Middlesex Cricket is reaching out to all adult male and female cricketers across the county to ask for your assistance in completing an inaugural survey, to gain the feedback and opinions of those playing the game at a local level, to enable us to better understand your experiences.
We are working hard to grow the game in new audiences, address important imbalances within the game and connect communities, and we also want to enhance the experiences of the players that bring and give so much to our game. It is for that reason that we want to listen to the people that play recreational cricket in Middlesex – regardless of who they are and how much they play.
We are sharing this link across our social platforms, clubs contacts and leagues within Middlesex, to help achieve the strongest possible response. The data generated will not only help inform the support we offer to clubs and leagues but will also help us drive greater more relevant support from ECB, and perhaps where appropriate to players and groups directly too.
As you may know, the leagues within Middlesex are not directly under Middlesex Cricket’s governance. We do however have a good relationship with them, so by asking the questions, analysing the answers, and presenting our observations, we hope to enhance players’ experiences for the players via the leagues they play in.
This is the first county wide survey we have pushed out to all players at all recreational levels, and we are committed to this being a yearly process to help us not only enhance our understanding of playing experiences, but also to help us monitor trends and impacts in the future. We want to provide a mechanism for people to share specific events and experiences that will then help us provide better systems and programmes of support. We recognise that while recently there have been lots of people sharing less than positive experiences, we also know there are lots of people who have remained silent – so we want to provide those people the opportunity to log events to help us better understand scale and severity too.
The answers collected will assist Middlesex Cricket to develop support and programmes to improve experience and standards across the game from inclusion, safeguarding, professionalism, performance, pathway progress and overall positive matchday experiences.
Finally, we have a few key areas that we believe need to be addressed within the game in Middlesex – at most levels, and we can’t look to start those conversations without truly understanding the current landscape. This specifically includes Non-Turf Pitches and the need for them, from both a financial and climate change resilience perspective, and we believe this area needs to be discussed seriously. We understand that players have traditions and views and so we want to really read the room and learn from our communities who use these pitches as well as those who don’t want to, so we can respond sensitively and appropriately for future protection of the game and performance improvements from our facilities.
The data analysis and stories we hear, will be viewed internally, with actions taken in our delivery of cricket and cricket related programmes, to help improve players’ experiences long term, to help keep players in the game and get more players playing in open age competitive cricket.
Cricket is a great game, with competitiveness, inclusivity and individuality built around team opportunity and club values. We want to help enhance this, but firstly, we need to understand lived experiences and views from the coal face.
So, if you’re a player, regardless of what level, how often, what your performances were like as an individual or team, we would love for you to click the link below and share your experiences of being a player this year.
Middlesex cricket player and official survey 2023 (expected completion time: 9-12 mins):
https://forms.office.com/e/XwwaS2VYVQ
If anyone has any further questions, or wants to support in this process, then please reach out Josh Knappett at [email protected]
