-)
Out of interest, why do you think that Danny’s suggestion that Lord’s might lose matches on EDI grounds is mischievous?–especially since the same idea features in the ICEC report and, as you say, has already been used as a threat to a different test ground.
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Other than the fact that it is rare to see a report criticise those who commission their reporting (see any of Cindy Butts reporting for the Met Police, almost as toothless as her uncle’s Clyde Butts offspin to Miandad in 1986 / 1987); I say the suggestion was a touch mischievous when one sees that John Major wrote the forward to the report (if not some of the sections on the history of the game seem to come from his earlier book almost verbatim – the paddocks and meadows in Kent that I was called up on).
When at the same time another of the authors Collins wrote in the Political Quarterly in February 2023 (I think) criticising the decision to fail to close the deficit at Haringey in 1997 owing to the shortfall of Littlewoods Pools grants – the impact of the National Lottery confusing all around – that Major did little to ameliorate in his last year before official National Lottery funding came online the next year in 1998 as the funnelled by MCC.
The same Haringey organisation that was seen by too many in the 1997 hierarchy as giving too many opportunities to black players of doubtful quality if not giving credence to the view that a Marxist ideology was being promoted – only Brendan Barber perhaps capable of being lumped with Bernie Grant and Jeremy Corbyn of Labour’s left, that mainly cricket they share in common with the centrist Tories in this aspect (of people like Bottomley, Major and May). (And with a Labour government expected soon, one can imagine another lost opportunity for this report).
(Whereas CMJ in the 1990s had a dog in the race, so to speak, considering his son was then a prospect, his view that the apparent preference for foreign born black players of the time – the Malcolms and Defreitases – was suspect as opposed to the dearth of opportunities afforded to the Watkins and the Mallenders and the Bicknells; that view had become very mainstream.)
(If the report was as left wing as Heffer complains – Mark’s views above a touch different – one would not see such a major punch being pulled – with Major. (Equally to describe Zafar Ansari as a Marxist on the basis of being a member of the criminal bar is a touch unfair).
Instead the report shows merely a limited appetite to call out the Yorkshire species of racism rather than saying, when it could have done so, that Lord’s should specifically lose future Tests for past EDI failures, whereas it seems to be just daring them to cancel the historic matches from 2024 onwards to demonstrate EDI. The report on essentially ECB procedures is thus very neutral, when saying that yes the procedures allowed the Yorkshire ban, though this power to reference EDI should be made explicit in future bids. It does not point to other instances and say that bans should have occured (for crowd behaviour at Headingley in 1996 or with the views of the chairmen at the DCMS hearings in November 2021 or with Durham now that their chairman Lord Botham binned the ICEC report – contrast this with the displeasure shown to Middlesex for their Pension shortfall this year, which for any other ground would have been more seriously viewed). This is what I presume was Danny’s suggestion with his article – if not his implicit criticism that an opportunity was missed to include some normative EDI based standards.
(What would have been good was if the report had tried to assess the EDI credentials of all the major match playing grounds on certain standardised criteria – but presumably excepting Surrey and Somerset, the governance overall was equally shambolic at all of the others and unlikely to change. No doubt with all their funding, MCC can easily produce a very flashy EDI report – vide that of April 2023 – that puts all the other grounds to shame that necessitated the delay to publication of the ICEC. I presume that but for the braying scenes at the fifth day at Lord’s in the Long room, that MCC’s EDI report would have been accepted by the ECB in its response. (No doubt Mark Milliken Smith will recommend three month bans for the three members – after all it is not as if they have sworn at the staff – the fines perhaps including an element for the extra EDI work perhaps needed).
I expect at best now that the Brighton College school mistress, Sussex and MCC good egg will see that space is found for the U15 comps on the main square – at least for a couple of years – and this would represent a positive response to the report if their April EDI report is not accepted. And that would require there to be outside criticism, from either the DCMS to have any effect.
Apologies as well for any other auto translate errors, as well as all the others.
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It may just be my low expectations, but I was surprised how far reaching and thorough the ICEC report was. The inclusion of both women’s cricket and class/wealth, in particular the recommendations aiming to bring women’s cricket level with men’s, went far beyond what I had anticipated.
