I talk to Peter Ackerley, Head of ECB Youth Development, About The State Of The Youth Game.

Could you explain how the increase in funding is improving the development of youth cricket in the UK?

There is wide range of areas where we now receive funding from. That funding goes into a single investment fund which it is then filtered out to the development programmes across the UK. What we do then, subject to an agreed funding formula with our 39 County Boards, is spread the money out to the County Boards. The funding the Boards receive is accountable to some very specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and some agreed roles and responsibilities that our County Board can work towards. The Boards get an agreed fixed fee each year subject to them fulfilling the KPIs which we have agreed with them.
75% of the Boards funding is fixed, the other 25% of the funding is linked to performance. What I mean by that is;
Are the boards increasing participation?
Are they increasing the membership to clubs?
Are the clubs on the way to, or already, being accredited?
They also have to increase the number of coaches, volunteers and the amount of roles out there for those volunteers. If they do that they get that extra 25%.
This is all about getting an inclusive, cohesive single approach to the development structure.

What are the County Boards bringing to this process?

We are now at a situation where we are in a business process with the County Boards. We work very closely to make sure that they improve their levels of strategic planning and we help and support them in that. We are looking into what they are doing for their own leadership and governance as well, where are they in their development programmes. Having gone through this process we now know roughly where the 39 Counties are in term of their development structure. At the end of September 2007 they have to deliver against key targets and core responsibilities.

How does the ECB and the County Boards work together?

Each County Board has now got, in addition to its main board, a very key operational management group who are responsible for working with the regional managers. This group decide what they can achieve and how they are going to improve. It’s a self assessment process and they agree to a level that they believe they can achieve. I do not mind if a County Board sets itself a low target as long as they are moving forward and improving. It realise on locally based decisions, which works very well, it’s a demand led system, what do Cornwall, for instance, need in order to progress. Once we know what a County requires in order to improve we can then work out how much funding they will need to hit that target.

And it is obviously a comprehensive approach to cricket development.

No County can get away with not supporting cricket for people with disabilities, women and girls, ethnic minorities and hard to reach areas in inner cities. It doesn’t mean that every county has to do it to the same level, it means that they have to hit the targets they have agreed with their regional managers.

Can you elaborate on the steep increase in the Cricket Development programme and where you see it going?

A lot of the people involved have been with us since the beginning. But let’s not forget that we are only 10 years young, this is the tenth anniversary of the ECB formulating. So for a young business we have made huge strides. In the last 2 years there has been a lot happening and that has culminated in a fantastic increase in income. From October 2007 – September 2010 I am going to be investing just over 14 ½ Million Pounds. That is from a single investment fund, just revenue funding not capitol. Now that does not including the Chance to Shine [approx ½ Million per annum] funding and other addition funding that will come in. That is quite a significant leap forward for us because 10 years ago we were getting around £50,000 per year, so you can see the difference. Clearly I want people incredibly accountable for that money, it is public funding.
By the end of this summer we will have articulated our 2009-2013 strategy will be. So you can see that we are working towards being bigger and better in the future. We have to be that forward thinking, in a smaller scale, it is what we are asking our clubs to do, plan ahead.

What are the main areas you are focusing on in order to reach the goals you have set for the programme?

The key to this is regionalisation, funding in the future will be based in regions.
Community is at the centre of this, it about people and encouraging them to get involved and be part of their local club. Once you start getting adults and children involved in initiatives like this you then start getting people away from their computer games and outside, it starts effecting obesity rates, social skills and many other things not related to sport.

Government funding is very important in all of this. Would they come in with such levels of funding if private companies had not chosen to invest as well?

There is a very key government agenda now where they want to invest along side private businesses and enterprises. A lot of the funding we have received from the government would not have happened without the private funding. For example, we have managed to take our Sky Sports Coach Education programme and match the funding with public finance to increase the network of coaches and tutors. That is a good example of what the government want to do. Off the back of what we are doing jobs will be created along with community and regional work forces, the government are aware of that and want to support that.

How do you see the ECB development programme moving forward?

We know now that when we invest money we can quickly get massive returns in terms of improving the participation rates of adults and children in cricket. We are starting to work with a Chance to Shine and the Cricket Foundation to look at using cricket as an educational tool. How cricket can become more literate, more numerate, informing kids about nutrition and how the body works. All of this will be available online to every teacher in the land. One of our key targets over the next two months is to breakdown the ECB website and make it easier for people to find the information that is there. The website is a great tool because it allows a groundsman in Lincolnshire, for example, to go online and find out how best to prepare a pitch, that’s a great tool and we have information for teachers, coaches, chairmen, you name it.
Within 12 months I want to be in a position to see how many people actually play the game. Now it’s not governed by any particular standard, it’s about the whole cricket family, from county cricket right down to youth Kwik Cricket. I want to be able to measure what the cricket family looks like.
We know the product is good, we want to bring the whole arena of cricket together and we are creating the links to enable us to do that. We know we are doing something right; you look at the increase in investment over the last ten years and the increased participation and it bods very well for a bright future.