England: English cricket desperately needs reform because of "widespread and deep-rooted" racism, misogyny, elitism, and class-based prejudice that exists at all levels of the game.

More than 4,000 players, coaches, administrators, and fans provided testimony for the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (Icec)'s 317-page report, which asks the sport to accept "that it's not banter or just a few bad apples" to blame for the issues.

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In response to the report, the England and Wales Cricket Board issued an unequivocal apology for failing to fully address discrimination and called the conclusions "a seminal moment" for the game. Within three months, it promised to address the 44 suggestions given by Icec.

However Cindy Butts, the Icec chair, said that fundamental change was quickly needed. “Our findings are unequivocal,” she said. “Discrimination is both overt and baked into the structures and processes within cricket. The stark reality is cricket is not a game for everyone.

“Racism, class-based discrimination, elitism and sexism are widespread and deep rooted. The game must face up to the fact that it’s not banter or just a few bad apples.”

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The report, which is one of the most blistering published evaluations of a British sports organisation, exposes the depth of the sport's flaws, citing things like:

• Cricket has "entrenched" racism. The report claims that it "is not confined to 'pockets' or limited to individual incidents of misconduct." According to the Icec, 87% of respondents with a Pakistani or Bangladeshi ancestry, 82% of Indian respondents, and 75% of Black respondents reported having encountered discrimination.
• Women frequently experience sexism and misogyny, and women's teams are frequently stigmatised, denigrated, and viewed as inferior. The England women's team has yet to play a Test at Lord's, the cricket capital, as the paper also notes.
• Cricket is "elitist and discriminatory," with "old boys' networks" and cliques from private schools permeating the sport to the exclusion of many." The study also describes incidents in which students from public schools were labelled "peasants" or had their accents from the working class imitated.
•  A "drinking and puerile lads' culture" permeates the sport, putting women at risk of unwelcome attention and preventing Muslim groups from being included.
•  a confused, blatantly defensive, and unfit for purpose complaints procedure. According to the research, victims frequently "suffer in silence" because they believe that reporting abuse will result in no action being taken.
• The report also faults the ECB for being slow to acknowledge the degree of racism in cricket before former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq made public the slurs he had faced while playing the game. Additionally, it raises concerns about why the governing body of the sport did nothing to address the decline in the number of black players or the notable underrepresentation of state school students in professional cricket.

“At the playing level, private school educated players are disproportionately represented, to a significant extent, in England’s national teams, both men and women, compared with the general population,” the report reads. “Diversity of ethnic background has also decreased in the men’s professional game over the last 30 years, and has never been high in the women’s game.”

The Icec’s 44 recommendations range from the modest to the radical. They include a number of measures to tackle racism, sexism and elitism, as well as calls for regular “culture” checks to ensure genuine change. “Cricket must not find itself in the same position in another two years’ time let alone another twenty,” the report states.

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In order to prevent the ECB from having a conflict of interest by serving as both a promoter and a regulator, the Icec study also proposes for the creation of an independent regulator.

It also suggests that the annual Harrow vs. Eton match and the Varsity game between Oxford vs. Cambridge be replaced by a state school under-15s competition and a finals day for university teams to signify that the sport is becoming more inclusive. This suggestion will no doubt send some traditionalists into a frenzy.

“Some people may roll their eyes at the perceived ‘wokeness’ of this work,” the report states. “However, as much as the word may have been weaponized in recent years, taking on a pejorative meaning, we consider – and it is often defined as such – that being ‘woke’ or doing ‘woke work’ simply means being alive to injustice.”

Butts served as the Metropolitan Police Authority's deputy chair and as a former commissioner at the Criminal Cases Review Commission. She also serves as a trustee for the Kick it Out football charity, which fights racism. The former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major wrote the report's foreword.

Some suggestions, such as dramatically increasing the chances for state school athletes, could be financially difficult to implement. The commission also points out that in 2021, England's male cricket players were paid 13 times as much as the country's female players, and it recommends equal pay at the provincial and international levels by 2030, both of which may be challenging to achieve.

The report recognises the bravery of the ECB in commissioning the report in March 2021, and acknowledges the game has made some sizeable improvements recently, particularly in attracting more girls and women players. It also accepts that the problems it identifies are “not, sadly, unique to cricket” and are often indicative of “deeply rooted societal problems”.

However the ECB chair, Richard Thompson, said he recognised that the game had to do far more to significantly reform. “Cricket should be a game for everyone, and we know that this has not always been the case,” he said.

“Powerful conclusions within the report also highlight that for too long women and black people were neglected. We are truly sorry for this. I am determined that this wake-up call for cricket in England and Wales should not be wasted.”

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