Cricket Wales

Hear that, Bumble.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

@BumbleCricket said some stuff earlier that’s got me thinking. (Read it here, on alloutcricket.com – https://t.co/wk7k4mcJgX by all means, but only after hoovering up my own gloriously fulfilling and not entirely contradictory missive.)

Now I don’t think I’m doing the fella a complete disservice if I paraphrase what he said – I know, diabolical and dodgy thing to do – by reporting Bumble’s reminder that there’s always been choice, always been different stuff to do, and therefore the Big Deal we’re making about player retention and/or dwindling numbers of clubs, matches played or whatever might not, in the great scheme of things, be that Big a Deal. Because a percentage of people have always moved on from the game – made other choices – to chase girls/boys/drink sweet Martini and lemonade, work, or set up a punk band. Always there’s been some (what shall we call it?) drift – nah, implies failure – some expression of choice which may or may not indict the game; always.

Clearly, Mr Lloyd has a point on this. His gravy-boat full, milky-creamily-mashed and treble-fabulous good nature impels him to urge us, in so many words, to leave off with the judgemental stuff and gather a little perspective. Maybe cricket’s really doing okay – challenged by more choices than previously, for sure, flower – but doing okay? He cites the example of clubs which are bouncing with smiling Rooty wannabes, thriving community hubs which can barely manage the influx of diminutive but excited scoopers and reverse-sweepers. These clubs certainly exist, defying any sense of atrophy or retreat.

I’ve never met Bumble but I like the bloke. He seems genuinely authoritative and genuinely authentic; never would you question his love for the game – at all levels. Importantly (or incidentally), he’s from pretty much the same latitude as me, the same spiritual place – that Northern outpost of corny-wonderful faith (in people?) and honesty and (blow me down), hope. Like me, he’s daft about sport.

The senior gym bunny and Accrington Stanley fanatic’s seen and is seeing a whole lot of the umpteen-plus faces of cricket around the country, around the world. It’s great that he’s plainly optimistic, that he has a faith in the durability of the sport, acknowledging as he does the competition from outside.

To further precis his argument, Bumble suggests (inevitably, amongst many other things) that maybe we need to get real regarding the viability of tiny clubs; that we should amalgamate plenty and drive quality and competition through continuing the trend for Premier Leagues, where standards and facilities are good. This in itself increases the viability and/or inviolability of club cricket, which he argues is hardly in crisis but which is challenged by choices – like always.

Some contentious stuff there – I’m immediately reminded of the delightfully teeny village clubs in my area which might be snuffed out under any brutalist gathering of that which is seen to be sustainable. Folks who’ve effectively lived their richly undemonstrative lives through the village club might be stirred to militancy by the thought of ‘healthy amalgamation’, I reckon. (Not Bumble’s phrase, I hasten to add.) Mr Lloyd has unquestionably earned the right to proggle away at our condition, mind, even if this process feels like the opening up of some acute or tender hurting – that’s just gonna happen, needs to happen.

I’m not going to try to unpick all his arguments, however; for one thing I (in the contemporary jargon) ‘hear them’ and another I agree… with some. I’m going to put a few other things out there, another contribution, if you will, to the debate, ideally conducted over a foaming pintabeer in a clubhouse with a spirit-lifting view of mighty trees or swirling rivers or smiling kids. Bumble has been my prompt.

As some of you will know I both volunteer and work in cricket and so irrespective of how bright or stupid I am I do know some stuff about migration, retention and maybe how clubs or regions move or think or identify what’s necessary to survive or hold fast or grow. Weirdly, I’ve actually been reasonably attentive and interested when all this gets discussed by members of our Cricket Wales posse. I/we genuinely do grapple with The Issues (or identifying the Real Issues) and genuinely do try to effect change and progress. We have heaps of information and heaps more in the way of opinion, baggage, ‘knowledge’.

And yet I couldn’t tell you how things compare now with some arbitrary idyll way back in the whatevers, when maybe cricket was on terrestrial TV and summers were long and Botham or Gower or Lloyd or Richards or Sobers was bewitching us or giving us the horn.

