By Charles Randall 

29 November 2013

Three bodies representing club cricket in England are to pool resources under a new umbrella organisation to be called the National Cricket Conference, it was announced at the Club Cricket Conference annual luncheon at Lord's this week.

A provisional contract for four years, funded by Sport England through the England and Wales Cricket Board for £280,000, has been signed by the Club Cricket Conference and Midlands Club Cricket Conference. A final deal is due to be ratified by the League Cricket Conference at a meeting in Banbury on 7 December.

The National Cricket Conference is expected to develop, manage and maintain a service offering fixture, player and ground brokering on a national basis from early 2014 until the end of 2017. The new office will be based in London, using the existing CCC premises. The intention, after discussions with the ECB, is that the three conferences will continue to operate across their own respective mandates while owning an equal shareholding of the National Cricket Conference.

David Collier, the ECB chief executive, thanked the CCC chairman Alf Langley and ECB officials Paul Bedford and Mike Gatting for their efforts. He reminded the Nursery Pavilion gathering that in 2005 the ECB launched the first strategy for cricket, called Building Partnerships. "It was all about bringing together the various associations and bodies in cricket to work with one common aim," he said.

"Today we celebrate having three organisations with a really proud history in cricket, who have done an enormous amount of work in the development of the game. The Club Cricket Conference, the League Cricket Conference and the Midlands Club Cricket Conference really have affected the whole history of cricket in this country. We're very close now to a centenary year and we thought what better way we could mark that than working together as one organisation."

"We've identified a very very important role going forward and that is finding players, finding venues and finding fixtures to support the county boards and the club game throughout the whole country."

Langley commented: "The deal hasn't yet been ratified, but we believe this is an important step forward for club cricket. Anything that might help to increase the number of participants in the game must be worthwhile."

The CCC paid tribute to several young cricketers who excelled in 2013. Imran Qayuum (Finchley CC) and Kristian Martin (Ealing CC) were applauded for winning the CCC spin scholarship to Pune. Simon Prodger, for the CCC, said: "We had a strong entry from all over the country, and these two lads were outstanding on the day and deserved their award."

The CCC's first participation in a triangular women's tournament at Aldershot with the Combined Services and MCC proved to be a success. "It was an outstanding contest, highlighting some great talent in the women's game," Prodger said. The CCC, captained by Saba Nasim, from Wantstead CC, won the Vauxhall Trophy, and the player of the tournament was Sophia Dunkley (Finchley CC), an "England player of the future" in Prodger's view.

Air Vice Marshall Sir Paul Atherton, head of Combined Services sport, noted the high standard and how rapidly women's cricket was improving. "The tournament at Aldershot was absolutely superb, and the best team won," he said.

Prodger announced that plans were underway to mark the CCC centenary in 2015, including a programme of matches involving countries hosting CCC tours such as Qatar, Denmark, Italy and Tanzania. Arrangements were advanced for an ambitious tour to Barbados and Grenada.

The fund-raising lunch, attended by 550 people, lived up to its reputation as one of the outstanding cricket events in the London calendar from the amusing remarks of compere Roger Dakin to the noble art of sabrage -- slashing the top off champagne bottles with a sabre -- and the witty speaking of comedian Ian Richards. Everyone in the room would concur with the CCC mantra of encouraging fellowship and the playing of cricket, though measuring the number of active amateur players has been almost impossible over the years. This has meant that upward or downward trends could not be identified. Unlike most sports there has been an absence of reliable affiliation data that a single overall governing body might provide.

Last week the ECB published probably the most reliable attempt to establish numbers so far. They disclosed the findings of a comprehensive study into recreational cricket that suggested that 1.7 million people over the age of 14 played the sport in some form during the last 12 months.

The research was based on the National Playing Survey, a new ECB project that attracted more than 21,500 responses from recreational cricketers nationwide together with analysis of more than 1.2 million scorecards from Play-Cricket.com and feedback from 12 focus groups.

From this data, grassroots participation could be estimated at 908,000 people in teams, with perhaps a further 792,000 people playing cricket informally in the garden or on the beach.

Survey data projected that 93 per cent of recreational players were male and seven per cent female. The average playing age was about 31-years old. It was especially interesting that ethnic minorities comprised 30 per cent of the overall participation base and that members of the south asian community were six times more likely to play cricket than the average recreational player.

The ECB said that the survey cricket’s traditional reputation for fair play scored highly with 50 per cent of participants, the most important factor being that it was played in the right spirit. More than half the respondents, 58 per cent, said they would like to play more often and 80 per cent found cricket more enjoyable than other sports they also play.

From the projected 908,000 participants, it was calculated that 266,000 were ‘core’ players playing at least 12 weeks of a 26-week summer season, 436,000 were ‘occasional’ players between three and 11 weeks and 206,000 were ‘cameo’ players, taking the field once or twice. The peak participation period in 2013 was mid-June when 375,000 people played in teams in a single week.

The findings formed part of a wider analysis of grassroots cricket participation, which was conducted by Two Circles for ECB and funded via the Sport England Whole Sport Plan.

Collier said last week that the survey gave a unique insight into who recreational cricketers were, what they wanted from the sport and how the ECB could best meet their needs. "All of this information will be vital as we roll-out plans over the next four years to boost participation still further by investing more than £96 million in the recreational game – with improvements in coaching, facilities and the wider club environment a priority."

Collier added: "Cricket in this country has a long and proud history of embracing different ethnic groups and we are delighted that the survey has revealed such a high level of participation from the south Asian community. Attracting even higher levels of participation from ethnic minorities is a key element in our national strategy as is providing even more opportunities for women, girls and disabled cricketers to play the game."