The impact of England winning the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, peaking with Jos Buttler’s full-length dive to run out Martin Guptill, has been felt across the country, boosting participation, attendances and engagement across England and Wales.

Initial findings from detailed research from the 2019 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup has revealed that the tournament drove hundreds of thousands of people to the sport, which the Ashes taking place in the second half of the summer, so fans had plenty of Cricket to digest over the middle months of the year.

The World Cup produced a spectacular finale, and the sport delivered once more at Headingly when Ben Stokes defied the odds to take the Ashes to a fourth test. The summer was a great advert for Cricket.

England Captain Eoin Morgan said: “Following the first game of the tournament when Ben Stokes caught that amazing catch off Adil Rashid, it felt that the eyes of the country were on us, which is great for our game.

“We could hear ‘Cricket’s coming home’ being sung from the stands and that’s when I realised that we were involved in something special.

“I am delighted that our Cricket World Cup win has been the catalyst to inspire a generation and get more people involved in the sport that I love.”

The most notable findings from the report include:

• The Cricket World Cup Clubs Programme involved 2,650 clubs, reaching around 560,000 people – 184,000 of whom were new to their respective club.
• Viewing figures for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup final were circa 15.4m, 31% of whom were watching their first cricket match.
• The tournament had significant impact in bringing new fans to the game, with 52,000 new, domestic ticket-buyers purchasing 227,000 tickets.
• Forty per cent of fans intend to follow cricket more in the next 12 months (51% for South Asian supporters), while engagement with ECB’s digital output increased 120% on 2018.
• Ninety-four per cent of first-time volunteers across the tournament would volunteer again in professional cricket
• Fifty-seven per cent of fans agreed they’d seen a positive impact in their host city and local communities

There was a huge push to promote the sport for this summer from digital teams and those on social media, which will have played a huge part in ensuring all could keep up with the latest action despite much of the coverage occurring on Sky Sports.

Despite this, Cricket managed to connect to more fans than it’s previously ever done before.

The information in this article was provided by the ECB. Relive the drama of cricket’s most memorable summer in recent history with this commemorative video.