Lord’s Taverners is one of the most prominent cricket charities in the world.
Membership is by invitation only and the 5,000 members include prominent sports, entertainment and society figures such as Sir Michael Parkinson, Sir Alastair Cook, Sir Andrew Strauss, Greg James, Miles Jupp, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Jonathan Agnew and Mike Gatting. King Charles served as President in 1975.
Yet there is much more to the Taverners than a list of famous members.
On our episode, we’re joined by Chief Executive Mark Curtin and we delve into the history and the incredible work of the Lord’s Taverners.
Mark shares his insights on the charity’s mission to use cricket as a tool to empower disadvantaged and disabled young people across the UK.
He speaks extensively about the Taverners’ deep collaboration with the ECB, and their mission to demonstrate, in the words of the ECB’s Chairman, Richard Thompson, that “Cricket can be the most inclusive team sport.”
We discuss:
- The history and core values of the Lord’s Taverners
- How the charity uses cricket to tackle social mobility and disability issues
- The impact of the Lord’s Taverners on young people’s lives
- Upcoming fundraising initiatives and how you can get involved
- International affiliates and membership
This episode is a must-listen for cricket fans passionate about giving back or anyone interested in the power of cricket – and sport in general – to create social change
Transcript
Zee: And we’re live with Mark Curtin, CEO of Lord’s Taverners. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s great to have you.
Mark Curtin: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s a great opportunity to speak to you.
Overview of Lord’s Taverners
Zee: So Mark, let’s jump right into it. Lord’s Taverners is one of the most prominent cricket charities, not just in the UK, but around the world. Why don’t you give us an overview of the organization, how it was founded and what it does right now?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. So next year, we’re going to be 75 years old. So we’re called the Lord’s Taverners because we were founded in the very famous Tavern pub at Lord’s, which in 1950. And the story goes, there’s a few different versions of this story, but legend has it, the group of very like -minded cricket enthusiasts, if I say, gathered in the pub.
And they realized how lucky they were to enjoy their sport, enjoy their cricket with their friends. So as the conversation went along, they started to share this desire to help what in the words of the day, those less fortunate than themselves. And with that, this idea of creating what then was a club in the first instance came about. And a number of people by September of 1950 had joined. It was up to about 70 members including here in the UK, some very known people from the broadcasting and media world with close connections to the BBC and including a cricketer of the day, Jack Hobbs, who I’m sure many people will be familiar with the name and the esteemed actor, Sir John Mills was involved from the beginning as well. So at the beginning, it was very much about people from cricket and from the world of entertainment.
Zee: Absolutely.
Mark Curtin: Coming together, sharing a passion and a love for the game of cricket and creating this club where they could do things together, have fun, socialize and raise money for young people who, as they say, were less fortunate themselves. And one of the probably the biggest name by far that was involved from the very beginning and became patron and 12th man was his Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, who passed away as we know a few years ago.
So it began to raise money, lots of charitable donations came in. And the first thing that it started to do was fund an organisation here in the UK known as the National Playing Fields Association. And that organisation was designed to protect green spaces and to protect fields and areas of play for sport to be played, including cricket around the UK. And then it was a few years later in 1964…
The club became a charity when the Charity Act came about in the UK and then from there it continued to grow over several decades later.
Who are Lord’s Taverners’ members?
Zee: That’s a remarkable origin story. So now several decades later, who is the membership of Lord’s Taverners right now? I mean, who are the members? How many members are there? And how does one become a member?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, so we have around about three and a half thousand members today in 2024. And those members are made up of a range of people, actually. There’s a number of people amongst the membership who have been members for a very long time and have been involved in the club as volunteers, as committee members, some as trustees of the charity and chairs of the charity. There are others who have been previously members of staff that have worked for the charity down the years.
And then there’s a huge number of people from the cricketing world. So one of the things that happens is when you join, when you become an England international, male or female, or the any of the England disability teams, you get to become an honorary taverner. If you’re prime minister, you get invited to become an honorary taverner as well. So all of the prime ministers of the UK down the years are certainly invited to be, not all of them necessarily take up membership.
But a number of them have. So with that also then is with its roots in entertainment and cricket, a number of very famous names have been involved in the charity. So I mentioned before the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, both the King as he is now, the Prince of Wales as he was then was the president in the mid 1970s and the current Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Edward was also the president of the Taverners about 25, 30 years ago.
And then here in the UK, a number of very famous names, some of which will be known to, I’m sure your listeners and other parts as well, people like Sir Tim Rice, a very famous theater conductor, composer and producer. Sir David Frost during his time, Terry Wogan, Eric Morcombe, Nicholas Parsons, all comedians and entertainers here in the UK. And Sir Michael Parkinson and Sir Trevor McDonald who recently been presidents in the last few years. So, very much linked with the world of entertainment and celebrity, but everybody that’s involved in the Taverners has certainly one thing in common, if not two, and that’s a passion and a love for the game of cricket, as well as a passion and a love for the work that we can do with young people.
