The Teesra

Category: ICEC

  • Does anyone speak up for the coaches?

    Does anyone speak up for the coaches?

    I don’t think it would be unfair to suggest that ECB Coach Development (the group within the England & Wales Cricket Board with responsibility for developing coaches, at all levels of the game, from grassroots to the professional game) has lacked a little direction recently. An interim Head for two years, then a vacant post for another year, and most recently an appointment who, 12 months in, has yet to be introduced to the coaches he is tasked with developing.

    There have been a couple of revealing “coach development” news snippets, recently, revealing in that neither said anything at all about developing cricket coaching (or coaches) beyond the professional game or the private schools in England & Wales.

    Nor about addressing the genuine issues of inclusion raised by ICEC, nor the ongoing (apparent) failures of coaching (at all levels of the development pathway) in England (& Wales) to develop players ready for the international stage.

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  • The ECB wants to build 40 new domes — but will this be enough?

    A couple of weeks ago, Richard Thompson, chairman of the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB), was interviewed by Dan Roan of the BBC at the opening of the country’s second all-weather cricket “dome” in Darwen, Lancashire.

    With the (understandable) focus at the time on playing schedules in the County game and player workloads, the main story from the interview was how players were “exhausted” by an “unrelenting” schedule.

    And, with no resolution of the problematic 4-day schedule for 2026, the schedule will only become more compressed as the Hundred claims more of the summer.

    But Thompson’s comments on the new dome, and on progress towards the goals set out by the ICEC report, got little further coverage. Which seemed slightly strange, to me.

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  • Early Engagement…seriously?

    I wrote recently about the ECB’s apparent “re-interpretation” of a couple of recommendations from the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report, Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket, 2023.

    Although the “…workstream of developing early engagement programmes for November 2025 is…[still] underway…” (unpublished as of February 2025, although the Counties might, perhaps, have had sight of it), several Counties have started the recruitment process to support the Early Engagement Programmes (EEPs) called for by the ICEC Report.

    Without knowing the final agreed format of the EEP, it does appear that the future County pathways that the Counties are preparing for might not be all that close to the ICEC proposals.

    And that the Counties are not preparing for ICEC Recommendation 35, which calls for much enhanced State School engagement.

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