Cricket is leaving working-class white kids behind

Telegraph

14-06-2025

James Minto is only 17 but already he is the main breadwinner at home and has overcome the barriers caused by social deprivation that make cricket an unfeasible sport for so many in this country.
The cost of kit, coaching and travel required to be a good young cricketer are often insurmountable obstacles for those growing up in the poorest parts of the UK.
The dominance of private schools has grown as the state sector has ceased to play cricket. Sport England says just 5.4 per cent of children at state schools play cricket in school hours, compared with 14 per cent for those at fee-paying establishments.
Private schools make up 28.2 per cent of the schools in this country yet they represent 70.9 per cent of the secondary schools associated with the 18 first-class counties.
Minto, who was named in England's Under-19 squad to play India on Friday, is from Norton, a market town in Stockton-on-Tees where the cricket club are twinned with the local miner's welfare institute. He grew up in a single-parent family with his mother Jemma and two brothers.
Last year, Minto became Durham's youngest first-class debutant at 16. He is the youngest to take a five-wicket haul for the club and bashed 67 as a nightwatchman opening in a championship match against Nottinghamshire this season to make him the club's youngest first-class cricketer to make a half century.
This is quite the bouncer by 16-year-old James Minto.
He's Durham's youngest-ever first-class cricketer. pic.twitter.com/zyIV2qDuGG
— Rothesay County Championship (@CountyChamp) September 17, 2024
Minto is quite short but strong from teenage boxing sessions. He is a left-arm seamer already capable of speeds of 85-87mph and a left-hand bat who opens in club cricket. He offers skills much in demand across all formats. Think Sam Curran, but quicker.
But had Minto been born in a similarly deprived area in a different part of the country, it is likely he would have been lost to cricket, raising the question; how many more James Mintos is the sport missing?
This is not a piece about Minto necessarily, although he has a remarkable story tinged with tragedy to tell and he talks frankly about his mother's recent death and the burden that now falls on him.
But wider than that, he is representative of what one county, Durham, are doing to address cricket's class problem and work with the British, white working-class community that overwhelmingly makes up the demographic of the North East and is often the most overlooked part of society.
It has been proved recently that cricket programmes pinpointed at specific communities can have success. The Ace charity led by Ebony Rainford-Brent is working in six inner-cities, focusing on children from African and/or Caribbean backgrounds and producing some players who are graduating into county pathways.
New season pending… are you ready? pic.twitter.com/ZGapt8Rmbk
— The ACE Programme Charity (@AceProgramme) March 21, 2025
The South Asian Cricket Academy has helped British Asians, who had otherwise been missed by the professional game, gain county contracts, but the sport has struggled to replicate this with a poor, white working-class group.
The report by the Independent Committee for Equity in Cricket, set up in the wake of the Yorkshire racism scandal, said in 2023: 'Cricket must ensure that, along with their ethnically diverse counterparts, white working-class cricketers do not miss out on the opportunity to play and progress.' It added: 'There is an urgent need to recognise and tackle cricket's class problem.'
The ICEC also said cricket 'will never be 'a game for all' at county level and above when large parts of society simply cannot afford to get their foot on the ladder and progress, no matter how talented they may be'.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has introduced All Stars and Dynamos cricket programmes for children aged between 5-11, but in most cases there is a fee of up to £50 to enrol which is beyond some parents. It also requires children and families to approach cricket clubs.
Durham's clubs are county's 'super-strength'
During a day spent in Durham, firstly at the Riverside with club officials and then talking to Minto, I also visit South Shields Cricket Club, who have a pioneering programme that offers a blueprint for how the game can reach deprived communities. One of the schools they work with is Dunn Street Primary in Jarrow. There the headteacher in one of the poorest communities in Britain tells us how the pupils are benefiting from free cricket PE lessons and a cricket after-school club provided by South Shields CC.
Durham County Cricket Club have long provided free coaching in their player pathway programmes, working in step with their communities. Tim Bostock, the chief executive, describes the local clubs as 'our super-strength'. John Windows, the club's academy director, sees the benefit first-hand. 'Every mining village, town has got a cricket club. I don't know how they have kept going but they have. Now they are all full of juniors. That is the strength of cricket in the North East. For every 9,000 people in Durham there is a cricket club. But picture that in a big city like Birmingham and there will be a club for every 100,000 people, so it is going to be elitist there.'
The wider game is reaping the rewards because Durham produce good players for England – Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Matthew Potts, Graham Onions, Mark Stoneman, Liam Plunkett, Scott Borthwick and Phil Mustard to name the most recent few – and done without the backing of the rich public schools that play such a big role in the south. It is early days, but Minto is on a promising trajectory, and may join that group one day soon.
Minto went away as a boy and came back a man
Jemma Minto died suddenly in April aged 50 after a short illness. James was on pre-season tour of Zimbabwe with Durham when he was told her condition had deteriorated. 'It was a tough flight home. I had a five-night stay with her in the hospital. I was lucky I got that time with her, that's how I think,' he says, flanked for support by Marcus North, Durham's director of cricket.