There are TV figures available but I doubt we really know what migration of 9-11 year-olds into clubs or retention of players in the 13-17 age-group looked like back in that sunny, simple, unaccountably Child Safety Officer-free era. (My point being that it’s perdy darn near impossible to be sure about whether things are better or worse; that (actually) comparisons between eras are relatively meaningless; that none of this makes intelligent discussion over current, ‘durable’ research an indulgence).

I hear the argument that as the sport has accumulated a layer of Development Officers and Community Coaches, so arguments for Development Projects or Community Coach work are bound to spring up. I hear the fear that (as everywhere?) a squadron of pen-pushers has insinuated its way into ‘cricket’ and is (wilfully or otherwise) banqueting on its blood whilst attempting to drive it forward. I hear the argument (or do I make it, being a coach?) that unleashing more great coaches into schools and clubs would sustain and enrich both the game of cricket and a zillion young lives everywhere and that every last possible penny should be invested in funding and improving coaches and thereby (I promise you) changing lives.

But back to that fella Lloyd. I disagree with Bumble that the lack of cricket on terrestrial TV is insignificant. I’m a real lover of sports but as a low earner I can’t justify coughing up the required £30-40(?) a month for the Sky Sports subscription. I simply can’t. And I can promise you (and him) that in schools I go into there are lots of kids who really don’t know what cricket looks like because they don’t – despite what our friends at the Daily Mail might say to the contrary – have Sky.

This is not to say that these same children would all be cricket mad should the Beeb be showing Test Matches… but I can only imagine that it must be a fact that pay TV reduces levels of exposure, hypothetically and in the real world (if there is one). Cricket costs, meaning it’s therefore beyond the consciousness of many, surely? I think this matters.

For balance – and because it’s true – Sky props up the game financially; a factoid that undermines any anti-capitalist revolutionary zeal we may be harbouring here. But you judge on all that.

Broadly I share Bumble’s genial confidence. I think maybe like him I reckon good folks will find a way. And that it’s the good work of individuals, individually changing lives by timely encouragement or technical tweaking that is the unchanging essence of ‘development’. And that therefore the work I/we do as cricket people needs to be conscious and respectful of not just the facts enshrined in our latest review, but of the uniqueness and power of individual experiences, relevance(s) and needs.

The game is gloriously and maybe increasingly diverse. Whether we agree with Bumble that cricket’s central challenges have remained relatively similar or not, we maybe can – maybe should – look at what we can do, in whatever capacity, to support the game – ‘muck in’. This is going to mean different things in different places. It’s also going to mean tough decisions, maybe unpopular ones like the ones that may be looming around the sustainability of village clubs, become necessary.

Strikes me that Bumble seeks to cut through the concept-fest that our cricket administrators are mud-wrestling in. It’s his way to sort things out witha bitta plain speaking. He knows cricket needs good-hearted people, experienced people on board. I wonder if (less obviously and perhaps less comfortably) he accepts that it will need a quota of lateral thinkers too, to separate sentiment from ongoing vitality.

Questions for the game.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 9 Comments

Every sport is navel-gazing. By that I mean doing that soul-searching thing to find a way to either grow or sustain; holding workshops or seminars where the men (mainly) who administrate gather to chew the fat and challenge themselves over matters of strategy and policy. I realise now that the quality of questions asked at these pow-wows is erm , powerfully important: in that respect it’s not unlike coaching.

I went to two days of exactly these kinds of meetings earlier this week as part of the Cricket Wales posse charged with thinking deeply but also freely about what we do. I should say clearly now that what follows is neither a Cricket Wales-approved synopsis of what happened and what this means, nor some kind of manifesto.

On the first count let it be known that whilst I am unashamedly proud – yes, proud! – to work for CW, I speak and occasionally get up a lather very much of my own and am therefore what we might call a medium-loose cannon. I’m a team-man, certainly but have waaaaaay too many fast-twitch fibres to be a full-time office-waller and/or strategic thinker – for now!

However – and in contradiction – I do get that there is value in skilled and informed and generous brainstorming; it’s complacent not to do it and (for the cynics out there) my experience has been positive, in the sense that I now reckon people genuinely work hard and honestly at these gatherings – certainly our lot do. Then we drink brandy ‘til 2 a.m.

