Yorkshire Cricket achieves investors in diversity award

In January 2021, across the Yorkshire Family – The Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC), Northern Diamonds, the Yorkshire Cricket Board (YCB) and the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation (YCF) – created the ‘Cricket is a game for me,’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) plan, with the mission to ensure that Yorkshire keeps playing its part in ensuring that cricket becomes the most inclusive game in sport and that Yorkshire Cricket is a home for everyone.

That EDI plan had a focus on:

- Ensuring that the YCCC Pathways performance programme is fair and transparent

- Commitment to building a culture of EDI

- Implement best practice in leadership, governance and developing staff

- Making sure everyone who attends or has a cricket experience feels welcome and at home

The progress Yorkshire has made over the past two years and the critical steps its taken across Yorkshire Cricket have already begun to help the club build a more inclusive environment and better foundation for everyone associated with the Yorkshire Family.

The National Centre for Diversity has now awarded its UK Full Silver Award accreditation to Yorkshire Cricket’s EDI work, with the award recognising that an organisation has not only committed to building a culture of fairness, respect, equality, diversity, inclusion and engagement (FREDIE), it also shows that it can evidence this in a practical way.

Solat Chaudhry, Chief Executive of the National Centre for Diversity, commented: “We are delighted that Yorkshire Cricket has achieved Investors in Diversity Silver, and I would like to extend our congratulations to their leaders, staff service users on their success to date.

“By engaging wholeheartedly with the Investors in Diversity framework, Yorkshire Cricket have demonstrated a real and tangible commitment to Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement (FREDIE) and to continuous improvement in this area.

“We are confident that staff and service users at Yorkshire Cricket will continue to work on improving and adapting and look forward to working with them in years to come.”

Stephen Vaughan, Chief Executive Officer for YCCC, said: “As a global cricket club, we have a responsibility to lead the way in creating a better and more inclusive world for all.

“We are very proud of the commendation from the respected National Centre for Diversity. We have more to do but this demonstrates our ongoing commitment to ensuring fairness, respect, equality, diversity, inclusion and engagement are at the forefront of our work and ensuring our workplace culture, policies and practices are as good as they can be.”

Mo Hussain, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager for YCCC, said: “Through our ‘Cricket is a game for me’ plan, our ongoing engagement with our local, national and international communities, we strive to embed equality, diversity and inclusion into all we do so that we can champion positive change for our staff, players, fans and wider society.

“To be recognised by the National Centre for Diversity demonstrates our unwavering commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, and recognises the impact we are making in sport and beyond.”