Minto signed his first professional contract, about £25,000, in May this year and along with an older brother, who is 19, he is looking after youngest sibling Teddy, a 16-year-old left-arm spinner, who is also in the Durham academy. The club are keeping an eye on the boys and there is a care package in place, but Minto has had to grow up fast, ensuring Teddy gets to school and running the household along with his oldest brother, while all three deal with their grief.
'Graham Onions [Durham bowling coach] said I went away [in the winter] as a boy and came back as a man,' he says. 'I just want to look after my brothers and the rest of my family. It's a lot of responsibility, but it can only make us better in the future. And wherever Mum is watching, I want to put a smile on her face. There is no certain way to deal with it. It is awful. Sometimes I get home and cry, but then sometimes like today I feel weird, I don't feel anything. But I'm always thinking about her, my brothers are as well.'
Club and community are pulling together for the Minto boys – Norton have put a plaque on the bench where she used to sit and watch her sons play club cricket – and that reflects the North East, where the local cricket club are still at the heart of the community.
The ICEC report suggested that all player county pathways should be free of charge. It estimated the cost of junior kit alone to be just under £500. Then there are charges for coaching, trials, attending festivals, travel and club memberships.
At Durham this has all been free of charge for several years, pre-dating the ICEC report. 'There were parts of the review that I didn't recognise from a North-East perspective and that our challenges don't get enough focus,' says Bostock.
Minto did not have to pay a penny. When he turned up one day with a pair of shoes not suitable for cricket, North went to the local high street to buy new ones.
'Free clothing, playing kit, and not having to buy it all really helped,' says Minto. 'Mum did her best but cricket can be expensive. My little brother has played for Durham for a few years in the academy, it has helped him and many of my mates as well.'
Every county age-group boy and girl now gets free kit
It costs Durham £50,000 a year to cover the expenses and is funded through their two backers – local businessmen Harry Banks and John Elliott – who insist the money is used on juniors. 'Our indoor facility costs £90,000 a year to rent from the council so there would be a charge for each parent to use it, but we removed that. Every county age-group boy and girl gets free kit and the idea is everyone gets on the pitch for free, summer and winter,' says North.
Bostock adds: 'We have to do it. If we don't, we are not going to get any kids to play because they haven't got the money. The demographic here is white British kids, often from single-parent families and often from long-term unemployment.'
Durham also face certain social problems with underage drinking that may be less relevant elsewhere and the strength of community brings great positives, but also can stunt personal development.
'There are different challenges here with relationships with alcohol and exposure at young ages,' says North. 'Look at some of the players who come into the professional system. They stay at home longer so that brings challenges. We find we have to be a bit more patient. Private school offers more structure, discipline, which may influence the way they develop. I find we have to wait a couple of years longer to get up to standards [compared with other counties].'
Patrick William-Powlett is waiting patiently outside Bostock's office in Chester-le-Street to take us to South Shields Cricket Club. It is a 20-minute drive, a chance to see the community work in action.
In the North East, 31.2 per cent of children are on free school meals, the highest percentage in the country. One in five are living in absolute poverty, which means they are taking up the offers from Durham council of food and fuel vouchers, council tax reductions and access to warm spaces.
The journalist Joel Budd, in his recent book Underdogs, a study of the white working class, says the North East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber are poorer than Alabama and Mississippi, and Brandenburg in the east of Germany. 'The scale of the problem is enormous,' he writes.
The night we go to South Shields, the singer Sam Fender, who is from North Shields, is playing the first of two sold-out nights at Newcastle United's St James' Park. Fender's lyrics are often about his working-class background and the struggles of the community.
'We are very good at talking about privileges – white, male or straight privilege. We rarely talk about class, though,' Fender said in an interview recently. 'And that's a lot of the reason that all the young lads are seduced by demagogues and psychos like Andrew Tate. People preach to some kid in a pit town in Durham, who's got f--- all, and tell him he's privileged?'
In Durham, those in work claiming Universal Credit doubled from 9,500 in 2020 to 19,900 in 2023. It is estimated that 28.8 per cent of people of all ages live in a household classed as 'workless', higher than the average across England. Full-time wages are 10 per cent lower than the rest of the country.
William-Powlett is a retired secondary school teacher and chairman of South Shields CC. He is one of those dedicated volunteers without whom cricket would cease to exist. He is tireless in running the club's junior community programme, and persistent too, scrapping for every bit of funding he can find and apply for. The Government's Holiday Activities and Food Programme, The Peter Harrison Foundation, Boost Charitable Trust and Sport England have pledged most of the £40,000 a year it takes to run his programme.
He slows down as we drive past the Laygate Flats in South Shields. 'Out of the 33,000 postcodes on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, this is ranked 305th in the whole country. There are kids with four living in one upstairs flat with no lift. This is the type of area our kids are coming from, but they're great kids. We have got some from there who could be very good, very talented one day. They are tough as well, committed. They just want to practise and play cricket.'
