“I recently bumped into a lad who recognised me from the programme years ago. He said I’d helped lift his aspirations; he’d been to university and now had a good job. These stories make it all worthwhile,” says Tariq Ali. “The MBE (for services to the community) is special but it’s making a difference in lives that really counts. And there are hundreds of people like me in clubs up and down the country making a difference.“Tariq Ali, Wolverhampton Cricket Club
“Chance to Shine gives me opportunity to work with Wolverhampton’s The Way Youth Zone. My community profile opens doors in schools, mosques, temples, gurdwaras and youth centres but it’s the cricket that drives passion. It’s why I can place a 13 year-old who’s been part of our programme for four or five years into one of the local clubs I work with. Donated kit and clubs’ flexibility on fees for access to raw talent; that conveyor belt is so important to getting the kids’ commitment and, as importantly, the parents who probably have no experience of organised sport themselves.”
When CEO Laura Cordingley speaks of Chance to Shine’s Street programme, it’s about unconditional access for the hardest to reach groups not a stepping-stone to community cricket clubs. But it’s that conveyor belt which many helping deliver Chance to Shine in schools – whether community coaches funded through the county cricket board or partner coaches from local clubs – see as critical in turning initial enthusiasm from a few hours’ taster activity into more long-term participation.
Patrick William-Powlett is chairman of South Shields Cricket Club, which works closely with Durham Cricket Board in its outreach to local schools and communities: “we need the kids from local schools as we’re totally dependent on developing our own players”. That’s why he raises thousands of pounds in grants to pay for the time his coaches – often the output of the club’s youth programmes themselves – put into developing programmes with local primary schools.
He’s rightly proud that one of the club’s partner primary schools – Monkton Academy – is Chance to Shine’s primary school of the year:
“Chance to Shine helps us get into schools and gives momentum to our club programmes. Monkton seized every opportunity Chance to Shine, Durham and the club presented and I know they will say it’s had a transformative impact on some of the school’s other performance outcomes. Their success could not be more deserved” Patrick William Powlett, South Shields Cricket Club
But are South Shields and Tariq Ali’s club network outliers in the 4-5,000 strong community of local clubs? The more nuanced ideological discussion in many clubs is on obligations to go beyond outreach and recruitment for their own needs – part of an enduring battle for long term sustainability – to expectations of commitment to a wider evangelical mission for the future of the game itself. This predates ICEC concerns but more about the reality in what are independent small businesses largely run by time-stretched volunteers with limited capacity to support schools based coaching programmes.
Many had already developed cricket programmes at the youngest ages recognising the need to get to kids earlier given the competition for attention. The game’s exposure to non-cricket families – and, moreover, the teachers deciding what sports feature in pupils’ sporadic physical activity – has waned and almost expired after its retreat from Free-to Air TV. The sight of youngsters playing their own games in local parks and play areas is becoming a hazy memory.
They will point out they embraced the ECB national programmes with around 2,000 clubs participating in All Stars Cricket for 5-8 year olds; trading the lions’ share of income for attractive packaging, concerted marketing and a nice a bag of starter kit for more participants than they were likely to recruit themselves. For some the commitment looks one way; ECB never shares details on the finance – there are even some who suspect it makes a profit – and no surprise, to many, participation has fallen in the last two years.
ECB says it’s a symptom of success as more confident clubs run their programmes and keep the income. Clubs say it’s because ECB has taken its foot off the gas on marketing and investment in programme development. Clubs are increasingly relied on to market the programmes locally – particularly in schools – while the media advertising spend and oft criticised tie-ups with predominantly middle class channels like Netmums appear to have disappeared altogether.
The scheduled sessions are still littered wIth activities the coaches….or, er, activators….had judged long ago either impractical for many who have no idea of basic mechanics having never seen the game played or the kids, themselves, just found boring. They also expect kids to come back a second and even third year to the same core content and modest additions to the kit bag.
All Stars has made a difference. ECB never published its own baseline number but 80,000 or so 5-8 year olds is possibly double those at same ages in clubs before. It enabled more clubs to contemplate running more and bigger junior programmes by easing some of the gold-plated bureaucratic burden around coaching qualifications and safeguarding requirements that ECB itself had imposed previously.
But it’s still only a fraction of the 3.5 million 5-8 year-olds in primary schools, or even the 580,000 Chance to Shine says it introduced to cricket last year. Or, indeed, the 1.4 million aged under 16 ECB, extrapolating Sport England data, trumpeted in its annual report as playing some form of cricket in 2022.
James Watson emerged from life as a sports teacher at Heathfield Primary school in West London – one of very few state schools and unique as a primary to be included in The Cricketer’s Schools Guide – to become an evangelist for state school-club partnerships. But even he acknowledges the frustrations in creating what ECB hold up as a blueprint for others. Hampton Wick Royal Cricket Club was far from the first, and not the most local, club James tried to engage. But both are now benefiting from the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts in terms of leveraged funding, facilities and coaching resource.
Which is why the 22,000 teachers registered on Chance to Shine’s schools’ portal represents such a huge opportunity. And why ECB needs to invest far more – perhaps closer to the £20 million a year Laura Cordingley says it could comfortably scale up to spend – given it provides only half of the charity’s £6 million spend last year in delivering 66.000 coaching hours in 4,000 primary schools.
Many think that level of support pathetic. Especially as most is actually recycled into county board revenues paying staff employed as community coaches to deliver it. But it will demand more from clubs, too, as new hybrid delivery models are needed to create meaningful long-term relationships between clubs and, say, the 8.000 primary schools – of 20,000 – that Chance to Shine has accessed in the past five years. That’s not to entirely discount secondary schools where the challenges are even greater.
It’s why clubs need more, not less, ECB investment too. Not just to deliver future players but the spectators, viewers, subscribers and volunteers on which the ECB’s business model is so reliant.
John Swannick is facilitator of the Cricket Club Development Network http://www.clubdevelopment.org