In essence, during our medium-epic philosophical shakeout, we were set two prime tasks; to identify the three most significant issues facing Junior Cricket in Wales and then, having reflected on those, propose what we might do differently next year.

(I may need to briefly remind or inform my sagacious readership that as I am a Community Coach, the bulk of my work and that of my colleagues is around enthusing kids for the game and getting them to transfer from schools into clubs/hubs or leisure centres so that the healthy cricket stuff sustains – hence the concentration on that end of the market. Cricket Wales, of course, is charged with leading and inspiring as well as administrating the whole of the recreational game in Wales but we Community Coaches inevitably(?) spend the bulk of our time playing daft games wiv kids.)

The following – a shocking mixture of ‘conclusion’, ‘experience’, hunch and sooo-premely insightful observation – will need some care, as a diplomatic disaster or twelve could unfold *unless* you are prepared to believe me when I say that neither myself nor my colleagues are characterised by a kind of appalling and arrogant CricketWalescentricity. (I promise.)

Having looked at rafts of data and swapped intensely our many, many coaching/club/school impressions, the clear winner in the Big Issue For Junior Cricket stakes was (the idea that the) experience for children who had transferred into clubs wasn’t magic or entertaining or (who knows?) comfortable enough for enough of those children to stick with cricket. A big number of kids were gathered in but a smallish number stayed.

There are several ways we might interpret that – from the idea that the game itself proved to be unappealing after a few sessions to the notion that something within or about the club experience was undermining (excuse the Sports Development Speak) migration. Plus, there would be sub-notions that I simply don’t have time and space to address – for now. Clearly, if the proverbial lessons are to be learned then the data – which shows a big drop off between the numbers of children who actually went to clubs, having been inspired (or bundled kicking and screaming) by Community Cricket Coaches and those who stayed there for more than a few weeks (and therefore became new members at those clubs) must be de-mystified if possible.

We threw most of the relevant notions round the room, earnestly as well as liberally and there was a consensus around the following; that whilst some clubs offer new children the kind of (actually) pretty dynamic and inclusive and entertaining sessions they get from Community Coaches who visit their schools (generally for around four lessons), others don’t. The experience is either a little intimidating or starchy or dull… or something.

We cannot know what every child feels about the transfer into clubs and clearly children (like allegedly mature adults) don’t always tell us the truth, anyway. But plenty do get asked about this – it is surveyed. Could be that we need more and better information around this but for what it’s worth (and I am clear it’s worth something) the Community Cricket Coaches and their immediate seniors the Cricket Development Officers of Wales were notably in agreement that migration numbers fall away sharply partly because sessions aren’t fun enough to make it worth the child (and by implication, the family) committing to the club regularly.

The chief difficulty around this may be the argument that Doh! Of course Cricket Wales staff are going to conclude that their coaches are more fabulous than those unblessed with the CW badge! Their very lives and jobs depend upon deciding to Big Up and Justify their own excellence!

People, on this one, all I can say is I’m pretty certain some of us like the sound of our own voices (Exhibit A, this website) and ye-es, it’s possible that we are the annoying geezers who Say Too Much Too Loudly whenever the opportunity to peacock our cricket knowledge around the gaff presents itself but honestly… we ain’t so cheap as to masturbate our own egos over this one. It’s too big, too important and besides – again, honestly – as a mob our lot are too genuinely concerned for the good of the game to invent some self-serving cobblers to deflect undeserved flak someplace else.

All of which means I am saying to you, to my colleagues and soulbrothers and sisters in club cricket, that it could be the case that some children, newly arrived at your club, are being inadequately accommodated. Some are feeling that sessions are a bit dull; some feel excluded – even though they have manifestly made a step towards the game; some maybe feel a bit lost. I should add – and not just for the sake of ‘fairness’ – that all of these feelings may arise in one of my sessions… but percentage-wise this appears to be less likely than in a club environment.

