An independent team of lawyers should be drafted in to investigate allegations of discrimination within cricket, a landmark new report has recommended today.

The new regulatory body was one of 44 recommendations made by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) in a damning report on discrimination within the English and Welsh game.

Following a two-year investigation, the commission said racism, sexism, classism and elitism were ‘widespread’ in the game and called for systemic change as well as a ‘fundamental change in culture and attitudes’.

The ICEC said that within the next year, a new regulatory body should be established, independent from the England and Wales Cricket Board, which would be solely responsible for investigating alleged regulatory breaches and making decisions about whether to bring charges.

The new body should be in a subsidiary company with its own ring-enced budget, and its own legal counsel and investigatory staff. It should not, the commission stated, share the ECB’s existing legal resources.

The ECB has said during hearings with the commission that it had ‘unequivocal confidence’ in its regulatory processes, pointing out that it sometimes instructed external lawyers to advise on cases.

The commission said: ‘We do not share the ECB’s “unequivocal” confidence in the professional game’s regulatory processes, nor do we agree that it is just a question of communicating those processes more effectively to others. Expressing that level of confidence indicates a level of complacency that we think is misplaced given that failures of the regulatory process, including in the professional game, contributed significantly to the crisis the game is currently facing.’

The ECB established the commission following a series of public revelations of racism and wider discrimination. The report today said these problems were not unique to cricket but that a deep-seated issue of racism continues to exist in the game.

The commission found evidence of a tendency to ‘close ranks and become defensive’ when complaints were raised. Concerns around potential legal risks, it was found, had prevented swift resolution through the one thing that many complainants actually wanted: an apology.

One professional male player told the commission: ‘I didn’t want to do a legal case. All I wanted was to sit in a room, them to hear what I’m saying, some answers as to why certain – not all of them – but how certain people behaved…and why they did that. Or why I was treated differently to white people in similar situations. And that is it. But the institution was more worried about the legal risk right from the word go.’

The ECB has apologised ‘unreservedly’ to those who have faced discrimination in cricket and said it will produce an action plan in response to the recommendations within three months.

 

This article is now closed for comment.