How counties would do with regards to being ranked on EDI criteria very much depends on *which* criteria you use. In this post, I focussed on women members and hosting women’s cricket because they can be fairly easily quantified without any special access (I am Outside Cricket, after all). Another measure might be whether the ethnicities of kids in their pathway are representative of their catchment areas. With London being the region with the highest percentage of non-White people in the UK, Surrey might not fare well in that calculation. Cynically, you could work out which outcome you wanted (which grounds you favoured to host Tests) and then work backwards to create a combination of standards to produce those results.
You could argue that this is what I did. There are probably ways in which you could look at the MCC’s record in a good light. If there are around 300-400 women full members out of 18,315 at the MCC, that might be more than at a county with a membership of fewer than 1000. Lord’s has hosted more England women’s matches since 2014 than Trent Bridge, the Oval, Headingley or Old Trafford, although far fewer domestic games. As is often the case with statistics, framing them in the correct way *could* make almost any argument seem convincing.
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I was rather surprised that the ICEC report covered either gender or (especially) class, but that was mainly because the reporting had focussed on the race component of it.
But there’s one other area where there’s quite clearly something going on and which was barely addressed, although it’s an area where figures are famously difficult to obtain. In men’s professional cricket a grand total of one player still playing, and one former player, has ever publicly talked about being non-straight (obviously most players talk about their sexuality, but only in relation to women).
Despite the difficulty quantifying how people identify in terms of sexuality, this is vastly below both any estimates about the population at large (the most common figures for men seem to be either side of 5%, which would equate to about 20 county cricketers–although it’s also pointed out often that younger men are more likely to identify as non-straight) and shows an enormous disparity with women’s professional cricket.
So it’s not a coincidence any more than the under-representation of South Asian Britons in the county game compared to recreational cricket. And the issue is the same (a culture that ranges from unencouraging to actively hostile). The issue is, though, the same as with other underrepresented groups: if we’re to keep a moribund sport alive for as long as possible, make the most of the talent that exists in the game, attract the most supporters, and enable all the players already in the game to maximise their potential by being as welcomed as possible in it, then the game needs to be more inclusive rather than more exclusive.
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This doesn’t answer my question though–which was why you think that DANNY’S suggestion was mischievous. (I’m not sure it really explains why the ICEC’s recommendation was mischievous either, to be honest).
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Perhaps I will try to explain again. (Most probably, unsuccessfully.)
Danny (below) recognises the difficulties in trying to specify relevant EDI principles specific to cricket.
This report did not articulate any principles to ascertain the promotion of EDI in cricket – probably because it took its cue from the approach to complaints handling and EDI that the PHSO suggested, following criticisms specific to the NHS after 2018 (presumably the source of some of Mark’s comments above).
The report on similar issues relating to Scottish cricket from last year did suggest a number of sport specific EDI principles at page 10 – that appear to be generic to sport. As Cricinfo reported at the end of June 2023, that report’s impact has left something left to be desired subsequently, particularly for those on the right. The failings of that report also I suggest are likely to be visited on the ICEC’s.
Danny did try to assess MCC against two EDI criteria – membership make up (where
MCC is probably is not such an outlier in terms of overall numbers of women – compare say Derby with a little over 1,100 members, mostly male – not that there criticism here is implied of Derby in particular); as well as major matches obtained in the period.
Danny’s second category of successful bids might be argued to conflate the roles of the MCC and the ECB (the latter awarding matches). Of the ECB six fold criteria, the first criteria, of attendance and profit maximisation would tend to conflict with Danny’s chosen criterion. With the Women’s Ashes Test in Nottingham this year gaining only 23,000 over five days, the business case for a Women’s Ashes Test at Lord’s is suspect, even when one takes into account that the ODI saw attendances of 20,000 for that match this year at Lord’s. It is not for nothing that the ECB have developed Somerset – and other lower capacity grounds for Women’s cricket on this ground – whether this is right or not, I again will not comment here).
Even leaving aside Danny’s two criteria, with the MCC not a First Class County or involved in the talent pathway, there is limited scope for them to be criticised on EDI grounds moving forward, even if the ICEC report is unclear on the reach of the jurisdiction of the ECB beyond merely the playing team members of the MCC as at present. It is invidious that a 18 year old on the groundstaff is subject to the jurisdiction for their social media comments, but say Heffer is not. It is wrong that Graves could not be required to attend DCMS hearings in terms of ECB procedures – the optics are even worse than Eric Pickles at the Grenfell inquiry or Geoffrey Howe at the Arms to Iraq inquiry.
