STRATEGY 2020 - 2023 Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity 1. Executive Summary Cricket is good for Scotland – and Scotland is good for cricket! • Cricket Scotland will not only inspire Scotland to choose cricket but will work to establish cricket as a mainstream sport in Scotland. • Cricket will become accepted by Scottish society as a sport Scotland has a right to play and succeed at and it will be known as the most diverse and equal sport. • Cricket players will become known by the general public, the sport will be covered in the national press and have a strong following in traditional and social media circles as well as a large fan base at live games. • Cricket will develop and build great facilities offering indoor and outdoor training and playing venues and utilising the school estate to encourage greater participation outside the traditional summer season. • Cricket will be offered at many, hopefully a majority of, schools, state and private, as a team sport offering a combination of individual skills, team ethos and good spirit, developing leadership and communication as well as athleticism and tactical awareness. • Cricket will develop an SGB infrastructure reflecting the needs of a growth industry, the numbers and quality of personnel to service a large participation base and the systems to support a robust development pathway for progression to international honours. • Resourcing, both people and financing, will need to be addressed as an integral part of the strategy. Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity 2. Our Vision “Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket” Our vision was created in 2015 and continues to guide us. It captures our focus on creating a greater awareness and appreciation of the sport in all areas of society across Scotland, building a more dynamic, diverse and engaged community involved in cricket in all its forms. This includes promoting and leveraging the strong values of cricket to ensure that communities of all ages and backgrounds, whether participants or non-participants, can enjoy the benefits that sport brings - increased belonging, improved physical and mental health, and community cohesion. 3. Our Mission “To make Cricket Mainstream” To create a Scotland where cricket is recognised as a mainstream sport, as the leading summer sport, and as a primary contributor to health, sporting participation and social inclusion and cohesion. To promote a thriving club game and successful performance system, underpinned by a dynamic, diverse and engaged community. Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity 4. Our Core Values Underpinning everything Cricket Scotland does are our core values - the behaviours, attitudes and beliefs which will help deliver our vision, mission and strategic outcomes. They also form the tools for internal challenge which will be used to improve our ethics and help to channel our efforts in the same direction. UNITED • Clubs, coaches, officials in the cricketing community • As one team working together to achieve mutual goals • We achieve as a team INTEGRITY • Caring, open and honest in all our relationships, on and off the pitch • Respect challenges, differences and others • Behave with honesty and fairness EXCELLENCE • Aim to perform beyond normal expectations • Go above and beyond • We aim to exceed expectations DETERMINED • Achieve our goals, no matter what barriers are put in front of us • Determined in the quest for excellence • Play hard and fair DYNAMIC • Moulding change at the forefront • Agile, adaptable and flexible to change • Leading in the modern era Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity 5. Context for the 2019-2023 Strategy 5.1 Alignment with other relevant bodies’ strategies It is imperative that any national governing body approaches the development of its sport aligned not only with the needs of the community but also with the aspirations and targets of both the international governing body and of national and local governments. Cricket Scotland has developed a strategy that we believe is aligned with all our stakeholders’ needs and outcomes. The International Cricket Council is in the midst of creating its new Global Strategy for Cricket which, in the current draft, concentrates on growing both participation and interest in cricket worldwide. There are ambitious draft targets which would be achieved by increasing interest in international cricket internationally - by creating more competitive cricketing countries to increase fans and thus commercial income - as well as growing grass roots participants significantly. It is also important that any sport aligns its own strategy with the 5 Ps (Partnerships, PE, Places, People and Performance) from the Manifesto for Scottish Sport (September 2015) and with the aims and objectives of Sport Scotland as published in their own strategy document. 5.2 The changes delivered through the last (current) strategy Cricket Scotland has changed radically during the period of the last strategy. Changes made include a corporate re-structure to align the responsibilities of the Boards with the needs of the business, a more professional attitude towards managing operational and financial risk, a measured and focused approach to the necessary skills required by the boards, closer management of the budget and planning process along with better monitoring and reporting. In addition, a greater ownership of business planning and a more commercial approach to funding the organisation to support cricket at all levels. Lastly significant personnel changes were initiated to introduce skills and capabilities needed to drive the game and organisation forward. In addition there has been significant progress in all three areas of cricketing activity – high performance, performance pathway and participation. The improved performance of our national teams at world level (including wins against full members like England), the creation of strong age group and development programmes for future elite athletes and new participation programmes like All Stars, Tapeball, CricHIIT and Table Cricket demonstrate the progress that has been made. In addition we have started a campaign of subtly changing the public and political perception of cricket away from a (mistaken!) view of it being in some way “elite” Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity towards a recognition that cricket in Scotland is a sport which is played by all groups and plays its part in civic society by seeking to help solve social problems. The work of our Community Engagement Team has been crucial in this by using cricket as a means to help people’s lives in communities which suffer from disadvantages or exclusion. This started in a small way in 2017 and 2018 as proof of concept but in 2019 has expanded significantly through the implementation of Project Glasgow (more details below in Section 7.3). All this has been achieved with little increase in overall income – the introduction of good business and people management practices has enabled us to do “more with the same”. But to make the step change needed to really make cricket mainstream we need to find additional and new sources of income. 5.3 Commercial income In our current strategy this has been one area where we have fallen significantly short of our aims. While we have become much better at creating income out of events such as international matches (we made the first ever profit from a major match in 2018!), we have not managed to attract major commercial sponsorship despite much effort and time. Building on the new mission we have, and the hopeful appeal of the narrative and journey it offers, commercial partnerships will be a key skill required of, and target for, the new CEO. Where we have had good success is in using partnerships with charities and others within the third sector to attract funds to help with participation activities like women and girls, disability cricket and our community engagement work. We will need to build upon that. Inspiring Scotland to Choose Cricket United Determined Excellence Dynamic Integrity 6. Thinking BIG! Cricket Scotland has, for many years of strategies, set realistic and achievable targets for incremental growth. These have been shared both internally with members, and externally with funders and stakeholders including the ICC and sportscotland. They have also, in the main, been achieved, thus maintaining cricket’s position as a top- 10 sport by participation numbers in Scotland. However, as a non-Olympic or Commonwealth sport (until women’s cricket included in Birmingham 2022 was recently announced), cricket has been outside the top 20 sports by sportscotland funding level which means the opportunities for growth have been limited. During the last few years, Scotland’s cricketing profile has risen and improved significantly with greater awareness of cricket's ability to deliver social good and iconic wins for the men’s team both on the world stage at a World Cup, against the top-ranked ODI nation in the world and against two other top-10 nations. The team is currently ranked 14th in ODI and 12th in T20i rankings. Likewise, the women’s team has worked its way up the rankings and is currently 13th in the T20i rankings (the ODI rankings for women do not go beyond 10 teams currently). At the same time the capability of Cricket Scotland has been radically increased,