Former England captain Heather Knight has said cricket still feels "posh and exclusive", despite initiatives designed to get more state school pupils playing cricket.
Speaking at an event on Schools Cricket Day, which marked 50 days to go before the Women's T20 World Cup, Knight emphasised the opportunity to "create a legacy" during the tournament. "Days like today, and obviously other things that the MCC are doing with the Knight-Stokes Cup, are a very good opportunity," said Knight. "I do think cricket sometimes still has a little bit of a mystique as sort of posh, exclusive, and any way we can break down those barriers and give opportunities to kids that otherwise wouldn't have got that opportunity I think is important."
A report released earlier this year revealed that 59 per cent of male professional cricketers in England, and half of female professional cricketers, were educated at private schools. That puts cricket among the top 10 most privately educated professions in the country.
Read more: Professional men's cricket more privately educated than House of Lords, report says
This year, the MCC launched the Knight-Stokes Cup, a new U15s tournament set to feature over 1,000 state schools pupils. The first handful of fixtures in the tournament were played this week, and the final will take place at Lord's on September 10. Knight and Ben Stokes both attended state schools, but are almost always the minority in the England XIs they play in.
"It [the Knight-Stokes Cup] is about getting more girls and boys in state school the opportunity to play competitive cricket and find a love for the game, and have opportunities that maybe I probably didn't have as a young girl growing up in a state school," said Knight.
Parallel to opening the game up to more state school pupils is the opportunity the women's T20 World Cup will bring to grow female participation. Sky Sports Cricket announced this week that the final at Lord's on July 5 would be broadcast on free-to-air television. While the men's World Cup final in 2019 was made free-to-air, as was the 2022 women's final England lost to Australia in New Zealand, their triumph in 2017 was behind a paywall.
"I think the biggest thing 2017 did, and that amazing day at Lords where it was sold out, I think it changed a few perceptions and people that were in big decision-making positions," says Knight. "Actually, this is what women's cricket could be if we invest and if we marketed it and if we put it on at the biggest venues and create a stage for the game.
"To be honest, I didn't really see the sort of overnight flip in women's cricket becoming mainstream and I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Maybe the infrastructure wasn't quite there, the plan to get women's cricket and grow it and build it probably wasn't there alongside. There was a great moment and everyone had a buzz around women's cricket and then it seemed to disappear. Obviously, without the professional domestic structure below as well, you didn't have the scaffolding to make the most of that success and that opportunity."
"When I was a kid I didn't have access to watch Sky Sports really. My parents didn't have the subscription so if I was a kid and it was behind [a paywall] then I wouldn't have seen it."
England will kick off the T20 World Cup with the tournament opener in Edgbaston against Sri Lanka on June 12.
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