Zee: Do you have members outside of the UK or are all the members based in the UK?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, we have what we call a kind of an affiliate model. So there are, there is a Lord’s Tavernas in Australia. There is one in South Africa. There’s one in Ireland. There’s one in Hong Kong. There’s one in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And we’re actually in discussions with some people in Canada as well about one starting up potentially there as well.
So the Lord’s Tavernas has a global reach, in areas as you would imagine like South Africa and Australia where cricket is also traditional but also those where it may not be and those affiliates what they tend to do is they operate as independent charities with their own membership but they use utilize the name of the Lord’s Tavern as again with a very close link to cricket but also to raise money and to be able to then distribute that money to young people and organizations supporting those young people for all kinds of various activities around the well, depending on what’s needed locally where they are in their own territories.
Do former players become Taverners?
Zee: Great. So you mentioned that members of the various UK national teams become honorary taverners. What about players after they retire from their international careers? Do a lot of them tend to become full time, actually full members, full taverners, whatever the terminology is?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, lots of them are very heavily involved in the charity. So on our current trustee board, Mike Gatting, who I’m sure everybody will know, is a member of our trustee board. Mike was president himself of the Lord’s Taverners for a number of years, about 20 years ago. And Mike is a staunch taverner. He’s been involved in the TAVs for many, many years, does a huge amount of ambassadorial work for us, speaking on behalf of the charity, as well as, doing lots of things in the past, like raising money, doing marches and walks up and down the country, doing stuff with the kids and turning up and doing some coaching and so on. And then there are a number of other people like Mike. Our current president is the great David Gower, who is a hugely popular figure, so loved by everybody. And not only David, as everybody will remember, as a swashbuckling batsman in his time.
But also a fantastic broadcaster, presenter. Mr. Smooth, I think, is how I’ve often heard him describe. And as our current president, David’s commitment to the charity is phenomenal. He turns up at so many things throughout the year, gives his time, is great with people, engages, tells fantastic stories that I’m sure many people will be familiar with, involving aeroplanes and all kinds of things when he’s been on tour around the world from his playing days.
So it’s great to have David involved. And then lots of other people involved in the organization. Former presidents include Chris Cowdery. We have lots of engagement from one or two current cricketers. So the Sussex Captain John Simpson is currently involved with us a lot and does a lot of ambassadorial work along with Monty Panasar and lots of other cricketers, probably too many to mention. But we’ve had a long and very close relationship with lots of cricketers down the years. Some on and off, some have kind of dipped in and dipped out being involved with the Taverners. But we’ve always enjoyed a really good close relationship with people that have played the game, including a lot of our events down the years where we’ve done things with great names, including Viv Anderson, Ian Botham, and many others who have, when they’re in the UK, engaged with us around entertainment events, fun events, and many of those have taken up honorary membership or membership at the Taverners as well.
How does one become a member?
Zee: So is membership of the Taverners by invitation only or is there an application process? How does it work?
Mark Curtin: It is by invitation, but we’re a very open, inclusive organisation. It used to be, to be quite honest, a very exclusive thing where you had to get an invitation and it was almost a bit of a closed shop. But in this day and age, you know, where we are all working really hard all around the world, but particularly here in the UK, to make cricket much more inclusive and engaging for everybody.
We ask anyone who wants to become a member to let us know and we’ll walk them through the process so that they can join as members or supporters. Some choose not necessarily to become actual members. Some just choose to support us in many ways, either individually or through their companies or through doing activities such as, you know, running a marathon, climbing a mountain, doing lots of challenge events and so on. So there’s…
There’s loads of ways beyond membership that you can also involve yourself and engage yourself with the charity as well.
Female membership of the Taverners
Zee: That’s great. Let’s talk about, women in, in the membership. So, you know, a lot, obviously when, when the Taverners were founded in 1950s, the world was very different. I would imagine, you know, in the early decades, it was, it was very male dominated or if not exclusively male in its membership. Now I believe, you know, it, like you said, it’s more open and inclusive. What is the, you know, what is the women member female membership, like in terms of numbers and who are some of the more involved ones that we would know about.
Mark Curtin: Yeah, so when the organization started, as you say, back in 1950, there were certainly very different times and it was a male -only club. And actually what happened again, there are lots of different versions of this story, but when each prime minister came into power, they were invited to become a member. And that became a bit of a problem in 1979 because Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. So what happened around that time with some well-known people, including Joan Morecambe, who’s the wife of the comedian and Eric Morecambe, amongst others.
