Kick It Out to venture into more sports after announcing ECB partnership

Kick It Out’s new partnership with the England and Wales Cricket Board is set to be the first of more ventures by the organisation into different sports.

The anti-discrimination group have spent the best part of 30 years trying to address issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in football but on Tuesday confirmed its first dealings outside of the sport when it offered to help the ECB with its racism crisis.

Racism allegations by former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq and others have hit cricket hard during the last year and led to a game-wide 12-point plan being released in November to tackle discrimination following criticism of the sport’s governing body.

Kick It Out is ready to support cricket in addition to others in a change of strategy by the organisation.

“I think a lot of sports are trying to achieve the same thing which is creating a game, whatever sport that is, where everyone belongs,” Kick It Out chief executive Tony Burnett told the PA news agency.

“There is a business case for this where absolutely morally it is the right thing to do but we are a relatively small country so if we want to be competitive in sports, we have to make sure we are finding talent and allowing talent to progress and succeed from all backgrounds.

“It is really clear in a number of sports currently that is not the case for all kinds of reasons, so do I think Kick It Out and what we’re trying to do has relevance to lots of other sports? Absolutely.

“I think the learning we have got from 28 years of working in football will help us to build solutions for other sports but also we know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

“We can maybe save some other sports time from doing the wrong things, so watch this space because cricket is just