The England and Wales Cricket Board has allocated £45m from The Hundred's £520m sale proceeds to a new strategic facilities fund aimed at making cricket more inclusive. This 10% ring-fenced sum will finance larger-scale projects over at least a decade, specifically benefiting women and girls, disability cricket, and ethnically diverse or lower socio-economic communities.

This direct funding response follows the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket's damning 2023 report, which identified structural racism, sexism, and class-based discrimination within the sport. The ECB previously invested £2m in diversity initiatives, but this new long-term fund targets the physical access barriers the ICEC report highlighted as critical.

County boards will manage bids from April, with the ECB also doubling smaller club grants and increasing interest-free loans. An additional £6m will support county boards' strategic plans over three years. While the UK Government provided £1.5m for cricket domes last year, it has not delivered a previous £35m grassroots pledge.

The strategic facilities fund represents the ECB's primary mechanism to tackle the exclusion documented by the ICEC report, using a guaranteed decade of investment to build facilities that open the game to overlooked communities across England and Wales.