MCC welcomes today’s announcement by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) of game-wide plans to respond to the problems of racism and other forms of discrimination within cricket.

ECB convened a meeting last Friday, comprising representatives from the 41 ECB members (MCC plus the First-Class and National Counties), the Professional Cricketers’ Association, Women’s Regional Hosts and the Recreational County Cricket network. MCC was represented by our Club Chair, Bruce Carnegie-Brown.

The aim of the meeting was to agree a process in which organisations within cricket can tackle racial harassment, begin to rebuild trust, and find short and long-term solutions to combat discrimination in all its forms.

The 12-point pledge published by ECB today has the support of all who attended last Friday’s meeting and represents a game-wide commitment to ensuring greater equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at every level of our sport.

Please visit ECB’s website via the link below to read the 12-point pledge:

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MCC has committed to the delivery of this plan as we believe in the power of collective responsibility to bring about positive change across the game.

The commitments set out by ECB today complement our Club’s progressive plans already in place. These include processes such as the incident reporting mechanism, established at the start of the 2021 cricket season and available for anyone to report a concerning or serious incident relating to MCC or Lord’s. Our disciplinary procedures are robust and confidential, and any concerns are handled swiftly and sensitively. To report an incident, please click here.

We published our first Environmental, Social and Governance report on 3 November. This report, produced at the end of a summer-long study, sets out MCC’s progress to date in these areas, as well as our ambitions for the future. Our EDI plan, which supports these ambitions, is scheduled to be presented to the MCC Committee for approval next month.

All MCC staff are currently engaged in anti-racism training in conjunction with the UK’s largest anti-racism education charity, Show Racism the Red Card. These sessions, which have been included as part of our EDI plan, were established following input from working groups formed in the summer of 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement was at its height, to listen to the experiences of our staff.

"We firmly believe that cricket is a game for all, and we will do our utmost to ensure it is accessible for everyone"

Guy Lavender, Chief Executive & Secretary said: “We welcome the publication of ECB’s 12-point pledge. We firmly believe that cricket is a game for all, and we will do our utmost to ensure it is accessible for everyone.

“Being more open and inclusive has been at the forefront of our plans for a long period of time now. We have a robust strategy in place, which we are committed to delivering.

"Our long-term goal is that MCC should be an organisation that welcomes all manner of lifestyles and perspectives, that embraces diversity and fosters inclusion, and that instils confidence that any concerns raised will be treated seriously and investigated fairly.”