Tom Brown is a high-performance coach with Warwickshire County Cricket Club and is completing a PhD in talent identification and development in cricket.
Inside the indoor nets at the famous Edgbaston ground in Birmingham, he told the ABC just how skewed England’s selections had become.
“We looked through all the specialist [batsmen] that debuted (for England in Tests) since 2011, and we found that 95 per cent of them have been white, 77 per cent of them have come from private schools, only 30 per cent of them have managed to average over 30 or more, with one player averaging 40 or more, which was Joe Root,” he said.
If you have to do a PhD to identify talent, chances are the natural gift for scouting isn’t your strong suit. While it’s not unreasonable to examine possible disconnects between less prestigious schools and top flight selection, by conflating alleged disadvantage with race (and religion) Brown is laying the groundwork for a quota regime that will reduce the game itself to ashes.
You could take it to the bank that the vast majority of the best cricket talent scouts, coaches, and observers of the game never had a tertiary education.
It doesn’t take a university degree to spot talent.
This is just a continuation of the Yorkshire ‘race scandal’, itself just a beat-up. Still, it got immediate results and at least four people have been sacked with no evidence.
Lefties are very good at this so they will continue the pressure and those in power will kowtow. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that English cricket becomes an allegory of Western decline.
When I think of the legendary rugby league talent scout Cyril Connell enrolling in a PhD to learn how to do it, well… LOLs. He picked freakish champions when they were running around in the under-12s.
There are exceptions, but cricket-playing at public schools in England has virtually all but died out for many years now. The fact that the teaching profession is largely feminised wouldn’t have helped, and most schools can’t afford specialist coaches.
And many of the school cricket grounds have been appropriated for other uses; vacant land = money.
Bit difficult for non-private schools to produce players if they don’t actually play the game at school.
Little wonder then that private schools (where cricket IS played) are turning out more cricketers, relatively speaking, and maybe even in actual numbers.
If black cricketers are talented enough, they will break through at first-class and Test level, but it seems they are not exactly banging on the door at the moment in England.
I blame the modern day fetishism or obsession with getting a tertiary or university education as the be all and end all, even in utterly useless disciplines.
That, and getting a PhD at the end of your name to stroke your ego with.
Socialists hate individual achievement because they want to keep people as helpless as possible and thus dependent on the central power.
Credentialism is a convenient way to defeat individual achievement … because credentials ALWAYS depend on the central power. Credentials are provisionally granted to you, and may be taken away if you are naughty … achievements are what you did for yourself and therefore can never be stolen. An excellent example is Dr Robert Malone and his pioneering work on using mRNA as a therapeutic, resulting in some patents … they hate that and insist on undermining it at every possible opportunity. Malone never says, “I have a right to speak because of my credentials as a medical doctor” he says, “I have a right to speak because of my achievements: I know the material and I was there when this stuff was being invented.”
Same deal with Margaret Court … she remains the leading female “Grand Slam” winner in all of history and that shits the Left Wingers to tears, but although they can delete her name from an arena somewhere, they can’t delete the history that she won all those tournaments.
The Leftists appear to be whacky fruit loops from a distance … but there’s method to the madness and once you come to understand it’s about power and deception the whole thing crystallizes. The fetishism is there for a reason, and the purpose is to be a substitute focal point that distracts from solving real problems. The famous biblical phrase and CIA motto, “The Truth shall set you free,” is logically and functionally equivalent to saying, “My lies are your prison.”
I read a mainstream news report a few days ago that said Malone “claims to” be the inventer of mRNA technology. He enraged Branch Covidian when he accused the world’s leaders of fostering mass psychosis.
Yes, and a good example of that is children: vaccines, trans-surgery, CRT in schools etc. The left hates the fact that parents have control of these young minds. They resent, more generally, the existence of a primordial locus of authority that isn’t the state; that isn’t them. The agenda isn’t chaotic; it’s purposeful.
How many of the Aussie team are black? They won after all.
Answer: about ½ out of 12, since Usman Khawaja played in a couple of the Tests and I think Cummins has some first nations heritage iirc.
You get this stuff all the time. There’s a kerfuffle in NFL because only one head coach is black. No mention that ALL of the running backs, many of the receivers and defensive line backs are black. Some peoples have special talents in certain areas. African Americans are the best running backs on the planet, as Jarryd Hayne could tell you. Our best footballer was almost a mediocre running back in the NFL.
If only all the England team were trans, they would have won 5-0.
Its always been the case that most ‘elite’ sportsmen have come from wealthier families because they always have Daddy’s business to go back to when their sports career fails. Hence, a lot of them are arrogant pricks. Young guns from poorer families usually wind up in work at a young age unless they are so good they can attract a scholarship.
More time for the duskies cricketing, less time mile sting kids. Win win.
Cricket is the type of game that requires long hours of practice, patience and a bit of talent. It also needs some deep pockets to succeed at higher levels
I spent some time umpiring grade cricket from 4th to 1st grade, and almost without exception the players that made it through the grades came from a private school background and were usually from wealthy families who could afford the cost of bats, pads, helmets etc., the travel time and cost, club insurance and match fees, social functions and so on.
Low socio economic groups don’t have these resources readily available and many find it difficult to advance without ongoing sponsorship.
It doesn’t take a Phd to work out that an elite cricketer doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.