ECB’s plans to engage with South Asian communities
One of the most gifted batsmen of his generation, Mark Ramprakash played 52 Test Matches and 18 One-Day Internationals for England over the course of a 25-year professional career with Middlesex and Surrey. A former Wisden Cricketer of the Year and PCA Player of the Year, he is one of only 25 people in the history of the sport to have scored 100 First Class centuries.
ECB’s wider efforts to engage with South Asian cricket communities was the aim of the event. Ahead of what promises to be a fantastic summer for the game, with the World T20 Champions Sri Lanka taking on England before India arrive later in the summer for a tour which includes their first five Test series here since 1959.
One of our most important initiatives at present is to promote cricket participation in five target cities where there are substantial Asian communities; London, Leicester, Bradford, Birmingham and Leeds.
Later this year ECB will be unveiling a major new sports facility at Crown Hills Community College in Leicester – a city where 40 per cent of the population is from an ethnic minority background – which will provide high quality training facilities for cricket clubs in the wider area. ECB has invested nearly £1 million in this project which will see the college adopt cricket as its specialist sport and also fund the appointment of a dedicated city-wide cricket development officer.
England teams have been enriched in recent years by the presence of players of Asian descent such as Nasser Hussain, Ravi Bopara, Monty Panesar and Isa Guha and we are eager to see many more follow in their footsteps.