We founded the Lady Taverners. And the Lady Taverners was a part of the organization that ran for many, many years, did a fantastic job with lots of people involved, including Leslie Garrett, who many will know, who’s the opera singer and entertainer, and also Judith Chalmers, who’s another well-known figure here in the UK and TV and broadcasting. And they put on lots of their own events, events that were of the day, particularly aimed at ladies and women, and raised lots of money, all of which went towards the Lord’s Taverners organization and the work that we did. And then around about 10 or 11 years ago, things started to change a lot in the UK where organizations, not just cricket clubs and organizations, but golf clubs and members clubs, as society changed, the views and opinions of male only and male and female membership types started to change a lot. So around before my time here at the organization, the decision was made to end the membership category of Lady Taverners and to have one membership category, which is that everybody is a Lord’s Taverners, a member of the Lord’s Taverners organization.
And effectively then the Lady Taverners as it was came to an end. But we still enjoy a huge amount of support and contribution from a huge number of those women who were members of the Ladies Taverners, who still do a lot with us and engage with us and help us raise funds and come to events and do lots of activities. And of the three and a half thousand members that we have now, around about 23 -24 % of those are female.
And many of those are people that were members before of Lady Taverners and took up membership of the Lords Taverners when all that changed, as well as a number of women that have joined as members recently in the last five or six years ago. So we’re very much, you know, making sure that we’re modern and relevant and of the day, but also respectful, I think, of the previous years gone by and particularly the work of, regardless of gender, of what people have done for this organisation, the commitment, the time and the money that they’ve given, which most importantly, regardless of how it was done and who did it and what gender they were, it was about young people. It was raising money and giving the organisation the resources to be able to do all the wonderful thing that we do for young people that we reach each and every year on our programmes.
Zee: Who are some of the female members that we would know of from the cricketing world currently?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, that’s one of the things that we’re working on at the moment actually. We have a number of female players who play. So Chloe Hill who plays here in the UK for Sussex is one of our players. And we also have a number of the women players who aren’t necessarily members, but have been doing work with us.
So probably the most famous name is Ebony Rainford Brent. Ebony actually used to work for the Lord’s Taverners before she got onto all the amazing things that she’s done now as a broadcaster and also setting up the ACE program, which is a charity that she founded here in the UK. But Ebony is still very much involved with us. She just recently, earlier this year, hosted an event that we did to celebrate International Women’s Day, where she hosted a panel of really prominent women in the game. And then the other thing I think that’s really changing and growing is we have more and more young women and girls on our cricket programs who come through the work that we do. We’re starting to see more of those young people now take a more prominent role in playing a role in the organization and being able to speak on our behalf, to tell their story, to talk about their journey. So we’re starting to see the balance, if you like, between male and female involved in the organization is starting to shift a lot. And rightly so, it’s 2024 after all that.
Lord’s Taverners’ fundraising activities
Zee: Yes, indeed it is. That’s fantastic. So, you know, Mark, shifting gears a bit, I’ve been, you know, we’ve been talking up till this point primarily about your membership, right? And the composition. I also want to touch upon the fundraising activities and events that you do. And then we’ll also get to kind of where the money goes and the programming. So let’s talk about the fundraising. So you’ve got this incredible membership of around 3 ,500 people in the UK and sort of affiliate organizations throughout the world. How is fundraising done? What are the various means? I know the members are very deeply involved. How does that work? And if you have numbers to disclose, how much is raised on an annual basis generally?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, absolutely. So this year we’ll probably raise close to five and a half million pounds, which is probably just under around about six million dollars, depending on where you are. Next year we’re expecting that to grow quite a bit, not a huge amount. It’s a tough world out there at the moment, particularly in the charity fundraising world. But we are seeing strong growth and healthy growth of the organization at the moment. So we’ll probably raise over six million pounds next year. And the way that we go about raising those funds varies quite a bit actually. One of the things, it’s a bit boring and technical, but we talk about having a balanced portfolio. Like any good business, we want our income streams to be variable. We want them to be sustainable. We’ve de -risked the organization a little bit post -COVID from just raising or predominantly raising its money from the events market.
Because as we all know, when the world shut down in 2020 and 2021, the first thing that happened is we all stopped getting together and socializing, right? And that made it very difficult for us to be able to raise the money or in some cases actually impossible for us to raise the money doing what we did. So over the last four years or so, we’ve really set about balancing out that portfolio. And I’m really pleased today that if you have to see a wagon wheel, if you like, of where the income comes in, in a pie chart, you’d see it quite evenly distributed from about six or seven different areas. So here in the UK, we have a huge number of trusts and foundations that support philanthropic work of wealthy families, businesses and institutions. And we’ve been able to grow the income that comes from foundations and trusts and also from statutory organizations as well. So there was a recent announcement just before the general election was called here in the UK that the government, UK government would be making a significant investment into grassroots cricket and school cricket generally, of which a proportion of that money would be coming to the Lord’s Taverners for the work that we do. And that was through the England and Wales Cricket Board. We do get a lot of funding from the England and Wales Cricket Board themselves, which comes through from all the various income streams that they have through the game, TV money, ticket revenue, merchandising, and other sort of revenue streams.
