Former Cricket Scotland chairman raises concerns over McKinney report

New Delhi: Former Cricket Scotland chairman, Tony Brian, has voiced "serious concerns" following the release of the McKinney Report, which uncovered deeply ingrained prejudice towards female staff and players within the organization.

Brian, who chaired Cricket Scotland from 2015 to 2022, acknowledged the necessity of addressing sexism and inequality but urged caution in interpreting the report's conclusions.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Brian expressed reservations about the methodology employed in the review, highlighting its reliance on a limited pool of interviewees and a lack of investigative rigor. He questioned the exclusion of certain former staff members from the review process and criticized the report's conclusions drawn solely from questionnaire feedback.

"I fully recognise that some staff in Cricket Scotland were very unhappy in their work in 2021, something I deeply regret," Brian said in a statement on Wednesday. "While clearly acknowledging those, I do however have serious concerns with some of the conclusions reached in the McKinney review, its selective use of interviewees and its admitted absence of investigative rigour.

"Firstly, the review's conclusions are based principally on questionnaire feedback from 21 existing staff (just over half of the 41 current staff) and three former staff who McKinney, very surprisingly, allowed to be nominated by an interested third party. Other former staff have been excluded from the review for reasons which are not explained - their voices have therefore not been heard.

"Secondly, McKinney used a methodology called a 'Neutral Assessment' defined as: 'an informal fact- finding process, generally used to explore areas of concern or to explore current cultures. It is not an investigation'.

"Having acknowledged that investigative work was not undertaken, the review then ignores that obvious limitation and goes on to draw conclusions on various issues based on the perceptions and feelings of the survey respondents. No attempt has been made to gather readily available evidence from others who were close to the individual issues."

The McKinney Report comes on the heels of a previous independent review in 2022, which found Cricket Scotland to be institutionally racist, resulting in the resignation of the entire board. Analyzing behaviors and practices within Cricket Scotland, the McKinney Report identified key themes such as culture and inclusion, leadership, and sexism and misogyny, culminating in nine recommendations for improvement.

Brian contested the report's assertion that Cricket Scotland neglected women's cricket until 2022, citing significant growth in participation numbers and performance standards since 2016. He emphasized the organization's long-term strategy aimed at fostering a sustainable future for women and girls' cricket.

"If they had spoken to the relevant people, they would have understood that between 2016 and 2023 Cricket Scotland grew women and girls' playing numbers in Scotland many times over," he said. "In 2015 there was a tiny number of a hundred or so players, and the women's game was at serious risk of dying. That number has risen to a sustainable base of approaching 1,000 women and girls' participants across all formats in 2023. And that was despite two years of very restricted development activity during 2020 and 2021 due to Covid.

"As well as much better participant numbers, Scotland now has a much higher quality of representative player with one Scottish player playing in the biggest women's domestic competition in the world (the Indian Women's Premier League) and eight Scottish players appearing in the Hundred (the top level of the English domestic game) - performance standards that are light years away from 2015.

"These improvements were as a result of a long-term strategy established in 2016/17 which invested in the essential building blocks of club and school structures, of coaching expertise, of a range of playing opportunities and of a wider and deeper talent pool, all to create a sustainable and long-term future for women and girls' cricket. Taking the simple investigative steps described above would quickly have demonstrated to McKinney the true position."

"The investigation referred to was carried out to conclusion robustly and in detail by a panel of two with relevant skills," he said. "If McKinney had taken the trouble to speak to those involved, it would not have left a wholly misleading impression on such an important point."

However, Cricket Scotland CEO Trudy Lindblade described the McKinney Report as a "damning indictment" of the treatment of female players and staff within the organization, issuing a public apology to those affected.