SGSA’s partnership with the England and Wales Cricket Board

As the football season drew to a close, not only did SGSA Inspectors turn their attentions to all of the close-season annual inspections, concerts and redevelopment work at football grounds, they also geared up for a busy summer of cricket.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is the governing body for Cricket in England and Wales, and takes its responsibilities for safety, security and service extremely seriously. Reflecting this deep commitment to safety matters, the ECB has been working closely with the SGSA since 2013 to promote a high-performing safety culture at cricket grounds. In 2025 the two organisations signed a second 5-year agreement to continue that work until at least 2030.There are three key priorities for this:

• Ensure safe infrastructure
• Get the safety management right; and
• Develop and share best practice.

But what does this involve, on a practical level?

Each of the 18 Professional Counties is assigned a regional SGSA Inspector, who is in regular contact with ground staff, attends Safety Advisory Group (SAG) meetings, and carries out a match day inspection at the ground each cricket season. These inspections aim to highlight good practice and also to identify any areas for improvement, producing detailed inspection reports which are shared with ground staff and the ECB to inform future work.

Our work in cricket is purely advisory, and without any regulatory powers, Inspectors aim to work with cricket venues as ‘critical friends’, supporting a process of continual improvement. Over the years our inspections have identified a range of areas where additional support or investment would be helpful – such as targeted improvements to CCTV systems, and support for new members of safety management teams.

We also provide regular CPD training for cricket safety officers, to ensure that they are fully up to date on key issues in safety. Highlights from this year’s programme include a cricket-specific webinar on management of scaffolding and demountable structures, first aid and medical matters, as well as a bespoke session on safety issues.

In addition to this, the SGSA facilitates a programme of tabletop exercises for cricket grounds each spring. These exercises are a key part of the preparations for each new cricket season, exploring the response to a range of scenarios which require the activation of the ground’s contingency plans. We aim for these scenarios to be realistic – no planes crashing into cricket grounds! However, our horizon-scanning for potential future issues to discuss at tabletops has at times proved to be eerily prescient.

In 2022 we included a scenario of extreme heat at a cricket ground in the North of England, which some thought might be a little far-fetched… only for the UK to be hit with record breaking heat that very summer, providing a major challenge for the safety team managing an international cricket match during the heatwave. Fortunately, the work that came out of the tabletop exercise scenario had ensured that they were well placed to respond to the challenge. The SGSA has since gathered learnings from those experiences and published guidance on planning for extreme heat to support all sports grounds in developing their own plans to manage the impacts of this increasing risk.

The SGSA’s partnership with the ECB is just one example of how we provide our expert knowledge and experience to support sports beyond football. For the ECB it highlights how creating a safe, secure and welcoming environment to cricket fans is critical for the future of the game.

Author:
Wendy Harnan-Kajzer – SGSA’s Deputy Head of Inspectorate