And the ECB are actually our biggest funder. So they give us around about 1 .1 million pound each year. And then we have a number of corporate partners and supporter organizations that we work with as well. The biggest and most prominent is an organization called the Barclay Foundation, which is part of Barclay Group, which is a big property developer and house builder here in the UK. And we’ve had a long established relationship with them.
Some of the people may have seen some recent activity that we did where we actually celebrated the extension of our partnership with Barclay by playing cricket inside the gas holder that is the backdrop to the Oval Cricket Ground that many people will have seen on TV or if you’ve had the privilege to visit the Oval. And we did that just recently where we had a group of kids from the programmes that they fund come along, and play cricket in the gas holder before that gas holder gets turned into a huge housing development or sorry, apartments and businesses as well. So that was exciting and fun and just a really good example of the way that we we do things with our partners. We still have a lot of our money that’s raised from our members. So nearly two million pound a year comes in from the members themselves that put on all kinds of activities and events from dinners and lunches to things like comedy nights or trips to horse racing. Golf days are very popular. We’ve got a lot of people have a love for golf as well as a love for cricket. So we organize a lot of golf events where we get a lot of people come along, take part in a really fun but competitive golf day, followed by a lunch or a dinner that might include an auction or some sort of fundraising activity as well.
And then a huge number of people who take part in our events around the country that are run by what we call our regional committees, our members that are all over the UK, which again include similar things like lunches, dinners, golf days, comedy nights and all kinds of innovative and creative things. And then in addition to that, we have a number of people that will, as I mentioned before, undertake activities for us. So this year was our biggest, most successful London Marathon.
We had over 60 runners that raised nearly 200 ,000 pounds for us by training really hard through a very wet English winter this year and undertaking London Marathon in April. And then a fellow podcaster of yours, Adam Collins, who’s very well known in the cricket world. He got a whole group of people together, many of whom were listeners to his podcast. And they all took part in the Edinburgh Marathon in May.
And between 50 of them undertaking either the marathon, the half marathon or the 10K that took place in the marathon festival that weekend, they raised nearly, I think it’s £35 ,000. So lots of different ways by engaging with organisations and institutions. We have individuals who are very generous and donate funds to us. And then around Christmas time, we do things like digital campaigns on social channels and others where we get people to make a donation to our programs. If they might give at Christmas time or around religious festivals and times of the year, be it Ramadan or Eid or anything else that’s happening here in the UK. So a big, big mix, a big community of people, of organizations, again, with a passion for cricket, a passion for our cause and what we can do with young people who very generously always give what I call one of, or all of the three T’s, time, talent, or treasure and any of those, any mixture of those three things help us to have all the impact that we have through the programmes that we run.
Zee: Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned Adam. Adam has been in the US covering some of the World Cup matches. So I’ve been seeing him and speaking to him in the press box. And he’s a, you know, he’s a great pundit, cricketer, observer. I did not know he was a marathoner as well. So I’ll have to ask him about that. That’s very impressive.
Mark Curtin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s great. He’s a big friend of the Taverners, Adam. He does really well. We also have, so I should have mentioned, and Adam plays, we have a Lord’s Taverners cricket team, and that cricket team’s actually been around since the 1950s. It’s very often made up of celebrities, people from the entertainment world, as well as cricketers themselves as well. I mentioned names like Gower and Gatting. Those guys tend to umpire more these days. They very much inform us that their playing days are behind them.
But it’s great sometimes we see some really famous names and we have done traditionally down the years who have played cricket for the Taverners. I can tell you a great anecdotal story if you if you all humor me for a second. So Barry Hearn, who many people may know, so Barry is the founder of Matchroom, which is the boxing and sports promotion company that exists here in the UK that him and his now his son Eddie run.
And Barry’s been involved with the Taverners for many, many years. He’s a massive cricket fan, passionate advocate and lover of what we do and actually hosts a Cricket Sixes tournament for us every summer on his own estate where he’s got a cricket club in Essex in England. And Barry tells a great story that I heard him telling David Gower last year, actually, which was that he was once playing in a cricket match, a very famous cricket venue here in the UK, which is Arendal, Arendal Castle, where there’s a beautiful, amazing cricket ground in the cricket field in the grounds of the castle. And Barry hit this fantastic shot that went over the boundary for six, and a very famous name from the world of cricket, who sadly is no longer with us anymore, but was also involved in the tavern, is Rachel Hayhoe-Flint. Caught the ball in the bucket that she was walking around the boundary with to raise for people to put money in.
