The numbers of players from an ethnic minority   in  county cricket has  almost doubled in the last five years, predominantly  from a South Asian heritage, their numbers  are  now something like proportionate to the  general UK population. The rise  mainly younger players starting out, most prominently playing  in the ODC.

Players  born early in the school year, into a family with a relative who was/is a FC cricketer and then given all the advantages of a fee-paying school disproportionate among them?

In 2025 not particularly with the birth months(s), but a noticeable number with a brother or father who is or was a first class player. Aryaman Varma at Northants was the first  for a decade if not longer to have been educated at Eton College and with Jafer Chohan,   Harrow and a former player for SACA, makes for a count of  two of the three across the game to have been at one or the other. Despite the referencing at times made to it, county cricket is not ‘Eton-Harrow posh’.

But given the total numbers of  independently educated, 239 in 2025, there are high career-entry costs to a cricket career. Applying a ten-year rule of thumb that those starting out  reflect the  sport about a  decade before, the decline in the state educated since 2015 ought not surprise to anyone who remembers 2005. It has though  been a steep decline and neither is  it obviously at an end.

Players from an ethnic minority probably mean there will be some who were state educated among the under-25s in 2030, but the white majority having declined in number from 88 to 36  in the last decade maybe heading into single figures. Bearing in mind that they relate to around 75% of the general population they are very under-represented talents.

Data from Cricket Archive.