The England and Wales Cricket Board has stopped using the Rooney Rule in recruiting coaches for its national teams, confirming to BBC Sport that the eight-year-old diversity commitment is no longer routinely applied and that its hiring process has “evolved”.
Asked about the recruitment process for 16 coaching-related roles attached to the England men’s and women’s teams since 2024, the ECB acknowledged that the rule — a pledge made in May 2018 to interview at least one applicant from an ethnic minority background for every coaching position across the national men’s, women’s and disabled squads — was not applied in every case.
“We regularly review our recruitment practices, and our approach has evolved over the last eight years,” an ECB spokesperson said. “Coach recruitment processes are tailored to the requirements of each role. At times we recruit an individual, and at others we recruit a team.”
Sixteen roles and a rule in the past tense
The timing is pointed. Last week the ECB confirmed the coaching structures that will take England into their Test tour of South Africa and white-ball tour of Australia. Stephen Fleming, appointed Test head coach in July 2025, brought in two men he worked alongside at Chennai Super Kings: Eric Simons, the former South Africa head coach and India bowling consultant who was with Fleming at CSK between 2018 and 2026, and James Foster, the ex-Essex and England wicketkeeper who was the franchise’s fielding coach in 2026. They join Marcus Trescothick in the red-ball set-up.
Two newly created national posts were also filled: Richard Dawson, Glamorgan’s outgoing head coach, as elite national spin bowling lead, and Michael Yardy as elite national batting lead. Those are precisely the kind of pipeline-shaping jobs the 2018 pledge was written to cover.
This is not the first time the policy has been bypassed. The ECB did not apply the Rooney Rule when Charlotte Edwards was appointed England women’s head coach in April 2025. At the time Clare Connor, then the board’s director of women’s cricket, defended the principle even as it was set aside, saying: “I think the Rooney Rule should be absolutely applied in all circumstances where it is deemed feasible.” The qualifier in that sentence has since swallowed the policy.
Why cricket adopted it in the first place
The rule takes its name from Dan Rooney, the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner who chaired the NFL’s diversity committee and pushed American football towards mandatory minority interviews in 2003. English cricket imported it in 2018 as part of a drive to increase South Asian representation in a sport whose recreational playing base is heavily British Asian but whose professional coaching ranks are not.
Three years later, the rule’s relevance sharpened considerably. Azeem Rafiq told a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee hearing that English cricket was institutionally racist, and the fallout at Yorkshire prompted the ECB to establish the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket. The ICEC’s 317-page report, Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket, published in June 2023 after taking evidence from more than 4,000 people, found discrimination to be widespread. Among respondents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, 87% said they had experienced racism, as did 82% of those of Indian heritage and 75% of Black respondents.
Abandoning an interview guarantee three years after that report lands differently than it would have in 2017. It also follows a wider retreat: Major League Soccer scaled back its own version of the policy this year, and the NFL’s rule has faced sustained criticism from coaches who describe it as a box-ticking exercise that produces interviews rather than jobs.
Pipeline over policy — and the risk in that bet
The ECB’s argument is that the rule treated a symptom. Its position is that strengthening the coaching and leadership pipeline — getting more ethnically diverse and female coaches through qualifications and into county and pathway roles — produces more durable change than mandating a single interview at the end of a process where the shortlist is already effectively set.
The board points to its own numbers in support:
- More than 1,000 coaching bursaries funded in 2025, with 22% awarded to ethnically diverse coaches
- 21% of participants on advanced-level coaching courses since 2021 from ethnically diverse backgrounds
- 19% of participants on specialist-level courses since 2021 from ethnically diverse backgrounds
Those are real figures, and they describe genuine movement at the base of the pyramid. The problem is the top of it. A pipeline argument only works if the pipeline eventually delivers, and the England men’s and women’s set-ups remain overwhelmingly white at the senior coaching level — with the most recent additions drawn largely from the head coach’s own professional network.
Dropping the Rooney Rule removes the one mechanism that forced the ECB to look outside that network, however imperfectly. The board has replaced a measurable obligation with a long-term promise. Its credibility now rests entirely on who gets the next England job.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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