Please try to get past the arrogance implicit in the cricketmanwales.com view of this and ask yourself how new, young players arriving at your club feel about what you’re offering. What is training like, for them? What is the environment like – what are the people these children are being led or coached or signed in by sounding like? Think about how the children who may never make one of your competitive teams but who have stepped across that threshold anyway feel. Maybe think about how your club activity fits against the fun festivals and inclusive, un-threatening, softball sport these children may have gotten used to at school. There may be an argument that you should be offering an extension of that experience as well as developing competitive players/Test stars of the future.

I’m here to ask some difficult questions. I realise the answers may be about changes in format or governance as well as culture change in individual clubs. I’m not providing answers and I know what I do – what Cricket Wales – does is flawed too. This blog – all of these blogs – are about making a contribution to a debate. Endof.

Look I know there are many many wonderful clubs and coaches out there. I am privileged to know and to work with an inspiring lump of them, either as a volunteer, or as a Cricket Wales fella, wearing *that badge*, remembering *that training*, aspiring to *those goals*. But however unpalatable it may sound, I am clear there are things we all have to improve, not just for some spurious need to ‘grow the game’ but because surely we are all together charged with offering our players – young and old – something fabulous for them.

Finally, it may sound like I’m somehow down on traditional cricket and traditional cricket clubs. No. Nothing I’ve argued is to suggest that traditional cricket is either out-dated or inappropriate or short on fun. It ain’t. It’s wonderful. But my strong conviction is we may need to provide some other stuff too, for the kids who want to join us… but then turn away.

Good move.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Deciding what to do is often as much an art-form as an exercise in diplomacy or joined-up thinking. Sculpting from intimidating choices that which merely works may not, in the contemporary flux, be enough – in life and in sport. Good moves, on the contrary, imply some well-springing beyond mere survival, into (actually) greater health; virility; dynamism. But given that we often concede to the reality that everything seems compound or complicated, the tendency to play safe weighs heavily against the brilliant, the inspired or truly creative; so good moves are hard to find.

We cricketpeeps have our challenges. On the global scale this might mean heavyweight conversations about governance; on a national or practical or structural level maybe that heave-hoing see-saw between County Cricket and the inevitable slot for Blast-dom. How do we manage all that? Significant. Significant issues but maybe not as big as the (okaaaay, related) question of how we retain players.

The @cricketmanwales-familiar among you will know that I work in cricket at what tends to get slightly patronisingly called the ‘grassroots’ level. As a Community Coach for Cricket Wales I spend a lump of my working life enthusing small people towards the game – go read previous posts and you’ll get the drift. I can tell you that generally it’s easy enough to gather players in under the spell but there is a problem in the teenage years.

Not just for cricket. Other team games are finding a disturbing number of players – boys, possibly in particular – drift away between the ages of say 14 and 17.

We could all write a fabulously strident thesis on the reasons for the exodus (I’d love to – please send funding to the Death to Nintendo/McDonalds and The Folks Who Produce Reality TV Campaign) but that’s for another day. What I want to begin to address is what it is we might do to keep young fellas/girls playing our game, when either doubts or other opportunities or distractions enter the frame. Or at least I want say something about a particular event which felt important, recently.

There may be a prequel to this; one which features stonkingly obvious insights between the link between quality of experience for players and retention… and more subtle understandings around coaching… and relationships.

If youngish boys and girls have an inviolably wonderful time at their cricket club then clearly they are likely to stay in the game. More than that; having appreciated the quality of coaching(?) learning(?) growing(?) they benefited from, they may well later look to make a contribution – possibly an enlightened one – of their own, to their club and/or the game. Thus good-ness stimulates good moves in the future, which in turn increase the likelihood of great people staying in cricket, enriching the cricket-peep gene pool . But what does this aforementioned wonderful time look like and feel like?

It looks different but like fun. It looks like a diving catch or an all-out, lung-bursting shuttle race – finishing with another dive… and slide, onto a watered outfield. It looks like whatever sharing a joke looks like. It’s physical; it’s ‘psychological’; it’s about movement. Maybe?

Maybe it also looks like a superbly thought-out series of training sessions where a zillion skills are learned… incidentally, almost? Because the coach knows he or she doesn’t need to teach too much, just offer some games and ask some skilfull questions. Let the players find a way to play.

