"We have missed a generation and a half, maybe even more" – Surrey launch African-Caribbean engagement programme

NICK FRIEND: The project's essence is in breaking down barriers and, by Ebony Rainford-Brent’s own admission, in making up for lost time. The goal is to reconnect with a community that has, by and large, been lost to English cricket in recent times

One memory sticks out for Ebony Rainford-Brent. She had gone as a coach to introduce the game of cricket to a group of students.

“I remember seeing this girl who’d never played before. I told her to throw at the stumps and she wanged the stumps down. Knocked them down. She did it five or six times in a row.” The former Surrey captain – now the club’s director of women’s cricket – laughs.

Her point is simple. “There’s talent. That was at a school down the road. It’s our duty as a sport to get out there and give it that platform.”

It is why she speaks with such a vivacious passion on a chilly Tuesday afternoon, even midway through a day full of media commitments. And it is why, alongside her county, she is launching an engagement programme, an initiative aimed at creating opportunities for young African-Caribbean cricketers to join the club’s performance pathway.

The scheme, which begins in March, will target children – boys and girls – between the ages of 11 and 18, seeking to find those with sporting potential, with the ambition of offering scholarships to the best, who would then enter Surrey’s age-group system.

It is about more than simply strengthening the production line, though. Level Three coaching will be provided, as well as sports science, equipment, travel grants and personal development education.

The essence of the project is in breaking down barriers and, by Rainford-Brent’s own admission, in making up for lost time. The goal is to rebuild relationships with a community that has, by and large, been lost to English cricket in recent years. She is hugely impressive company and a natural figurehead for a terrific, vital project.

“If I’m honest, it helps that I’m black to be able to talk about it,” she acknowledges from the Oval’s Micky Stewart Members’ Pavilion. “I think it helps that I’m from the community, I get the journey, I’m British-born from down the road. I think that helps make the conversation easier.

“I would describe this programme as being about reaching out and engaging. But it’s about relating. If the kids don’t know that people care about them and are trying to do stuff for the community, it’s just going to pass them by.

“But if you invest, put time in, show you care and try to build these relationships, suddenly everyone becomes very excited.”

It is not just about creating cricketers, but rather letting people in and reconnecting on a local scale in south London. All those who attend the initial open days at the club’s indoor school will receive membership, allowing them to attend Surrey matches free of charge, alongside an adult.

“There’s no doubt about it; we have missed a generation and a half – maybe even more, maybe 20 years’ worth,” the 2009 World Cup winner admits.

“We have to do what we can to rebuild it. I’m thinking ten years ahead in my mind – when you look at our audience and when you look at our grassroots prorgrammes, some of the staff, maybe even on the board of the club and high-level coaches, you just want it to be representative of the community. I’m not expecting skews anywhere. It just needs to reflect what you see when you walk around.

“We’ve missed a whole amount. We definitely have. All the clubs based in big cities have been looking at other priorities. As a whole, we’re looking at keeping our game going, if you know what I mean. With going back to free-to-air, it’s about keeping our game going.

^{Former Surrey and England seamer Alex Tudor is set to unveil the programme alongside Rainford-Brent}

“I don’t know if we’ve thought enough about whether we’re looking after our direct people on our doorstep. Do they feel like this is their home? Do they feel part of it? What comes with that is so much more.

“You start looking after your local community – we could have had how many more players? But we could also have had more people watching or going through to work for the club from different backgrounds.

“It’s not just playing, but it’s so many other facets that we have. We most probably skipped a generation and a half. We maybe missed out on the West Indies when they were at their peak and being able to ride off that. Even though they weren’t ours, just not being able to ride off that.

“The challenge is that we’re starting almost from scratch in the sense of rebuilding those links. We haven’t even got programmes to leverage off that have been running in the background. We are starting from scratch.

“But there is an excitement from that. I’ve always found when you do something after having done nothing, things can move quickly because nothing has happened. I think we have to capitalise on that.”

