In the generation that has passed since the golden summer of 2005   England’s cricketers  have  gone from being mainly  the products of  state schools  to being mainly not. One  look at the decline and  it looks like the state-educated may be nearing the end of the line, talent without the right schooling in cricket not enough.

A problem, about which it seems there is quite a lot of agreement. But one prone to exaggeration as well?  The 20%  count from the 2025/6 Ashes is of Ben Stokes (who moved to England when 12), Matt Potts and Mark Wood, three players out of the 15 who appeared in the series. Include in  Harry Brook and Joe Root who went to state  schools before getting scholarships and the % goes up, include them out and count  appearances rather than heads and it  goes down.

Tweakable stats, although  players with a scholarship since Ashley Giles in 2005 number 11  (of 107 in all).  Players privately educated younger, older players less so now  is also the pattern  in county cricket, where the decline in the state educated  in the last decade has been stark.

98 players under 25 in 2015, 52 last summer, and with a history of decision-making  at the top of the game that  might be described as  Grassroots Last  the decline may very well have further to go. More players coming from ethnic minority backgrounds might to a degree help keep the numbers positive, as might some  counties, but the big question now is how much gets invested  to impact the 2030s?

Data from Cricket Archive

England last won an Ashes Test in Australia in 2010/11  since when  0-13. After the 2021/22 series a  review  pointed to a quantity problem with domestic cricket: there’s too much of it.  For every team sheet in Australia’s red-ball competition, the Sheffield Shield, there are four in the Championship, allow  for  the number of players, the weather and there is a  noticeable difference  in the playing days for individual players.

The Sheffield Shield is played almost entirely by Australians,  arguably making it  more focussed,  intense with  the influence of  Test players, past and present, greater. Possibly, although  when it comes to Test cricketers the  Championship with its openess scales up pretty well, and with these numbers also reasonable to ask why isn’t domestic cricket a sizeable advantage to England? Maybe it is of course, just not obviously  given a legacy of  spending big on buildings and not giving enough for  the playing base.

When Joe Root tossed up at the Gabba in 2021 he was starting his 13th Test that year, Pat Cummins his third, and England’s players continue to play on more days  because England continues to play more Tests; an average of 75 days to the Australians 61 in 2024(/5). No doubting either how reliant England’s Test team has been  on those who play the most, almost half the names on  team sheets those who had a schedule of 100 days plus. A too much problem, but £, Sky, T20 leagues and market forces; or,  actually okay, England’s best in demand and just doing what they should be doing?

Going from year to season the number of playing days for English players, averaging 75 and 39, is in proportion. Some variation between the counties certainly, different numbers of players, how much white-ball they play etc, but  not a  concentration of smaller counties near the top of the table. Plainly other Test nations put out competitive teams with fewer domestic players, but in England, starting from here, it’s not obvious that contraction below would result in an advance above.

Data compiled from Cricket Archive.

Better  sporting news recently with the decision to extend FTA coverage of Rugby Union’s 6N for the next few years. A generation ago cricket’s governing body took the money, leaving the game’s future to take care of itself rather.  Not good for getting young players interested, move on  a  decade or so from the decision and the reliance on public schools for county players quite unsurprisingly started rising, more push than nudge and arguably now more shunt than push.

A game heading up-market, getting posher as well? Personally, an Etiquette Board for spectators  was a new one last summer but among  the players if posh is Eton-Harrow posh, then not particularly.  In 2005 Hampshire teams included an old Etonian but in the men’s game since 2015 none found in the archives, old Harrovians three in 2024, one of whom has since retired. But no doubting the concentrations of players from some schools, 12 from King’s College, Taunton in 2024, Millfield, 9 or the connections at some  counties. Or the (‘career entry’) cost, sums well in to six figures, times if siblings.

For the women’s game the  records  are much less complete, across the three main competitions last year  34/68 privately educated, 123 players in all, a higher % among the under-25s; so possibly not so very different to the men, albeit the span of the possible is wide. Players with a South Asian heritage not as many, no salt needed.

In 2024 the most common name on the county circuit was Singh, 5 players,  a marker for the future  maybe. In all  a (conservative) count of 55 players from an ethnic minority,  up to nearly 20% of  the under-25s in 2024, converging if it hasn’t already converged on the % in the general population. A game for all? Not that,  two minorities be better than one, or three  if players who are related to other county players are included, but also a very obvious message about state schools.

Freddie Fintoff’s Field of Dreams series starts with the comment that to play cricket you have to be lucky or privileged, better if it  wasn’t like that, then a clip from the 2005 Ashes. Luck, or at least family influences important in ‘getting cricket’, making a career out of the game: FoD makes clear Freddie’s career owed much to his father, two of his teammates that summer were related to Test cricketers,  five others had a brother or father who played for a  county side.

