Chance to Shine closes on 6million participants at difficult time for cricket

Chance to Shine is closing in on its sixth millionth participant but the charity is also keen to help cricket through the racism crisis in 2022 and continue to make the sport accessible for all.

Having put on free coaching for more than five million children since its formation before the 2005 Ashes, and despite the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, Chance to Shine sessions continue to be staged up and down the country almost every day of the year.

Work in primary and secondary schools occurs in addition to the organisation’s award-winning street programme where 70 per cent of its participants are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

After the fall-out of Azeem Rafiq’s racism allegations against Yorkshire and the subsequent 12-point plan put in place by cricket to rid the sport of racism, Chance to Shine is set to embark on an independent investigation in 2022.

“Cricket has its challenges at the moment and we want to be part of that solution,” chief executive Laura Cordingley told the PA news agency.

“We have always focused on training and developing our wonderful network of coaches so one of the things we are doing is rolling out EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) training to them. We focus a lot on research and we are quite proud of the data and insight we drive from our programmes to make sure we make informed decisions.

“One of the things we are focusing on is doing an independent piece of research around how young people have felt included as part of our programmes but also whether they have experienced any forms of discrimination so we can get to grips with that piece of work, which should only help us develop again as we move forward.”

At a time when cricket is on the ropes both on and off the