The government has branded £35m of funding for grass-roots and state school cricket pledged by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “fantasy”, while announcing a smaller package for the game.
In April 2024, Sunak – a keen cricket fan – promised the game a £35m package, which the England and Wales Cricket Board had planned to use to fund 16 all-weather cricket domes. It was also planning to use it to bolster charities such as Chance To Shine, the Lord’s Taverners and ACE (the African-Caribbean Engagement programme, founded by former England player Ebony Rainford-Brent).
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At the time, chairman Richard Thompson said the ECB was “delighted” with the investment. He described it as “a seminal moment in enabling the game to invest significantly in areas that up until now have not had the support they deserve”.
But since the change of government, leading cricket officials have become increasingly resigned to losing the funding, and it now appears to have been shelved.
“Unfortunately, the announcement made by the last government was a fantasy. There was not a single penny of funding actually attached to it,” Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, told the BBC.
“So the announcement in itself equated to absolutely nothing at all.”
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Nandy was speaking at Leyland Cricket Club in Lancashire, where the government announced £1.5m of funding to build two domes. One will be in Luton and the other at Farington near Preston, where Lancashire are building a new ground, with both expected to open next year.
This is in addition to £400m pledged to a variety of sports at the Spending Review earlier this summer. A small portion of that is expected to go to cricket, with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport currently in discussions with sports bodies over how the money is spent.
“We are backing sport because we know how much it matters,” said Nandy. “It changes people’s lives. It opens up opportunities that people would never have had otherwise.”
The first all-weather dome was opened at Bradford Park Avenue in 2023, while two others are in development in Walsall and Darwen in Lancashire.
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“These state-of-the-art all-weather cricket domes will be transformative for the communities they serve, opening up cricket to more people year round and providing top-class facilities for elite players too,” said Thompson.
“They are an important part of our plans to break down barriers and make cricket the most inclusive team sport.”
Sunak regularly attends cricket matches, including this year’s IPL final in Ahmedabad, and gave England’s greatest wicket-taker, James Anderson, a knighthood in his resignation honours list earlier this year.
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