Making a Difference - Get Into Cricket - Development

Play Cricket - Making A Difference

Increasing participation, club membership, club affiliation, coaching roles and volunteering roles, securing funding, promoting equity and ensuring strong relationships with all counties - these are just some of the priorities of the ECB's development team.

When the ECB formed in 1997 it had a budget of £2.5m to invest in the recreational game. Fast-forward ten years and the organisation has £50m to distribute for the life of the ECB's current strategic plan 'Building Partnerships 2005-9'.

This project gives county boards a framework to follow to mirror the priorities of the ECB, including player development, disabled cricket, funding and facilities.

Many clubs have already joined ECB schemes, such as NatWest CricketForce, while there has been a significant increase in people playing cricket, particularly women and girls. The number of coaches and volunteers has also continued to rise. A vast number of cricket clubs - there are 8,500 in England and Wales - are working towards the vital ECB Club Mark accreditation.

But the ECB will strive to improve those figures in a bid to become the most respected and successful cricket nation in the world.

The Play Cricket - Making A Difference report published in May 2007 is available here for you to download, save and print in full as PDF files.

Click on the document link below to open the report:

Play Cricket - Making A Difference (3.3 MB)

To open this file you will need the free Acrobat Reader installed.