Zee: Sure.
Mark Curtin: And Barry was given out because Rachel caught him out in the bucket. So there’s some amazing, fantastic stories like that from down the years that celebrities and famous faces and notable people have talked about. And Barry also tells a second part to this story, which was that many years later, a few years later, he was on a flight and the captain of the plane walked through at the beginning of the, you know, before the flight took off, obviously to go in there, take his seat in the cockpit. And he turned around and he said, are you Barry Hearn? And Barry said, yeah, I am. He said, I saw you once hit a fantastic shot at Arundel and you were given out because Rachel Hayhoe Flint caught you on the boundary. And Barry said that that was just amazing that, you know, that all those years later, someone had remembered that. So one of the things I think we pride ourselves a huge amount about here at the Taverners, whether it be the work that is happening now with the likes of Adam Collins and others that do an exciting and innovative things, creating communities, people that raise money for us, all those stories and traditions down the years.
Others I can tell you about, you know, there’s some Pathé news footage somewhere online where you’ll see the Duke of Edinburgh in the 1950s or 60s, I think, playing basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. in London at one of our fundraising events. So there’s a rich history of stories and fun and great things happening at the TABS Down the Years where people with celebrity status or notability came together to be able to raise money and to make things happen for the charity for, as I say, for young people who back then were described as less fortunate than ourselves.
Lord’s Taverners’ relationship with the ECB
Zee: That’s all amazing. I want to dig in or follow up a little bit on one thing you said, which is, you know, you have a strong relationship with the ECB. Can you, Mark, can you talk a little bit more about that? Who at the ECB do you work with? Which people, which divisions? What’s the nature of the work together? How has that relationship been and how is the support that you get from them?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, well, first of all, with the leadership, so Richard Thompson, the chairman and the board, the committees at the ECB, we are an official charity partner along with three other charities, which is the MCC Foundation, the ACE program, which I mentioned before, that Ebony Rainford-Brent founded and another big charity here in the UK called Chance to Shine and asked for charities all work together collaboratively with the ECB.
We enjoy a really good, fruitful, very close relationship, as I say, with the senior leadership from the board right the way through to the executive leadership team of Richard Gould, Rob Andrew, who now has a very prominent role heading up the professional game, and Leisha Hawkins, who is our main day-to-day contact, and I work very closely with. Leisha is the managing director of recreational cricket, so they’re very much the grassroots game here in the UK.
And then people through the organization. So very much working with the marketing and comms team when we’ve got something that we want to talk about and we explain how cricket at the moment, very much the drive is to demonstrate how inclusive cricket can be and how cricket goes way beyond the game itself and has an impact socially for many young people and communities and organizations. And it’s important to tell the stories and create the narrative and explain what the game is doing with its charity partners and its national governing body and all those county boards and cricket foundations and first class cricket counties around the country.
And then we also work very closely as much as we possibly can when the time is right of other teams within the organization to promote activities and things that are going on. So a really big, exciting event that’s happening this summer is at Lords on the 22nd of July.
The MCC and the ECB have organized for the first time ever a full disability cricket match on the main strip, on the main wicket at Lord’s where young people with either physical and or learning disabilities, well, all people, not just young people actually, there’ll be an MCC 11 versus an ECB 11. And we’re really involved and engaged in that as well. We’re going to be doing lots of stuff that’s at activations around the stadium and the grounds on the day, promoting the fact that disability cricket is in a healthy, thriving, growing position.
And that’s part of the work that we do very much with the ECB, including with the disability cricket teams that the ECB have as well, who often tour. We were delighted this year, or at the end of last year in October, that two of the two young players that started their cricket journeys on Lord’s Taverners disability cricket programs, played for England in South Africa in a tri series against Australia and South Africa where they won.
The England learning disability team won the series, beating the Australians at the Wanderers in an iconic cricket setting back in October. And two of those players started their journeys, as I said, at Lord’s Taverners Program. So lots of different ways we engage with the ECB, not only just in terms of funding, but it goes way beyond the transactional nature of funding to proper partnership and us taking our responsibility along with everybody else in the game of making sure that we grow and improve and develop grassroots cricket and community cricket and recreational cricket so that effectively to use the words of Richard Thompson, the ECB’s chairman, we want to make cricket, we want to demonstrate that cricket can be the most inclusive team sport.