As I said, with their financial and other resources, MCC could easily top EDI league tables, even without requiring journalist members like Emma John putting up puff pieces in their respective papers (where she only four weeks ago was hinting at the problematic behaviour of male MCC members). (And one discerns that the editorial board of BOC have not been offered membership to plug their EDI credentials yet – might I wish you better luck next time chaps).
All of which means it is very unlikely for MCC to be sanctioned on EDI grounds, whatever anybody thinks, whatever the criteria used (hopefully they do not use the number of taps of alcohol free beer as a criterion as MCC proudly proclaimed in April)
Now the ICEC report, like the Scottish report is rather polarising, if not people generally do not seem to have read it, particularly the right wing critics such as Botham and Heffer, when saying that aspects relating to their spheres of influence need to be rejected.
(So while claiming to be a historian, while accepting that the behaviour at Yorkshire was unacceptable, Heffer asks MCC to reject any findings relating to MCC qua members.
Being close to members of staff dismissed at Yorkshire, Botham conflates the ICEC report on procedures of the ECB with the investigation into events at Yorkshire when saying in his recent interview that he has not seen any “proof of wrong doing”, when railing against the anonymised reporting in the ICEC report – that specifically does not relate to the events at Yorkshire alone except in general terms. In this, Botham shares the view of many on the right that there are no significant problems arising from the issues raised – noticeably he did not explain whether he agreed with the stance taken by his one time commentator Michael Holding – so much for that being an interview “that asked the hard questions”.)
I presumed Danny’s article referenced Heffer’s earlier monthly article from June amongst others, where Heffer believed that the report either said or implied something – sanctions against MCC on EDI grounds were possible – that could never be have intended to have any impact if one actually read the reports or considered the context.
This was why I thought Danny’s suggestion was mischievous. As Danny knew the MCC could not be sanctioned on EDI grounds ( or would be at the bottom of the list of any “EDI enforcement action”), yet this was not the impression of those on the right on reading his article.
If you disagree, could you suggest better EDI criteria (that would single out MCC or even a specific county, like Yorkshire)?
(I do not think I said that the ICEC’s recommendations at number 18 was mischievous – as mentioned – one waits to see the response of Claire Connor, to see whether she is going to bounce the panel members, or will actually go through and cancel the historic matches.)
(And while the work of the panel is concluded by releasing their report, it should be noted that Cindy Butts did ask to include matters such as Class etcetera as a condition of being appointed – not that the ECB asked for this – nor would this remove the standard criticism that these panel members were “not Independent” etcetera)
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Well, inasmuch as I can understand at all what you’re saying, I still can’t see it. You seem only to be saying that you disagree with Danny’s suggestion–but that’s not the same as the suggestion being mischievous.
I also can’t see why you think that the ECB (or the CDC) wouldn’t have jurisdiction over the MCC. The ECB has jurisdiction over the professional game, including the allocation of major matches. The CDC explicitly has jurisdiction over the MCC, although not currently the power to remove major matches (this could of course be altered by altering the Regulations though).
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I realise this is in the wrong place, perhaps.
One definition of mischievous is the one I used here – “causing or showing a fondness for causing trouble in a playful manner”. There are other definitions – perhaps you could be clear why you disagree?
In terms of the current self regulatory set up, the ECB appears only having limited jurisdiction over MCC, even on EDI grounds presently. Your responses seem to agree with that aspect, particularly vis a vis the other major match grounds, despite what you might write.
Arguably, if action was taken not to award major matches on EDI grounds, Lord’s risk in terms of EDI would be quite
low as a matter of probability as compared with the other major match ground first class counties. I suggest MCC’s leadership recognises this, as opposed to their membership, if not those on the right.
To suggest that Lord’s were at greater risk than other venues at losing major matches on EDI grounds is at best a playful suggestion.
And with Danny’s playful suggestion of excluding MCC as a venue garnering alarmed responses from members of MCC, this indicates that he has succeeded. Hence “mischievous”.
(I have not said I disagree with Danny – just that that possibility is far remoter than perhaps we all would like, particularly if one was assessing matters using agreed criteria. Things would be different if one did not have to give reasons for decisions, to fail to award matches to Lord’s)
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It’s not mischievous to want change, and I would not think it necessarily unlikely that the MCC would have their England matches removed by the ECB. If it were to happen, I would think it would not be unlike Yorkshire’s international ban, where the ECB would say Lord’s can’t host any more Tests until they gain significantly more women members and host more women’s matches. The MCC would call an SGM and the members would fix those issues in one vote, then the ECB would lift the ban.
