onemoresummer.co.uk/post/are-sch...

Sorry. It's probably not clear from my tweet that there are more than 101. I was just trying to show the tiny number of schools involved.

ECB State of Equity Report 2025 has 52% indy.
I have 62% of those developed in Eng/Wales as indy (n=189) from 94 schools.

Last year the Sutton Trust had England male cricketers* as the only sport in the top 10 professions with the highest independently educated %. Just behind the Army & Senior Judges.
* National team players only.

FACT: A quarter of all male professional cricketers (101), who grew up in England & Wales, went to just 23 independent schools. 🏏🧑‍🎓

Which ones are best at developing England players? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Lancashire surprised me & also how low Durham actually are.

The numbers include squad players. Younger players will be more likely to be indy. In fact across all the counties 75% of players under age 22 are indy. The squad also includes players signed from other counties. Only one school with more than 1 player... The Perse School, Cambridge with 2. 👍

🤯 Wow. 75% of English professional cricketers aged under 22 were independently educated. 🏏🎓
onemoresummer.co.uk/post/does-yo...

Does your county have more or less male English cricketers who went to Independent School than the national average? 🏏👨‍🎓🧭
onemoresummer.co.uk/post/does-yo...

Many thanks Raf. So not really very accessible or promoted in any way unlike the National County men?

@crickether.com Quick Q. Where do I find results/table info on Tier 2 & 3 teams pls? Obvs easy for the FCC men, Tier 1 women & the National Counties men have a flashy new website but that doesn't cover T2/3 women. 🤔 Many thanks.

52% of male professionals were independently schooled. 84% of these paid between 10% & 100% of the fees (only 16% had 90%+ scholarships),(ECB, 2024).

6-7% who are independently schooled in the UK.

Most from the top 100 cricketing schools out of approx 1500 senior independent schools.

#TFTD Ben Stokes... 'The talent that we have in England is just unquestionable. The pool of players, the talent that we have, it's probably as good as it's been in a very long time'

Have we ever had a 'system' that has 45% of male professionals coming from 0.5% of the general population?

'The vast majority of our players come through the state school system' Mark Wallace DoC.

For homegrown players:
6 Indy, 7 State.

For all Eng/Welsh players:
9 Indy, 7 State

What can we do to improve the MCCF Hub model so MORE state school kids reach 'talent pathways'? 🏏
onemoresummer.co.uk/post/ideas-t...

This sounds encouraging... £500K raised for Knight-Stokes Cup 'programme'... would be delivered by the MCC Foundation (MCCF)... aims to create high quality environments – akin to centres of excellence – for talented state-educated cricketers to thrive.
www.lords.org/lords/news-s...

I blame George Orwell. He basically wrote a 'How To' guide for where we're at.

Do you have any data on that?

In promo material to encourage sponsors a figure of £7K per hub is mentioned.

Cost to be covered:
Facilities
Shirts (1K?)
Coaching (2 coaches? for 10x 1.5 sessions + matches)
Kit
Overheads/Admin

#TFTD How much of the annual £1m MCCF Hub expenditure ends up in the coffers of independent schools through facility hire? A large proportion of this money is charitable donations (legacies, trusts etc) as well as ECB & MCC money.

Cam Green Int'l & State stats are perhaps surprisingly good, across all formats, and that's just for batting.

The future is tall The great batters have historically been on the shorter side. T20 is changing that. Here is why

Not saying its all correct but this is a good read:
www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/129879...

😄

Height is an interesting one. I'd suggest there is a trend towards taller batters now too, esp for white ball, mechanical advs for power hitting.

Why develop a fast bowler who will only ever be 5' 8". They may well be good (enough) but its increasing the risk of wasted dev (precious) resource.

By regularly measuring height/weight and knowing ht/wt of bio parents, then a fairly accurate predicted adult height can be obtained from the Khamis-Roche calculation. Doing this also helps to monitor growth spurts and help prevent injury.

Danny on X also mentioned how skillset (mostly batters) and ethnicity are also unexamined factors in scholarships. 👍

State & Scholarship Pro > Indy Pro

A better understanding of how this all works, I agree, would be beneficial, especially from the player experience perespective.

It would also be interesting to follow the career path of a. scholarship pros, b. indy pro, c. state pro to see what the average career length is. My hypothesis would be:

How would you compare. Scholarships are already more 'selective' than regular students so a higher % of 'conversion' is likely.

That data would be fascinating.

Sometimes there is an element of a self fulfilling prophecy if a school/coach takes a punt on a player. They can be more likely to do everything possible to prove their scouting to be correct. A Pygmalion effect.

Fascinating analysis of the scholarship pathway to the professional game of #cricket

It's interesting that McCullum, Key, Luke Wright, Carl Hopkinson, Ed Barney (Performance Director) are all indy boys. Trescothick was a state school boy.

I think part of the disconnect people feel with some of the England team is that it feels like frat boys on tour.

Interestingly, the previous PhD study of 2015, discussed 5 years ago, which perhaps mistakenly found no maturation bias in English cricket, was by Ed Barney who is now the men's Performance Director.