Lord’s Taverners’ programming
Zee: Amazing. So that’s a great segue into the next thing I want to ask you about, which is the programming that’s done, right? You raise the money, you have the amazing membership base, you raise the money from various sources, various diversified sources, and then you have a mission, right, to improve access to cricket and other activities for less fortunate youth.
And I might be sort of missing out on some of the aspects of it. So what, tell me about the programming, where the money goes, how you implement these programs, who you partner with and the success you’ve been having.
Mark Curtin: Yeah, sure. So now today in 2024, whilst we’ve done lots of things over the years in seven and a half decades, you can imagine we’ve done a lot of things. We now exist to positively impact the lives of young people who face the challenge of inequality and disadvantage. So the language that we use today is very much about empowering young people. Whilst, as I mentioned before, you know, there’s been lots of iterations of our mission and our values and so on.
We very much see that inequality exists. It exists in lots of places for lots of different people for lots of different reasons. It probably always will exist when we’re certainly not big enough to expunge inequality. But what we can do is maximise the power of cricket to be able to give young people the confidence, the skills, the characteristics to be able to face the challenges of inequality and overcome.
So to give you an example of how we do that, we, if you take this two or three aspects of our work, the first one, and in terms of the amount of reach that we have to about 20 ,000 young people a year now in the UK, including Scotland and Wales, and hopefully as of next year, Northern Ireland, we run a number of different cricket programs. So coaches who we work with from the county cricket boards. Some of them the first class counties, other from the smaller counties here in the UK, and as I say, in England and Scotland and Wales, will go into what are called SEND schools, so special educational needs and disability schools, and deliver a program for a number of months of cricket, and introduce young people by adapting the game of cricket to how cricket can be played. And some people hopefully would have seen what’s called table cricket.
Where you have effectively a table tennis or ping pong table with some specialist equipment that goes around the edges of it to create boundaries and scoring zones. And then there’s a bowling ramp and a three inch bat that one player has at one end. And you can get five or six players all playing at the same time. They could all be wheelchair users. They could all have different disabilities, different physical disabilities, and they can play a tabletop version of the game. It’s very technical, and extremely competitive as well once it gets going. So we introduced table cricket to some schools because of the nature or needs of the young people. Or we might have a blended program of table cricket together with sports hall -based or outdoor -based softball cricket that’s adapted for young people with all kinds of different physical and learning disabilities.
And what we do is we deliver that program, including training teachers and people that work within the school environment so that when the coaches have finished, they’re left with kit and equipment and a legacy to be able to continue that program. And we develop skills and characteristics such as teamwork, communication, all the things that everybody that’s passionate about cricket knows what not just cricket, but sport can do in terms of developing lots of different personal traits, characteristics and skills for young people.
And then what we do is we have a community based program called Super Ones. And the Super Ones program is a fully inclusive, free, community based program where young people come with their friends, family, siblings, carers, teachers, whoever it is in their lives that can support them and play cricket in a really inclusive way in the environment, in the community, near where they live.
One of the things that happens quite often here in the UK,is that if you’re a young person that goes to a special educational needs and disabilities school or setting, quite often, more often than not, you’ll travel quite far. You may be taxied or minibus to your school, which may not even be in the county or the region where you live because of the specialism that it may have. And what we hear quite often from parents is that those young people’s friends who they make at school, aren’t from their local community. They don’t see anybody in the school holidays or at the weekends. And they don’t have that same advantage, if you like, or privilege even, that young people who don’t have disabilities have when their friends live just down the road or in the local community.
So, by creating Super Ones hubs all over the country, including having a number of coaches themselves that live with a disability that may even have been participants that come through the program, we’re creating a world where young people can have much more access to sport and physical activity, much more local to them. So, it’s about making sure that it’s accessible, making sure that it’s adapted and that young people and their families and people from their community feel welcomed and engaged and that they can actually thrive within it. It’s not just something where you come and play just for fun. It can be competitive. As I said before, we’ve had young people from those programs that now play competitive international cricket around the globe and get to appear at places like Lourdes or the Wanderers in South Africa.
And we demonstrate, we help to demonstrate, and this is the bit about helping young people to overcome the challenges of inequality, but by building confidence and skills, we can demonstrate firstly to them and to their parents and the people around them, that cricket can actually be a game that goes way beyond the boundary and way beyond the game itself to develop the skills, and attributes and characteristics that they can take into their wider life at school, in their community. And one of the big things for us is into the workplace. Young people with disabilities often find that their families and people around them when they’re young are really concerned about how independent they will live when they’re older. What happens when their parents aren’t around anymore? What happens when they have to go and earn money for themselves or they’re not at school? They don’t have all the support network around them anymore.