The South Shields ground is a bit rundown, and William-Powlett apologises for the state of the pavilion. The clubhouse had its roof damaged a few years ago and there is no money to repair it. The ground is shared with the local rugby union club and has been home to South Shields since 1877. In that time they have produced only two first-class cricketers; their role being to provide cricket for the community and not just be a pipeline. One of those pro-cricketers was Gordon Muchall, the Durham batsman, and his father is the volunteer groundsman, marking out the boundary as we speak.
But they are still giving everything to the community. South Shields work with nine schools and also provide 37 days of summer holiday camps with a capacity for 48 children. At the camps, children are given a fruit salad when they arrive, hot lunch and more fruit before going home. For some, this would be the only meal they receive. 'Some come every day because we know those kids need something to do, they need some food otherwise they will just be stuck on their estate,' says William-Powlett.
School nurses talk to the children about healthy eating and the local oral health team drop in. Some of them had never seen a dentist before. Twice a week the children help make lunch, learning how to prepare food from scratch and taking home what is left over.
And of course, they play cricket, with qualified level two coaches, while Zimbabwe women's vice-captain Josephine Nkomo is paid to run the girls section. A major part of the work is with schools. The schools they partner with are chosen on need. For a term, they receive two hours of cricket PE and a cricket after-school club.
We drive to Dunn Street Primary, through the streets of Jarrow, a name synonymous with poverty but also a fierce pride in its identity. Whereas other schools receive help from South Shields for a term, they have been working with Dunn Street continuously since January 2024, providing two hours of PE lessons a week and an after-school club.
The school dinner hall is smaller than the new multi-million pound home dressing room at the Oval, but large enough for South Shields to get kids playing cricket. For headteacher Michelle Trotter, the benefits have been obvious. The area is in the bottom one per cent of the country based on the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index. It is one of the schools that receives funding from the Forgotten 40 foundation, set up by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos, and named Forgotten 40 because it refers to the percentage of children in poverty.
Dunn Street has a roll of 137, and 70 per cent are on pupil premium (free school meals). Thirty-three per cent have special educational needs. 'There are a lot of challenges for the children and a lot of family challenges. We are a tight-knit community but that has taken a long time to build trust in us,' says Trotter.
Cricket has helped. 'It is great to see the children grow in confidence and being excited about something new and different and to be taught by experts. Having that expertise in our school and offering a different role model for our children is great.'
It takes a different approach for cricket to crack areas with so many problems. 'I can go into a posh school with a flyer about what we do and the kids will turn up,' says William-Powlett. 'But with the kids we are working with you have to build personal trust with them so the first thing we do is the 290 hours of free coaching with the schools, then a good number of them trust us and come to our summer camps.'
For South Shields, the long-term benefit is to unearth talent and expand their membership, hoping some of the summer camp children will become first-team players. Last year, 113 attended the school summer camps, 40 per cent were girls and 57 per cent were on free school meals. There were confidential bursaries available to help parents. 'I know we have a lot of kids who would not be able to access cricket without our bursaries. They just would not have the resources,' says William-Powlett.
Cricket and its reliance on public schools is a complex issue. It is not as straightforward as counting the number of public school pupils in the England men's and women's teams and drawing the conclusion they are all privileged. Most went to those schools on 100 per cent scholarships because they were super-talented at cricket, not because their parents had deep pockets.
But cricket cannot rely on a small number of private schools, mainly based in the Midlands, South and West, to keep feeding the sport. Initiatives such as Chance to Shine and the Ace Programme do great work in promoting cricket and reaching communities otherwise disengaged with the game.
But cracking the state-school problem can only be done with government support and last year's announcement, when he was prime minister, by Rishi Sunak of £35 million to fund state-school cricket has not materialised under Labour. It would have paid for inner-city cricket hubs, but has disappeared into a spending review black hole.
So in places like the North East it is down to counties, clubs and volunteers such as William-Powlett to help cricket find the next James Minto, a talented kid who just needs that bit of help.
An historic innings 💙💛
The best of James Minto's first-class best of 67. #ForTheNorth pic.twitter.com/VnOOlkyPss
— Durham Cricket (@DurhamCricket) May 17, 2025
'I'm just going to keep going and make Mum proud,' says Minto, shifting in his seat as the chat turns to his mother. 'And that is by me getting my head down, and doing what I'm doing now.
'I don't know how my mum did it. She was an amazing mum. She did absolutely everything for us. She would drive us everywhere, sort stuff out and organise everything. She would always be messaging and telling me how proud she was.'
Minto, Durham, his mother, South Shields and Dunn Street Primary are all interconnected, if not directly, then by a spirit that threads through cricket in the North East. All of the 18 first-class counties are different and have challenges. Some are doing great work, too, but Durham are setting the standard. Minto might one day be walking, talking, wicket-taking, run-scoring proof of it for England.