This extract from my latest book From Azeem to Ashes considers how and why participation in cricket has diminished among people of Caribbean heritage – but also talks about some bold moves to address this.

Supporters of the West Indian cricket team enjoy their crushing victory over England at the Oval in 1973

Figures for participation in cricket among the Afro-Caribbean community are now alarmingly low, with around 1% of all recreational players represented. Earlier in this book we looked at how the supremacy of West Indies cricket was a beacon for Black Britons during the repressive 1980s. Their affiliation to the game had deeply set roots and is well documented.  Sport England board director Chris Grant told The Cricketer in 2020 that ‘when my father came before Windrush, during the war, cricket was a complete part of his life coming from Jamaica,’ before going on to lament that ‘something happened—there was a messy divorce between the Afro-Caribbean community and cricket in England.’ In his wonderful evocation of Caribbean voices from the Windrush generation, Homecoming, Colin Grant, invokes the story of the young boy gifted an improvised cricket bat for his birthday: ‘I was four or five. It wasn’t a (proper) cricket bat….but all the boys in our family played cricket.’

Bill Morris, who went on to become the first Black leader of a trade union, writes about how he was just about able to tolerate the cold and fog of an unwelcoming Britain because he reckoned he wouldn’t be here for long: he’d soon be off home to play for the West Indies. One of Colin Grant’s interviewees captured the cultural, as well as the sporting, differences apparent when those from the Caribbean went to watch games. ‘You go to Lord’s and you see a schoolboy with his father keeping the score, quiet, shh. The West Indians would be commenting on every ball bowled, turning it into more of an event and social occasion…the crowd wasn’t just there to watch – it was a chance to express yourself.’

Should you choose to google a phrase relating to the decline of Afro-Caribbean participation in cricket in the UK, one organisation consistently hits the top of the list: ACE. Launched in January 2020 by Surrey County Cricket Club and operating as a registered charity, ACE has extended its reach to Birmingham and Bristol, with plans to expand to Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester. Notwithstanding the months rubbed away by Covid, the programme has been relentless in its aim of launching a ‘talent search…designed to engage young people of African and Caribbean heritage’ as expressed in its mission statement.  With significant funding from Sport England, contributions from the ECB, Royal London and individual donations, ACE’s impact has been immediate. Chaired by the charismatic Ebony Rainford-Brent and with consistent backing in the form of lengthy packages from Sky as part of its genuinely committed stance on anti-racism, when it comes to addressing widening participation in cricket, ACE is the biggest player in town.

In January 2023 I set up a meeting with its director, Chevy Green. Our Zoom call is scheduled for an hour, but when, reluctantly, we eventually manage to call it a day, we reckon that we’ve identified most of the world’s cricket’s problems, even if we don’t have instant solutions to them all just yet. It’s the first of two conversations over a fortnight, because he invites me to an ACE coaching session at the Oval to see the programme in action and to meet staff, volunteers, participants and parents. He doesn’t have to ask twice.

Over the course of these two discussions, he shares his own reminiscences about South London Black cricket. ‘The trouble is,’ he explains, ‘that many of those clubs played on council owned property and were wandering clubs: when those grounds stopped being maintained, they wandered off and didn’t come back.’ It’s a story I hear repeated in conversation with a group of dads watching their sons – there are some girls training too – going through their paces in the Ken Barrington Cricket Centre. They talk of key individuals moving away from clubs they knew, most frequently just because of age. Along with these ‘uncle’ figures went energy and input from others, making any continuing identity difficult. Two dads, cousins who have a shared cricketing past in West London, have worked hard to maintain their own local club – ‘to make sure our kids have what we had’ – and talk of how such contact with the adult world as teenagers taught them lessons about conduct and responsibility as well as cricket.  ‘And we were a pretty fierce bowling attack,’ grins one. We shake as we part, his monster hand crushing my feeble fingers, suggesting that he definitely wasn’t fibbing.

Other parents reference how their own association with local clubs kept their own cricketing interest alive and, as a consequence, their determination to give their children similar opportunities. I am delighted – and marginally surprised – to hear one tell me that his son had been inspired by watching the brilliant Fire in Babylon at 13. And just in case that wasn’t enough to cement his love of the game, he has met Michael Holding at a Lord’s Taverners event, with the great man taking time and trouble to talk to him about his interest in cricket. Another tells me a similar story about how a meeting with Saqlain Mushtaq through a visit to ACE had left his offspring starstruck and even more determined to succeed.

In the cricket hall, bearing, as it must, the infusion of sweat and boy (despite the presence of a minority of girls) participants ape their heroes, down to the obligatory football warm up, prior to some vigorous and demanding strengthening and agility routines. There is the obligatory banter adapted for teenage purposes: ‘get bowled out three times and there’s no KFC for you.’ But there is no doubting the serious intent of every boy and girl as they go about exercises, drills and sequences. They are all aware of the chance they have been afforded and the opportunities that ACE could offer.