And what we do is a huge amount of work with our corporate partners and with other organizations to develop the skills and characteristics and give them the confidence that they can take into the workplace when they’re older as well. And we’ve seen this year through our work with Barclay Foundation and the Barclay group that we’ve had people go into the business and do work within the business. We’ve also had a really successful program. There’s a fantastic video on our website this week where young people have become stewards and worked on a match day at a cricket match, a first class cricket ground like the oval with Surrey, where they built the skills and confidence and they’ve done things like scan people’s tickets, had customer service, customer face enrolled. And all of these skills, characteristics and the confidence that goes with them to be able to do that has been developed by taking part in our community cricket programs and our schools cricket programs where we start with cricket.
And then we add extra things in where the development officers and the coaches that work with them help them to develop those over time. So that’s really what the programs are about and the reach that we have and the outcomes from being able to take part in those programs.
Lord’s Taverners’ international affiliates
Zee: So Mark, I wanna talk a little bit more about your international affiliates, right? You said you’ve got Lord’s Taverners organizations in various countries that are technically independent. Can you talk about how they work, how you work with them? Do they decide how to do their own fundraising? Do they decide how to distribute the monies? And how does…
If someone is interested in a country that you don’t have an affiliate and starting an affiliate, how would they go about it? So those are my questions about your international reach.
Mark Curtin: Yeah, sure. So let’s start with those affiliates that already exist. Yeah, they’re very independent. We have a kind of what I would describe, there’s probably no official name for it, but it’s an affiliate type relationship. So they have the name of the Lords Taverners. And what they do is they will differ from country to country, but they’ll raise funds. And then they will work with organizations to do very similar work to what we do. They don’t necessarily run community cricket programs in the same way in which we do. But they will raise funds through activities such as dinners, cricket matches and other events. And then those funds will be used to, in some cases, they might make an asset donation. So we in the UK here used to do a thing where we would get an adapted minibus for wheelchair users. We don’t do that here at the moment anymore because our focus is on community cricket programs. But some of those affiliates, particularly Ireland, still do that. In other countries like Australia and South Africa, they’ll raise funds and have a member’s club where people get together and share a passion and a love for cricket. And those funds might be distributed to other more localised charities or organisations that do more community work with young people with disabilities. So, we’re not prescriptive about what they do. We ask them obviously to make sure they protect the name and the integrity of the Lord’s Taverners, to make it about cricket and have cricket at the centre of it. And then how we work with them differs as well and it changes from time to time. A few years ago, just before my time here at the Lord’s Taverners and just before the pandemic, there was a trip to South Africa where the South African Lords Taverners and members of the Lords Taverners UK got together. There was a great fantastic, there was a couple of cricket matches where the Lords Taverners, the UK Lords Taverners cricket team went over, played some games. Everybody had a very nice time socially. It was an opportunity to see the country and to share some stories and meet some fellow cricket lovers in South Africa. So that’s an example, if you like, of some of the things that we’ve done together.
The chairman of Lord’s Taverners Australia was in the UK last year while the Ashes were on. So myself and our chairman Tim Luckhurst met with him at Lord’s for the men’s Ashes game and we had a drink and a social and we just caught up with each other and talked about what work we’re doing in the UK and what work they’re doing in Australia and started to talk about, you know, when the next dashes are on out in Australia, at the back end of 25, 26, you know, maybe we’ll reciprocate the same thing and some members from ours will go over and so on. And we’ve talked about things like auction items, you know, where we might have an auction item that might, you know, go for a better price or a higher price in one market or the other. So we, we support each other’s work. We utilize and maximize the good name of the Lord’s Tavern as much as possible.
We share membership bases, but depending on what they want to do in their own countries, we discuss with them and they have the freedom, if you like, to be able to raise money to support whatever the need or the causes in their own countries.
Zee: And what about creating, you know, if someone in say India or the U.S., you know, cricket playing associate countries or test countries and say, wow, we want to have a Lord’s Taverners organization here. How would they go about that?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, just contact us actually, let us know. I mean, we’ve just had the most recent conversation with a delegation. It was actually a city mayor and business delegation that came to the UK where there’s where cricket is starting to take off quite a bit in Canada. And they were doing a bit of an exploratory work with the British High Commission in London. They came to talk to us because cricket looks like it’s going to be quite popular in this particular city. I won’t say which one it is for now because the conversations are in the early stages, but it has a very high South Asian immigrant population, which is why we think cricket is possibly without sort of stereotyping too much, but why cricket is growing substantially there. And they’re very keen to see the game grow because it fits with community and cultural needs in that city. And one of the things that we talked about was possibly establishing a Lord’s Tavern as Canada.