But this is very abstract. Let’s move on to stuff wot actually happened…

Recently, Cricket Wales ran an Under 19’s T20 competition. The idea essentially being that cricket clubs throughout the principality could enter teams in an event that not only looked and sounded like a Big Bash (or similar) but was essentially and indeed boomtastically directed by the players. They were, within reason, to shape it in the way they chose. So yes, there was coloured kit. Yes, there was some geezer wiv kickin’ toons. And yes, it was more than slightly wonderful. My lot – Pembrokeshire- missed the deadline for entering.

Actually that may not be entirely true but something, something got in the way – fortunately, not for long.

I’ve been on the fringes of this but I remember asking the question of our local fire-starter (and Chairman of Pembrokeshire Association for Cricket Coaches) Mr Jonathan Twigg
what’s happening re- the Under19 thing?

Then having a couple of brief conversations with our local Cricket Development Officer (Matt Freeman) and a longer one with Haverfordwest CC’s Junior Head Coach Simon Williams. All of which left me thinking we might be in a slightly embarrassing black hole, having neatly fulfilled metropolitan prejudices about Sleepy Ole Pembrokeshire.

HA HA! Wrong!

In fact, faster than a speeding cherry, Messrs Twigg and Williams had a) nobbled half the county and b) bundled a key clutch of the potentially (cricket-wise) underemployed youff into a seething, expectant and actively-engaged posse. Sponsorship was sorted; kit and fixtures were sorted; a Final’s Day (as well as the friendly games) was posted into the calendar. Most magnificently… things really happened.

My own club’s teens swiftly metamorphosed into Blue Lightning, players now resplendent in blue, sporty-disco shirts with name and squad number on the back. Likewise at Carew Rooks or Burton Warriors or Cleddau Crusaders – all in grooviciously contemporary clobber. Twigg and Williams and god bless ’em their equivalents elsewhere got the games on – at Haverfordwest superbly supported by Big Scrivs, the local MC/DJ/esteemed provider of music and (quite literally) fanfares.

In other words, games took place. Teen-appropriate events. Cricket events unlike anything seen before in our county. 20 overs of wallop and bantz-loaded cricket, for young people, watched by lots of other young people – and often their families – accompanied by bursts of reassuringly dated Popular Music. Wicked!

On the Finals Day at Haverfordwest Cricket Club the organisation as well as the cricket was ramped up to fever pitch. ‘Twiggo’ had established a Control Room containing more pens, forms, balloons and members of the media (thanks @FraserMercsport) than a Jeremy Corbyn rally. Umpires – proper ones – had not only been sourced but kitted out in fetching acid green by main sponsors Nat West, represented locally by long-time Narberth CC man Huw Simpkins. Ditto sponsors from Tees r us, alongside Mark White from Cricket Wales HQ. It was all alarmingly kosher.

In terms of the practicalities, 3 pitches were available at Haverfordwest CC whilst a preliminary fixture was played at Hook CC a few miles down the road. 8 teams entered, including Llanelli Knights from… well, you-know-where, some 50-odd miles east, plus, remarkably, I think, 7 from Pembrokeshire. All teams were guaranteed at least two games, with a plate competition being played out (ten overs per innings) for those beaten in the first matches.

For the record, Llanelli Knights were deserved winners, beating Burton in the final: Haverfordwest won the plate. However the occasion was such a clear and overwhelming success – and spoke so loudly of frontiers being opened – that we might dare to hope that in the continuation of this one event a significant step forward might be possible in terms of retention.

Some of us are already thinking that our local County Cricket Club needs to take a long, hard, unprejudiced look at this. Because it may not just be relevant to teenagers. It strikes me that whether we like it or not, gathered-in, short-format cricket of this or a similar sort may be central to how cricket develops – and I do mean develops – all over. Our own struggling lower divisions in Pembrokeshire might be sustained in this way… and how comfortable us older folks are with that may be irrelevant. Local leagues may need to provide both longer format and T20 boomathon cricket.

Most teams brought about fifteen players to Pembrokeshire Finals Day, so that meant 120 teenage players doing what they feel comfortable with – feel good about. Panacea? Possibly not. Model? Quite possibly. Good move? Abso-lutely.