In 2024  around one in five who played for the 18 FCC were  related to someone who play(ed) for one of the 18, or play(ed) first-class cricket elsewhere, more than one in three if the marker is premier league club  or above. Family a formative influence but also no doubting the big generational change in educational backgrounds.

The players that have been starting out in the 2020s have mainly come from families of county cricketers, a truly tiny % of the general population, and the privately educated; those that are  born in to it and those that can pay to get there. By 2030 many  starting out then will be lights that set off  towards the end of the last decade, when the cumulative effects of all things paywall era were being felt; given the numbers here is cricket going to be a public school profession for them?

It might be. Taking a figure of 150 + players for the under-25s then at least some with different backgrounds  could reasonably be expected, although in the Blast last summer the figure for the under-25s was (counting appearances) 80%, for 8 of the counties 100%;  markers for where an incoming tide was.

There is  south-north divide of sorts which may  be a limiting influence,  but the long-term rise shows no sign of decline, 155/326 were independently educated in 2019,  and may be accelerating. VAT on independent schools to help? More club cricket a better route for developing the most  talented and with it a re-balancing from south to north, it might take a few years but stranger things.

Players who attended an independent school and/or have a relative that play(ed) 18FCC/FC cricket

Overall not great, much of it a legacy from a generation at the end of the last century who forgot the transfer of school playing fields, followed on in this one by some forgetful cricket administrators.  Money now consequences later, into which pattern in 2025 equity sales in The 100; funds from the  future to  pay the players more, take the competition up-market. While  enough might be being done to widen the playing base how, if at all, it will impact those who make it to the top is another question.

Is red-ball cricket fairly thought of as a game for the privileged classes?  Lord’s prices for Test matches are certainly one pointer. As to  the players, on the county circuit 105 out of (14*11=) 154 at the Oval last summer had been to an independent school, add in those from overseas with similar educations and the 2022  county champions may have been the most privileged in the competition’s history.

Cricket Archive data.

Whether Surrey were also champions because of it is moot; the numbers for Sussex and Worcester were  not so different, the numbers for the ‘smaller East Midlands counties’ not so many. The average of English-qualified players across the game was around 55%, although fair to add this was slightly above that for the  England teams in the 15 Tests in 2022 (52%).

But the head count of players that have been to an independent school, whether on a bursary or fee-paying, has risen markedly in recent seasons; of those that weren’t around in 2018 but were in 2022  the figure is close to 60%. While it  fits in to what might  have been expected given the ECB’s priority of £s over FTA after 2005, it’s also a legacy that probably has a distance to run over the next decade.  An increasing concentration from a small number of independent schools seems likely, getting on for a quarter of English players came through 20 of them last year.

In ‘democratic’ white-ball cricket this reliance on places attended by 6-7% of those of school age was quite similar, the numbers a bit higher if anything; as broadly it was with the pattern of domestic and England players’ backgrounds. Cricket Archive has not so very much on those in the Women’s 100, although it would be no big surprise if it was in line with the men; for what it’s worth the counts last year were 6/13.

There is an obvious follow-on question here about the backgrounds of recreational players. As to the answer to the long-term decline in  the game’s playing base being private equity at the top, cue higher ticket prices; football has  travelled a distance up-market from where it was in 1992, but with cricket, starting from here, why follow?

Cricket and Privilege

When this subject comes round it  doesn’t  often start with whether there are too many Test match grounds, obvious enough question that it is. Did anybody ever think nine was the right number? Maybe they did, or at least were in favour of competition to upgrade facilities, although of  the  150+ home Test matches since 2000, England have played just 15 of them at Cardiff, Chester-le-Street and Southampton.

This is a very different pattern to the expansion of Test cricket that took place after WWII  when as more Tests were played, more were played at Edgbaston, Trent Bridge and Headingley. In the years 1970-99 England played 150+ Tests and all six grounds staged more than of 20 of them,  albeit that as five Test summers became six more often in the 80s and 90s, Lord’s staged two matches.

One ground then usually missed out and  with Lord’s and the Oval something of a given, it left three from four. In the 21st century with the three newcomers and seven Test summers, a problem; too many and not only in hindsight.

The  consequences of this financially were wholly unsurprisingly sizeable losses at some of the TMG counties, followed by debt write-offs (a great big ‘profit’ for Glamorgan in 2015)  and other financial restorations. Taken together on this horizon the smaller counties  have essentially broken even, although whether they are more sustainable now with The 100  is moot.

So too many smaller (non-TMG) counties ? Or the opposite and that  they are not  ‘county enough’,  too much like smaller versions of the Test match counties when they should be staging  more festivals in more places.  As cricket finds out whether there is enough interest to sustain both The 100 and The Blast, a big expense, it doesn’t need the  bonkerdom of shrinking the cricket map as well.