Centre with goal of inclusivity pursues a reassessment of the coaching and even the language of the sport
“Cricket is shit if you’re shit at cricket. But everyone has been shit at cricket. Even Ben Stokes. When someone threw a ball at him for the first time, he didn’t smash it six rows back. Ben Stokes was shit at cricket, and then he got good at cricket, and he got good quick enough to stay in it. Because anyone who’s crap at cricket for too long thinks, this is rubbish, let’s fuck off.”
Everyone wants cricket to be better. Everyone wants cricket to be more present in state schools, more open to those beyond its boundaries, less of a self-sustaining garden party. Or at least everyone says they do. Even the England and Wales Cricket Board, which has spent 30 years producing reports about how racist, sexist and elitist the game it oversees is, always with the same air of mild, patrician bafflement, as though this is all somebody else’s area of concern.
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