The South Asian Cricket Academy have announced the opening of its fifth high-performance regional hub, with Leyton in East London becoming the latest focal point in the country to benefit from the opportunities that SACA provides.
The Leyton hub, based at Essex Cricket’s Leyton Urban Cricket Hub, joins the existing four other established South Asian Cricket Academy regional hubs across the country, in the Midlands in Birmingham and Derby, the North in Bradford, the Southwest in Bristol and the Southeast in Wokingham.
From those four existing hubs, to date SACA has successfully secured contracts with Professional County Clubs for no fewer than 18 British born South Asian cricketers within its Academy programme, 8 of which were secured last year alone, with high hopes of more SACA graduations to follow in 2026.
Only recently SACA announced exciting plans to launch their inaugural Women’s programme, with support from Take Her Lead, the registered charity dedicated to equality & inclusion for women and girls in cricket and the launch of SACA’s Women’s programme is another significant step in what has been an incredibly successful journey for the Academy to date.
SACA’s track-record sees the Academy, which was founded in 2022, stand head and shoulders above other elite programmes in the country in its record of success, and the opening of the Leyton hub is seen as another perfect opportunity to provide an elite high-performance environment to help develop local talent and create opportunities for its players to cement futures in the professional game.
Tom Brown, Founder and Managing Director of SACA, commented: “Leyton, and large parts of East London and bordering Essex are rich in their cultural diversity and the passion for cricket in the area is enormous.
“We know the talent is there and we can’t wait to create yet more opportunities for cricketers who come into our programme to further their ambitions in the game. We’re confident that the opening of the Leyton hub will be another significant step forward for us in enabling us to continue to build on the success the Academy has already seen.
“Our thanks go to Essex Cricket, who have played a big hand in helping us to set up the Leyton hub and have been immensely supportive of all that SACA has done to date. We are looking forward to continuing to work closely with them as the programme moves ahead.”
SACA recently announced its fixture list for the 2026 season, confirming the Academy will take on 16 of the Professional County Clubs across the three formats of the game this year, which will again provide an array of opportunities for SACA’s players to showcase their skills against their professional peers.
Arfan Akram, Essex Cricket’s Strategic Lead for East London commented: "The East London cricket community is a very diverse and passionate cricket loving community, with a proud history of producing outstanding players. Many cricketers - including Nasser Hussain, Rob Rollins, Ravi Bopara, Varun Chopra and Rishi Patel, to name just a few - began their cricket journeys in East London.
"We have worked closely with SACA since its emergence and helped fund the original PHD research into the issue of the lack of representation of British South Asian players in the professional game, and many East London-based players have represented SACA in recent years. Therefore, the Essex East London Hub is a natural progression of our joint collaboration.
"We are excited to formally engage with the tools, coaching networks and programmes that SACA can provide, offering aspiring cricketers and coaches in East London another layer of opportunity and support on their journey within the game in collaboration with the East London Diverse Cricket Network.
"We are delighted that the Leyton Urban Hub will host the Essex East London SACA Hub. Since being refurbished and reopening in 2019, the Hub has welcomed over 150,000 visits for cricket provision and remains at the heart of a wide range of cricket programmes."
For more information on SACA, please click here.
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