SACA: The growing success of Asian talent factory is a lesson for counties

The franchise tournament’s predatory nature of player procurement routinely leaves counties contesting August’s One-Day Cup competition with whatever scraps they are left – just ask Surrey, who are counting the cost of losing 15 players to the Hundred. But therein lies opportunity.

Over the past month, four players from the South Asian Cricket Academy (Saca) have earned short-term county deals specifically for the One-Day Cup; one of them – Amrit Basra at Derbyshire – this week secured permanent employment, with at least one more expected. In the wake of four other Saca players signing long-term professional contracts with counties earlier in the year, it has been a breakthrough season for the organisation.

Approaching four years of existence, Saca’s success story is, happily, becoming increasingly more widely known. It was while working as a performance coach on the Warwickshire pathway that Tom Brown wondered why so many of the young men under his charge were hugely talented South Asians, yet only a tiny proportion of that demographic were progressing into the professional game. It intrigued him so much that he undertook a PhD on the subject.

Brown found that white, privately educated British male cricketers were 34 times more likely to play professionally than state-educated British South Asians. Coming at around the same time that findings were released into Azeem Rafiq’s claims of racism against Yorkshire, it was a damning statistic. One of Brown’s conclusions was that conscious and unconscious biases among coaches were often to blame.

The South Asian cricketing passion can be seen in parks and village greens throughout the country. The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket found that South Asians make up 26-29% of the game’s adult recreational population in England, yet only 5.2% of professional cricketers in the country in 2021 were British Asian and 2.2% “other Asian”. At senior leadership level of English cricket, South Asian representation was just 2.8%.

Brown set about changing those figures. Alongside Kabir Ali, a former England bowler and Brown’s team-mate in club cricket, he founded Saca at the start of 2022 to give players a second chance at cracking the professional game. Open to all South Asians over the age of 18, the programme provides elite-level coaching throughout the winter, with matches taking place throughout the summer, primarily against county second XI sides, offering the ideal opportunity for players to impress. It has expanded to four regional hubs featuring about 60 players.

And it is working. Yorkshire leg-spinner Jafer Chohan last year became the first Saca player called up to a senior England squad, Gloucestershire seamer Zaman Akhter has played for England Lions, while Zen Malik and Kashif Ali have become county first-team regulars. In total, 18 Saca graduates have secured professional contracts.

On selection for England’s white-ball tour to the West Indies last winter, Chohan credited the role Saca had played: “I might not have been here if it wasn’t for that. I’m really grateful, and a lot of lads are, because it gives them the opportunity to achieve what they have wanted to their whole lives.

“I’d played a bit of minor county cricket and I felt like I was ready to play some second XI and get seen by some counties, but there was no way in. You can message coaches but it’s only going to get you so far. Saca gave me that opportunity to play against second teams. It was huge. They were great for me.”

Brown suggests Saca’s success this year – adding eight names to the 10 that have previously joined the county ranks – is most likely part of a snowball effect; greater numbers mean more exposure for the service they offer.

“Maybe in previous years we weren’t thought of by counties looking for players, but now they think of us,” he says. “When I speak to them now, it’s less about trying to explain what’s going on here and what we do. I don’t have to tell them that one lad has hit a hundred at Northants or something like that.

“The counties just naturally check what Saca are doing now, so it’s more understood where the players are at and what they are doing. The conversations have become far easier. We seem to be part of the counties’ talent ID now.”

Originally funded by Birmingham City University, the Saca programme is now predominantly supported by the England and Wales Cricket Board, alongside private sponsors. Yet Brown has always been abundantly clear that he does not see Saca continuing to operate much longer. His hope is that changes in attitudes towards South Asians in cricket effectively render his organisation obsolete in the next two to three years; the ambition is to show the first-class counties why they need to change rather than do the work for them.

“Having a South Asian-only programme for too long means the counties won’t be incentivised to get things right at their end,” he says. “From a talent point of view, change is happening at counties. The system is becoming more objective, and understanding of different cultures is definitely better than when I started my research.”

That is the main aim, and if it means he must find something else to work on then it is a job well done.

Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images