It’s also reminiscent of when the MCC voted to allow women members. They were forced into it by the Government, who refused to allow any public funds to support the development of Lord’s for a men’s only club. If the MCC wanted Lottery funding and the like, they had to let women join. Even then, it took two SGMs to get the required majority. It’s funny comparing this to the MCC’s account of the vote, which implies that their members spontaneously decided to allow women to join because they realised it was unfair and how it was an example of their members’ commitment to social justice.
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Because of the MCC’s lack of transparency, and this is true of county clubs too, the membership breakdowns are not available to the public (and often not to members either). It’s further complicated by the MCC’s membership structure which is broadly split into three categories: Full, Honorary and Associate. Full is the largest group and, as the name suggests, have full rights with regards to voting, attending matches, etc. Honorary members are essentially ‘Full’ members who have been given a lifetime MCC membership due to their fame, service to English cricket, or service to the MCC. Then there are Associate members, who are people on the waiting list to become Full members who cannot vote or attend most matches in the pavillion. There are 18,315 Full members, 5,910 Associate members and 356 Honorary members. The waiting list was roughly 20 years from 1998, when they voted to first allow women to join, and so no women became Full members through the typical application process (ie without playing for the MCC or being awarded an honorary membership like Clare Connor) until 2018.
With all of this, I would assume that the percentage of women in the Honorary membership category was higher than 2%, since the MCC would like to publicly portray itself as progressive (despite doing all of the things I have listed above) and awarding a membership to a high profile women’s cricketer makes good PR. Likewise, the number of women Associate members *should* be higher than 2% because Associates are all on the waiting list and so must have applied after 1998 when women were first allowed to do so.
The MCC’s 2022 annual report states that 526 people became Full members in that year. If that’s a typical number, then roughly 2,500 people will have risen to Full membership since women first started reaching the head of the waiting list since 2018. Or, to put it another way, over 15,000 of the MCC’s 18,315 Full members would have presumably applied before a single woman was allowed to do so. Given this, and the other issues I’ve written about, it would be unsurprising that the Full members (the largest and most powerful group of members) would feature a particularly low proportion of women.
It’s not meant as a mischievous suggestion. Lord’s sucks, in many different ways. I believe one of the other writers is writing a post about it from the perspective of someone who actually attends matches there (I’ve never been), and it won’t be flattering. I am a big believer in the principle of deterrence, and taking men’s Test matches away from Lord’s for all of the reasons I’ve written about would send a very strong message to the whole of English cricket: No one is above the rules, and if we did it to the MCC then we would certainly do it to you if you don’t take immediate action.
Regarding moving the ECB’s headquarters, I don’t think moving from one club’s property to another is an upgrade. Personally, I think moving to a low-income city like Hull or Preston would be a good move. A lot cheaper in terms of both property and living costs, but it would also help give the higher echelons of English cricket an appreciation of the issues facing the game outside St. John’s Wood.
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A slight correction – even with six Championship matches at Lord’s – the upper limit of 60 playing days seems quite limited – even at Augusta National they play for five months without problems
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Among the few things that I would give the ICEC report credit, is where they identify some of the difficulties in asking the MCC now to make improvements in regard to EDI matters.
MCC are not a First Class County (FCC) – indeed their members seem to hate hosting Middlesex (and credit to you Danny for publicising their latest annual report – I wonder if you have seen the 2019 report anywhere online and if so where) . They no longer represent nor host the ICC. They are a private member’s club who hosts public matches. (I am surprised that regulatory action from the Charity Commission or Sport England have not previously addressed some of the problems where they have sought lottery funding that saw the change to allow women members in 1998 – which is now described as a result of the campaign by Rachel Heyhoe Flint).
While there are two other famous MCCs in cricket – the Melbourne Cricket Club who do not seem to make that more despite hosting another professional sport – and the Madras Cricket Club – that seems to even now to set standards for exclusion; it is rather unfortunate that these other two countries like a match at Lord’s when their teams tour. It is something of a blessing that Modi is not from Delhi to require most visiting teams to attend there. Anyone in England for a Ashes tour not to include Brisbane or even Melbourne (who handed back the Commonwealth Games while the Football WC or the Olympics is okay)?
