23 June 2023 , 05:30
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When Ben Stokes, in the immediate aftermath of an agonising but thrilling defeat at Edgbaston, spoke of a mission to inspire youngsters to take up the game of cricket, no-one doubted his sincerity. It is a familiar theme of his.
After the 2019 World Cup win, he said: “I hope we have inspired kids who want to be part of what we have just been part of.”
Which is great. But all that needs to happen now is for parents to make some inspired choices of lottery numbers so that they can send those kids to a posh school.
Win a decent jackpot and you can send your cricket-loving kid to, say, King’s School, Canterbury, where termly fees are £9,780 and where Ollie Robinson was educated. Or the £13,000-a-term Tonbridge School where Zak Crawley spent his formative years.
A sum of £10,500-a-term would get your boy or girl into Stowe School, following in the footsteps of Ben Duckett.
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Cranleigh School charges £11,725-a-term to provide the education given to Ollie Pope while Worksop College is a snip at £6,543-a-term and produced none other than Joe Root.
Root’s fellow Yorkshireman Harry Brook enjoyed his later school years at the £9,945-a-term Sedbergh School if you fancy that for your newly-inspired kid, or maybe St Peter’s in York at a slightly more reasonable £7,330-a-term would give as good a grounding as it did to Jonny Bairstow.
And if you have dreams of parenting the next Stuart Broad check out Oakham School, his alma meter, at £8,700-a-term.
There are three terms in a school year, don’t forget.
Ben Stokes led England against an inspired Pat Cummins and Australia - but the England skipper remains an outlier in cricket (Getty)From the above, you might notice what most of this thrilling England team has in common. Indeed Stokes - along with Moeen Ali and James Anderson - is an outlier.
It is only fair to point out that not all parents of these players were rich enough to shell out an average of twenty grand a year for their son’s schooling. Some would have benefited from scholarships as private schools cherry-pick outstanding young sportsmen and women.
It is also essential to point out that this England squad is a fantastic, down-to-earth bunch of young men, with no air of pretension about them.
But cricket is an elitist sport, which is ironic considering the demographic of a fantastic Edgbaston crowd was far from elitist - unlike the Lord’s crowd for the annual Eton-Harrow cricket match, where one set of supporters taunts the other with a rendition of “We’ve got more Prime Ministers than you.”
Stuart Broad celebrates with Joe Root after dismissing Marnus Labuschagne (Visionhaus/Getty Images)When Lord’s took that match from its calendar (it has since been reinstated), some Tory MPs were, no doubt, outraged.
Yet where were the outraged MPs when cricket in state schools was being systematically undermined by the sale of playing fields, chronic underfunding, and demands on teachers that meant extra-curricular support for the sport was impossible?
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Different governments down the years have jumped on the bandwagon when the English cricket team has been successful and will, no doubt, do the same if it wins a compelling Ashes series. But those governments - along with his one - have been utterly complicit in an erosion of the sport in state schools that is verging on an eradication.
Credit must go to the England and Wales Cricket Board for initiatives such as All Stars Cricket which aims to get kids down to their local clubs. But it costs time and money to play at local clubs and the culture at some places leaves a lot to be desired.
It is not just cricket, of course, that has suffered in state schools but it is the prime casualty of decades of government and local authority neglect.
This England team and Ben Stokes ARE inspirational to this generation of kids.
It is just a shame only a small fraction of this generation will have enough family money to be truly inspired.