Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has urged current PM Andy Burnham to reinstate the £35m funding commitment to building all-weather “cricket domes” he made when he was in No10. 

Sunak pledged the sum in 2024 to create 22 of the facilities around the country but the Labour government scrapped the funding, labelling it “fantasy”, after replacing the Conservatives later that year.

It has since invested £4.5m to help the England and Wales Cricket Board build seven domes but Sunak called on fellow sports fan Burnham to do much more. 

“Cricket domes across the country would let more people play cricket and ensure that they can practice together all year round,” he said in the MCC Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s last night. 

“The popularity of the three domes that have already been built so far shows just how much demand there is. And now we have a new cricket-loving prime minister. 

“I would urge everyone to push the government to fully restore the funding we announced for this program back in 2024.”

The cricket domes are a key plank of the ECB’s strategy of broadening access to a sport which has become increasingly siloed in fee-paying schools. 

Sunak made the £35m commitment in one of his last acts as PM but Labour was quick to reverse it after ousting the Tories, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy saying: “Unfortunately the announcement made by the last government was a fantasy. There was not a single penny of actual funding attached to it.”

Sunak pokes fun at England cricket team

Since then, the Department for Culture Media and Sport has provided £1.5m in funding for two domes, in Luton and Farington, in 2025. 

It pledged a further £3m earlier this year, matching the ECB’s contribution to constructing five more domes in Birmingham, Bolton, Derby, Newcastle and Nottingham.

Sunak, MP for Richmond and Northallerton in Yorkshire, is the third non-cricketer to deliver the prestigious MCC Cowdrey Lecture, after Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Stephen Fry.

He used the talk to poke fun at the England men’s Test team’s recent drinking controversies, which led to captain Ben Stokes quitting.

Recalling a meeting with the England team in 2022, he said: “I went straight from Parliament that day to Downing Street to meet the England cricket team who had just won the T20 World Cup.

“It was a less raucous affair than the [infamously boozy] 2005 Ashes celebration. Oh, actually, judging by recent reports, frankly, any night out recently with the England cricket team.”