{"id":232974,"date":"2025-10-29T23:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/232974\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T23:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:49:09","slug":"ebony-rainford-brent-its-about-pathways-for-the-most-underrepresented-groups-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/232974\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebony Rainford-Brent: \u2018It\u2019s about pathways for the most underrepresented groups\u2019 | Cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe you missed Warwickshire\u2019s one-day cup game against Sussex in the dog days of August. It was a group fixture between two mid\u2011table teams in a competition to which no one pays a lot of attention. But despite it all, the match marked a significant little milestone in the modern history of English cricket. Because Sussex gave a debut to a 21\u2011year\u2011old from Hemel Hempstead called Troy Henry, the first male player to come up into professional cricket through the Ace programme<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Henry had turned up for the very first trial Ace held, back when he was a teenage left\u2011arm quick who dreamed of playing pro cricket and needed help to do it. Five years later, Sussex sent him in at No 9, he made 15 off eight balls, then came on fourth change and took one for 34 in four overs of left\u2011arm spin, because Ace\u2019s coaches had persuaded him that if he wanted to get ahead he ought to switch disciplines.<\/p>\n

Four days later another Ace graduate, the 17-year-old Davina Perrin, smacked 101 off 43 balls for Northern Superchargers in the Hundred eliminator against London Spirit, in one of the stop\u2011and-watch-this moments of the English summer<\/a>. A month earlier a third Ace graduate, Amy Wheeler, signed a new one\u2011year contract with the Blaze.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to want change<\/a>, easy to talk or write about why we need it<\/a>; back in 2020 everyone was doing it. The hard part is actually bringing it about. Henry, Perrin and Wheeler are the first players to emerge from five years of organisation, administration, fundraising and coaching by Ebony Rainford\u2011Brent, Chevy Green and the team at Ace during the quiet in-between.<\/p>\n

Now Rainford-Brent is stepping down as chair. She will still be on the board, but feels the organisation needs someone with more expertise in fundraising as it makes its next steps. \u201cWhen we started it was on a hunch that there was more talent in the black community that we needed to capture in the professional game,\u201d she says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect it to turn into a programme which also serves kids from across different cultures and class backgrounds, we didn\u2019t expect to have 40,000 kids through the programme in five years, didn\u2019t expect 370 kids in our academy across the nation, and we didn\u2019t expect to have three pros come through this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Ace programme grew to be bigger than Rainford-Brent expected, it was because the problems in English cricket were worse than she suspected. Five years working in the field has left her with the firm belief that while there are still problems with racial biases in the pathway \u201cthe class barrier is the biggest barrier to entry into cricket\u201d. Ace has expanded its scope to meet this need. \u201cWe started with a lens of making sure the game wasn\u2019t dying among one community, and we\u2019re still doing that, but what we\u2019ve created is something that is really just about opening up pathways for all the most underrepresented groups.\u201d Ace has spread around the country and now about 20% of its intake comes from white working-class communities, particularly in inner cities.<\/p>\n

Ace graduate Davina Perrin helped Northern Superchargers to win the women\u2019s Hundred this summer. Photograph: Action Plus Sports Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Looking back on what she has learned, Rainford-Brent says she was surprised at \u201chow much support the young people needed\u201d. She imagined Ace would be primarily about improving performance \u2013 she is so easy-going, it\u2019s easy to forget that she was a remarkable athlete herself \u2013 but the array of challenges young players face is much broader than she imagined. Take their three professionals. Perrin already had talent but needed personal mentoring, Wheeler\u2019s family needed more structural support, and Henry needed specific coaching to help him make the switch from bowling pace to spin.<\/p>\n

She is not done. \u201cOur No 1 goal was to produce 10 professionals by 2030,\u201d and they are well on their way already. \u201cI think the wider target now is about creating that wraparound support, so we are creating employability in the game even for people who don\u2019t make it as professional players.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The two biggest steps she wants English cricket to take are to bring in more means testing so the cost of entry drops for people who are being priced out of playing, and changing the structure of the talent ID system so that opportunities are distributed evenly around the country rather than focused on, say, a handful of private schools.<\/p>\n

All this has to be done even when the conversation has moved on. The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket published its exhaustive report on the state of the game in 2023<\/a> but already it feels like a document from another time. \u201cYou get these peak interest moments and then it can fall off,\u201d Rainford-Brent says. \u201cOur true test is what happens in five or 10 years\u2019 time and what we did in between these cycles when everyone was paying attention.\u201d It helps that the leadership at the England and Wales Cricket Board has changed for the better, not least because, improbable as it seems to her, Rainford-Brent is a board member herself. \u201cAnd yes,\u201d she says, \u201cI do wear my hi-tops to the board meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I say is that we\u2019ve gone from being hopeless to hopeful,\u201d she says. \u201cBut hopeful doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ve cracked it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maybe you missed Warwickshire\u2019s one-day cup game against Sussex in the dog days of August. It was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-232974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}