As English
Cricket grapples with
racism and structural problems, its accounts do not make good reading
![Funding cut threat must sharpen ECB’s thinking with finances already tight | Andy Bull](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b735d448b4d1e7e8d979f302147a0ca826068122/0_216_4119_2472/master/4119.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=aac81ae9224c3f151ce15f5cf5ea58b1)
Back to the shambles, then. No, not the Ashes tour. This is from the other side of the
England and Wales Cricket Board’s Rubik’s Cube of problems.
Six weeks ago the ECB’s chief executive, Tom Harrison, was asked why any of the many people who have heard him and his predecessors talk over and again about their renewed efforts to address racism in the sport ought to take this latest ECB scheme seriously. What was it, exactly, that was going to make the new action plan any more effective than the Clean Bowl Racism campaign the ECB launched in 2000? Or the South Asian Action Plan in 2018? Why was this step forward for Yorkshire going to take them further than the ones the club promised when they launched anti-racism projects in 1992, 1999 or 2015?