ICAEW chart of the week: Commonwealth Games

Our chart this week marks the start of the XXII Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, illustrating how the numbers of events and competitors have grown since the first games in 1930 to reach 280 events featuring 5,054 competitors in 2022.

Combined line and column chart showing medal events for each games (columns) and number of competitors (line).

Games: I-III every four years from 1930 to 1938, IV-XII every four years from 1950 to 2022.

Medal events I-X: 50, 68, 71, 88, 91, 94, 104, 110, 121, 121; XI-XX: 128, 142, 163, 204, 217, 213, 281, 245, 272, 261; XXI-XXII: 275, 280.

Competitors: 400 in 1930 through to 5,054 in 2022.

The XXII Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, from 28 July to 8 August, involves a record 5,054 competitors from 72 teams participating in 280 events in 20 sports. This is many times the 400 or so competitors from 11 teams that competed in 59 events in six sports at the inaugural British Empire Games in Hamilton, Canada, in 1930.

Although much smaller than the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games is still a major undertaking with a budget for Birmingham 2022 approaching a billion pounds, including £778m of public funding, of which £594m is from central government and £184m is from Birmingham City Council, West Midlands city region and other local sources.

The main focus will be on sporting performance, with events in aquatics (12 diving, 52 swimming), athletics (58), badminton (6), 3×3 basketball (4), beach volleyball (2), boxing (16), cricket T20 (1), cycling (20 track, 4 road, 2 mountain biking), gymnastics (14 artistic, 6 rhythmic), hockey (2), judo (14), lawn bowls (11), netball (1), para powerlifting (4), rugby sevens (2), squash (5), table tennis (11), triathlon (5), weightlifting (16) and wrestling (12).

Birmingham 2022 is the first games to have more than 5,000 competitors, although with 280 medal events there is one less than the 281 that featured in Manchester 2002.

England, as the host nation, will be hoping to improve on its performance at the Gold Coast 2018 games, when it came second in the medal table with 136 medals (45 gold, 45 silver, 46 bronze) to Australia, who won 198 medals (80, 59, 59) on their home turf. India with 66 medals in 2018 (26, 20, 20), Canada with 82 (15, 40, 27), New Zealand with 46 (15, 16, 15), South Africa with 37 (13, 11, 13), Wales with 36 (10, 12, 14) and Scotland with 44 (9, 13, 22) will also be looking to do well.

For the participants, the efforts will be intense, while for spectators in the stadium and the audience at home, the nail-biting tension of the lawn bowls competition will be just one of many gripping sporting events to be enjoyed this summer.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the month: Cricket – England v West Indies 3rd Test

31 July 2020: Summer is the time for a special edition of the #icaewchartofthemonth, celebrating the victory of the English men’s cricket team over the West Indies in the 3rd Test at Old Trafford, resulting in a 2-1 series win for England.

Chart: England 1st innings 369 + 2nd innings 226 = 595. West Indies 1st innings 197 + 2nd innings 129 = 269 short of target.

Many explanations of cricket as a sport tend to focus on the intricacies of how it is played but in practice, the aim is pretty simple – one team sets a target by scoring as many runs as they can and the other team then tries to beat that target. Of course, like most sports, the joy is often as much in the skills of the players and the tactics deployed as much as who wins or loses, but the principal objective remains the same: score more runs than the other team.

West Indies no doubt regretted putting England into bat first, as England proceeded to score 369 runs in the first innings, significantly better than the 197 the West Indies team achieved in reply. England then extended their total by adding 226 runs before declaring, giving the West Indies a stretching target of 398 to tie or 399 to win. A strong England bowling performance meant West Indies only achieved 129 by the time they were bowled out mid-afternoon on the fifth day, falling short of the overall target of 595 runs by 269.

Stuart Broad had a stand-out match, scoring 62 runs in England’s first innings and taking 6 and 4 wickets respectively in the West Indies’ two innings – including the 500th wicket of his international test career. Chris Woakes, who took 5 of the West Indies’ wickets in their second innings, was the other key English bowler, while Rory Burns (scoring 147 runs across two innings), Ollie Pope (91) and Joe Root (85) were the highest scoring English batsmen. More details are in the scorecard.

Cricket can be a mystery to many, with unique features such as whole days abandoned to rain – as the fourth day of this test match was. Some have even likened cricket to a ritualised rain-dance, helping to make England the green and pleasant land that it is. For others, cricket is a different sort of mystery, providing sporting magic that makes an English summer complete.

The #icaewchartofthemonth and #icaewchartoftheweek will be off for August before returning on Friday 4 September. We hope that you will be able to take some time off to enjoy the summer, wherever and however that may be possible.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.