SACA PARTNERS
SACA is a non-profit organisation which relies solely on the financial contributions from our fantastic partners and sponsors. We would greatly appreciate it if you took the time to read about each of our partners below and explore their companies further. If you are an individual and would like to support the programme, please click on the link below to our GoFundMe Page.
​ECB funding primarily enables everything we do at SACA to be done bigger and better, reaching more players, gaining more opportunities for them and therefore etching us closer to our goal of increasing British South Asian representation at the professional level for players and coaches alike.
Further, the financial backing from the ECB has empowered SACA to forge partnerships with ACE and Take Her Lead, facilitating additional research initiatives aimed at addressing prevailing inequality issues within cricket. In collaboration with the ECB and its charitable allies, two PhDs at Birmingham City University will investigate the intricacies of creating inclusive high-performance environments and understanding the socio-cultural landscape and barriers within women's high-performance cricket.
Founded in 1984 by Professor Binna Kandola OBE, Pearn Kandola has been around for a pretty long time, much before words like diversity, belonging, bias and inclusion entered the vocabulary at work! For 40 years, their mission has been simple: to make the world fairer.
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Pearn Kandola have worked with organisations of all sizes, in all sectors to help them create workplaces where difference is valued so they can reap the DEI dividend: employee engagement, enhanced innovation, better financial performance.
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Keen to speed up the pace of progress, they built Kandola+, an intelligent DEI learning platform that has been proven to deliver more inclusive behaviours within organisations.
Kandola+ is incredibly proud to be the Platinum Sponsor of SACA and to be a small part of the wonderful work the SACA team are doing to increase the representation of professional British South Asian cricketers across the UK.
At Birmingham City University, their mission is to enable students to transform their lives and to achieve their potential. The university showcases students from a diverse range of backgrounds that reflect the city of Birmingham whilst forming a rich, vibrant and energetic community!
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Birmingham City University has placed a new onus on sports science and athlete development, demonstrated by its new state of the art sports campus in the city centre, including a sports hall, cricket nets and fitness suite.
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Birmingham City University have been integral to the development of the South Asian Cricket Academy through its funding of the research that underpins the programme, as well as granting use of the fantastic sports facilities on site.​​
Take Her Lead is a charity set up by former England International Cricketer and current broadcaster Isa Guha. Their vision is for cricket to be a place where every woman and girl can fulfil their potential and thrive, within the game and beyond.​
Take her lead promotes equality and diversity in cricket, healthy recreation and leisure for the public benefit by working to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of sex or gender. ​SACA has partnered with Birmingham City University & Take Her Lead, initiating and part funding PhD research (Hina Shafi) exploring the reasons into low BSA female representation, in the hope that this research will shape future targeted intervention programmes.
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The ACE Programme was launched by Surrey County Cricket Club and Ebony Rainford-Brent (MBE) in January 2020 in response to the decline of the black British professional players by 75%, and less than 1% of the recreational game.
The ACE Programme was designed to engage young people of African and Caribbean Heritage and a talent search was launched. Since Black History Month of October 2020, ACE launched its own academy where 25 talented players became ACE scholars and the charity made strides to have a wider national impact.
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SACA has partnered up with ACE to part fund PhD research that explores inclusive elite high-performance environments within sport. This aligns with their shared vision of increasing the representation of minority groups across elite cricket.
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