In Rainford-Brent's early days at the club, Mark Butcher, Michael Carberry and Alex Tudor were all part of the men’s first team. All three would represent England. Yet, while England had nine black Test debutants between 1981 and 1990, there have been just three since 1999.

According to research carried out by Thomas Fletcher at Leeds Beckett University, the number of black non-overseas players in men’s county cricket fell from 33 to 9 in the 25 years between 1994 and 2019. There were just three in the domestic women’s game last year.

Only three full-time head coaches in the history of county cricket have been from an African-Caribbean background and none of the current 41 ECB board members are black.

🤔 ACE Programme?

📹 Surrey's @ejrainfordbrent explains all. pic.twitter.com/uSEeVjyQR5

— Surrey Cricket (@surreycricket) January 28, 2020

A report released on Monday by Sport England added to these figures, revealing a participation rate in cricket of just 5.2 per cent among black youngsters between the ages of five and 16 between 2017 and 2019.

It is hoped that Surrey’s plans can play some part in bringing about a shift in these figures. That is the aim put forward by Rainford-Brent. “I think the baseline success for me is seeing participation levels go up,” she says. “If you think of our catchment area, it needs to be higher.”

The scheme – deservedly – has seen widespread praise roll in ever since it was made public on Tuesday morning. England bowlers Chris Jordan, who began his career at Surrey, and Tymal Mills both shared the news on social media. The topic has generated much discussion in recent times, but little action – until now.

One key point Rainford-Brent makes is the importance of harnessing potential – whether that be cricketing talent or cross-sport athleticism. She tells the story of a javelin thrower she met recently, who had been involved nationally at elite level but was not deemed good enough to progress further. Yet, the raw materials were there for a transformation into a fast bowler – a 6ft 4in frame and a transferable basic technique that demands sprinting in a straight line before hurling an object from a side-on stance. He is the kind of rough diamond that the programme might hope to find.

“He’s an absolute beast of an athlete,” she adds. “I was speaking to him and he wants to play sport, so would easily do a conversion-type thing. To me, what we’re looking for could be in so many different forms.

“You see programmes at universities like Loughborough where they convert athletes – you might just have missed out on sprinting, so you become a bobsledder. They have been quite intelligent in how they find talent. For us, we’re not just looking for someone who can get their front shoulder up. We’re looking for athletic potential.”

^{Ebony Rainford-Brent was part of the England side that won the World Cup and retained the Women's Ashes in 2009}

In a sense, that is how it all began for Rainford-Brent herself. She was the beneficiary of sessions led by the Cricket for Change charity during her time at primary school. She learnt from there, having first been football-obsessed. “That’s how I was,” she reflects. “I didn’t see anyone who looked like me [in cricket].

“We played a game called ‘Bowl for Bat’ and I thought it was fascinating. Everyone was playing for themselves. So, if I wanted to bat then I had to get you out. But to get the ball to bowl, I had to field it. So, what would happen was someone would whack it and then you’re all chasing that ball. It was a really simple game and a little bit selfish, but it created this fun and this competitiveness. You don’t need much equipment.”

Rainford-Brent would go on to become the first black woman to play for England. It is a fact that she tended to overlook during her own playing career when she was conditioned to focusing on her on-field battles; she has come to recognise her significance only more recently. “When I was first told, I was 22 or 23. I was like: ‘What?’ As a player, you don’t care and you want to get back to hitting balls in the nets.

“It’s very much that classic athlete thing; I didn’t think past my next score and what I’d have to eat today. You don’t think of the bigger picture. Even when I finished, I don’t think I did.

“It’s more when you start to look at the game as a whole and you start to understand it as a whole. But I never saw all that when I played.

“Denise Lewis was my childhood hero. When you listen to them and they’re everyday people, you get it. You can relate to their journey. I know I took so much from her. I still do take inspiration from people.

“There is a personal point too. I don’t like shouting about what I do, but there’s a moment – like right now – where I realise how important it is to have been the first and to be young enough to be able to do something like this and to be in a club which just gets it.”