With the MCC publishing a EDI report in 2022, it is noticeable that the ICEC attended with MCC on 22nd September 2022 to discuss matters. The SGM proposed by the MCC members opposing the cancellation of the historic matches on the main square was due to take place on the 29th September 2022. This meeting was abandoned with agreement – I presume subsequent to the meeting with the commission (so the question to be answered is was something promised to the ICEC that did not get past the members) and a further EDI report was published in April 2023. With questions raised by even Atherton as to why the recommendations were not published in January 2023 given the reports that the fact finding process had been completed – in 2022 said to be explained by the volume of reporting – it is noticeable that a further EDI report was published in 2023 April and only then was the ICEC report published with their recommendation at 18 and 19. Was the panel more “bolshy” than the MCC expected? Did the MCC pull a fast one, much in the way Strauss attempted to bounce the counties Morne Morkel like last year with his High Performance Report?
In my view, holding a school’s match is something equivalent to Derby needing to hold a Michael Bublé concert (as I believe Derby needed to do in 2021 to diversify their funding streams beyond the historic). Limiting the number of days played at Lord’s is something that is unjustified – I have more of a sense of agreement with the members that they could easily play the U15 tournaments on the main square. Equally I do not believe the MCC leadership will ever accept the edict to ban the historic matches (or hold them on the Nursery ground).
There does appear to be some tension between the MCC and the ICEC that does not seem to be fully articulated and I wondered if Ollie knew anything further? If some 2500 members have been appointed since 2018 and the official number of women members is still at 1.2% or around 220 – as was the agreed figure in September 2022 – why does Ollie take issue except if not part of a general campaign of disinformation? Were other standards agreed with the ICEC and then ignored?
(Looking at the 2022 MCC report is rather interesting – they seem to receive more money hosting Hundred double headers than a competing report in terms of new funding that explained that Headingley received only £85,000 a time – or is the hosting fee flexible? If the sums are variable, if not they are allowed to be, surely the MCC could pay an extra £3 million a match to host Men’s Tests – they certainly make more than whatever the Oval can manage to be invested on EDI initiatives.)
(And looking at the 2023 MCC April EDI report, having 30 taps or so for San Miguel 0.0% is perhaps not something to be proud off. If they decided to blackball Simon Heffer for his June (DT) column, then maybe this would “push the needle”. Not even Nigel Farage could complain)
I do think it is rather naive to expect Lord’s as opposed to other grounds, to be punished as you suggest, particularly if the ECB seem to be tenants, hence my suggestion that they decamp to the regions, like the BBC. With Graves getting a sizeable return on his £20 million investment – even 4% over twenty years mean that he is considerably “in the black” on his investment, if not being a beneficiary of the £3.9 million or so that Yorkshire received last year from the ECB; with a system that does not criticise him and praise the investment of Spen Cama with Sussex; no significant change is likely.
But surely that does not stop public if not official criticism of MCC (as part of the “two way engagement on social media”). But to do so requires agreed standards that MCC fails to uphold as part of their “Lords for All” campaign. It is a shame that the commission did not say that much about that (and while the report indicated that the match allocation process is fixed till 2024, a month later we are told the match allocations are fixed till 2027).
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Regarding the MCC’s leadership, I would say that they are less conservative (with a little C) and more open to change than their membership. Or at least, those members who are active in terms of voting in AGMs and setting policy. Only 1%, 180 members are required to approve an SGM on any subject. Those members who oppose change are more likely to attend meetings, vote, and are also very vocal with at least two of them having newspaper columns.
It is not unlike politics in America. A majority of the population are (relatively) liberal, support abortion for example, but those who aren’t are more likely to vote, more likely to donate, and tend generally to be more focussed on achieving their goals. Policies are determined by those who turn up.
180 of the more liberal MCC members could combine to approve an SGM forcing them to host women’s matches, to alter their membership policies in order to quickly improve the percentage of women members, to eliminate the special provisions for staff of certain schools to become members, but they don’t. The same could be said for county members, although for them the threshold is typically closer to 10% than 1% of members required to force an SGM.
It is one reason why I have little sympathy for county (or MCC) members who say they want change but are powerless. They aren’t. The mechanisms are there for them to use (except for at Durham, Hampshire and Northamptonshire which are no longer member run), and they can’t be bothered. The only issues which have successfully prompted an SGM recently are the removal of the traditional matches at Lord’s and some Lancashire members opposing any reduction of Championship matches just before the Strauss review came out. The members are a very powerful group, but only appear to coalesce when opposing change rather than promoting it.
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