So that’s an early discussion. Nothing’s come of that yet, but that might be something that happens. Whereas in other times, you know, Lord’s Taverners in Malaysia or in Hong Kong started where there’s been a close network or an affiliation or sometimes in some cases, expats that have maybe moved from one territory to the other. So the short answer is if you’re interested and you live somewhere else and you’d like to do it, get in touch with us, you know, at Lord’s Taverners in the UK and we’ll have a chat about it.
What is like to do charity work in cricket?
Zee: Great. That sounds like a great opportunity for a lot of cricket loving fans throughout the world. One last question for you, Mark. You’ve been very generous with your time, but I want to ask about your own perspective. You’ve spent the bulk of your career in sort of the charity sector, often in sport, but the past few years, this is your first time working exclusively in cricket. What are the, you know, in this role, what are the sort of specific opportunities, challenges that come with working in cricket in a nonprofit or charity organization, how has that been different for you? You know, more challenging or better? What’s it like being in the cricket world after not being exclusively in this?
Mark Curtin: Yeah, it’s a great question. I get asked that often, actually. I think the biggest opportunity is that the game itself is thriving globally. Whilst there are some challenges for the game itself, particularly around the long -term future of test cricket, white ball cricket in particular, we’re in the midst of a T20 World Cup in the USA of all places. I mean, who would have thought that a few years ago, right?
But yeah, I think that the game and its growth and the interest in the game globally is a great opportunity. I think the way that the game has increasingly, not without its challenges and not without lots of things that must be done better and must be fixed and probably fixed quicker, but the game’s inclusiveness, I mean, the rise of women’s sport generally, but women’s cricket in particular over the last probably 10 years or so, is great and we want to see more of it. We play our role in that and that affords us lots of opportunities. I’m the dad of an 11-year-old daughter who loves her cricket and just last night our own local community cricket club, you know, she was over the moon in that she’d been asked to go and she’d been selected to be part of the under 15s squad and play in the first hardball match for them this week.
So, I’m really passionate about it on a personal level. So, I get to take this sort of personal into the professional as well. But I see the challenges. I see how different it is for girls to boys. Here in the UK, one of the biggest challenges is the game, is the perception of the game. It’s very much seen as something for the elite. It’s seen as expensive. It’s seen as something that’s predominantly, you know, very white, middle class, male dominated and at worst, you know, played by old blokes in jumpers and sweatshirts who stop for tea and all these strange traditions that the game have. But actually, when you look at the real cultural diversity and mix, there’s a fantastic thing that the ECB are doing here in the UK at the minute with all of the National Club Network, which is linking food and all the different cultural foods that you get from the South Asian community, the Caribbean community, the British community.
So, they’re getting all the clubs to show what different menus they have when they do teas, when matches are on and all the different menus and so on. And that result in probably a book or something being published in the year. So, on the one hand, I think we’re having to work really, really hard to change the game and improve the culture, the inclusiveness and those opportunities, as I mentioned before, for young people that face disadvantage to make everything much more inclusive and equal for everybody to thrive and enjoy the game. On the other hand, everything is there to be able to do that. The opportunity is there, the growth in the game, significant investment is coming into the game. As I mentioned, we’ve seen the explosion of the IPL, the growth of the game now in the North Atlantic, and in particular in the US. We’ve got cricket back in the games, in the Olympic games in 2028 in Los Angeles, which would be a phenomenal opportunity for the game. And also, I think that where the game is growing around the world, we’ve seen new teams or teams that have done really well and surprised a few, including the US’s defeat against Pakistan in this World Cup, are all signs that if we get it right, if we apply craft, if we work together, if we collaborate, if we have an open mind, and if we’re ready for some change in certain aspects, this game really can be phenomenal. It can create amazing opportunities for everybody. It can be a place where young people from disadvantaged communities can thrive, can get all the opportunities afforded to them and can develop skills and characteristics to do all the wonderful things in life that they’re capable or have the potential to do.
So, I think the big challenge is to try and manage all of that, is to keep the money coming in, to make sure that we keep working in partnership, that we keep an open mind, we stay relevant and modern and all those things. And that we convince everybody outside the game who we want to support and enjoy the game and maybe even join the game, that it isn’t just this elitist middle-class thing that maybe it used to be, but we’re changing.
And we’re changing the game for the good and we’re changing the game because we want everybody to enjoy the game of cricket and to be able to thrive by being involved as a player, as a coach, as a parent, as a volunteer, as an umpire or an official of some sort, whatever your role in the game, be involved in the game because it can do something for you and your community and school or city or wherever it may be. It’s an amazing thing, but we have a big, big task ahead of us to be able to manage that on a global scale.
Zee: Mark, on that note, I wanna thank you so much for joining us today and spending so much of your time. I’m sure our listeners will find everything you said really valuable and we look forward to being in touch.
Mark Curtin: Great, thanks, really appreciate it. Great speaking to you.
