ECB May Yet Still Offer A Pathway For Unis

ECB May Yet Still Offer A Pathway For Unis

- Derek Pringle

Ed Smith, the National Selector and a graduate of Cambridge University, will announce his firs England Test team next Tuesday In eras past, such a team would likely comprise several players with university backgrounds, yet that has changed, perhaps irrevocably, given MCC have decided to withdraw their funding of undergraduate cricket.

Since 2005, MCC have sponsored six university centres of cricketing excellence (UCCEs) based in Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Leeds, Loughborough and Oxford to the tune of £56,360 a year. It has been a noble cause but as MCC’s overall priorities change, the money to those University centres of excellence will cease as of June 2020 – the saving no doubt diverted towards more pressing areas of investment such as the ground at Lord’s.

For many, losing such an amount would comprise more than half their annual budget. But while some of the UCCE’s would be able to find the shortfall, it would have dire consequences for those that couldn’t, with coaches and current programmes threatened with redundancy.