Here’s what Fraser Watson from The Western Telegraph made of that day – http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/sport/13715660.T20_teams_have_a_blast_at_Finals_Day/

The Mad Batter’s Tea Party; Obvious Positives.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Working in and for the game of cricket, I take more than a passing interest in how folks view all of its multifarious (or possibly just nefarious?) forms. (Go see Jarrod Kimber ‘bout that latter niche.) I’m as daft and as clueless as the next fan/coach/umpire/player about many things within what we might call the world of cricket but medium clued-in, I would say, on matters to do with coaching and retention – what the game (or, okaaay, what Cricket Wales) is looking to do.

I’m not boasting. I’m not saying I’m good at this or that, just that I have some knowledge – some information – stored on these issues, following turgid or revelatory classroom-bound discussions or blokey workshopping or centre-practice of cricket stuff. It’s what I do. Why wouldn’t I know something? If I don’t know what the path forward looks like on Coach Education and in terms of schools provision, I do know what’s being discussed, or put in place, or considered at local and national level. But ultimately… everything’s context.  Everything out there shapes things.

Cricket People are like Ordinary People in that they locate themselves, noisily or quietly, into wildly different zones of opinion or belief. Sometimes a level of global calm seems to win out, as the cricket equivalent of peacetime – or tea-time – prevails. Other times the brew is stronger and the scones, yaknow… stonier.

Now feels like a Mad Batters Tea Party. An incendiary, expressionistic, drug-addled cornucopia-fest. Where the crashbangwallop of the game magnificently and beautifully but maybe luridly reflects the noises off, the times, the turbidity currents building around cricket’s heaving continents. It’s excitingly off its own head.

The times of course do contribute to the vulcanism; ‘f you don’t like something or somebody you mercilessly troll them. ‘F you see the umpire got it wrong from 24 different angles you blow your collective, high definition fuse. If the game slows down you down another Fosters. So if this doesn’t seem like a Test Cricket kindofa time then maybe that’s because it really ain’t.

However. Despite the absurdities and indeed immoralities exposed by ‘Death of A Gentleman’; despite the *challenges* to fairness/honesty/decency implicit in an Indo-Aus-Giles Clark Pact; despite the alleged woefulness of some of the Ashes Women batting – despite the obscene hurry we’re all in to get somewhere brasher quicker – there are Obvious Positives. Even for Test Cricket. Surely there are? Positives which though they may not necessarily ‘grow the game’ – in that immortal phrase – may counter-intuitively perhaps preserve it and develop it.

I know some of these positives from my work and in that I am privileged. I see young girls in Penny Dropping mode as they get that this is their game too. I see the powerful and yet relatively untapped educational potential in upful, ‘physical’ but thoughtful school sessions – children building cricket games and therefore using a zillion ‘academic’ skills as well as heartily lugging round those limbs – moving. I meet, actually, loads of brilliant people, either in schools or within Cricket Wales or Glamorgan C.C.C. or elsewhere.  But hey look if you think I’m coming over all soft-sellingly pro- what I do then I’ll park that and go back to where we came in. Which was with perceptions – opinions.

I went both to the Ashes Test Match in Cardiff and the Bank Holiday double header extravaganza – where both men and women played T20 Internationals. Both were superb events, confirming the racy, thrilling, contemporary brilliance of short-format cricket and the traditional but evolving majesty of the five (soon-to-be-four) day experience. Moeen Ali was great. Ben Stokes was great – all kinds of things from that general upping of the ante to seeing Cook command the new era with confidence and imagination were great.

These days were both a novelty and a re-affirmation.  We’ve burst through something, haven’t we? Carved out of yesterday’s billion-year-old past.

I’ve previously wittered on about this new wild positivity – picked holes in it – but generally it’s pretty fab, right? It offers us cricketpeeps clear opportunities; let’s take them.

But enough foam for a minute. Here’s a wee story which feels relevant. ‘Sharing’ stuff, (hate that phrase!) asyado, on twitter, I happened to drop in a minor note of disappointment re the level of attendance at the beginning of the Women’s T20 and was fairly promptly slapped down for using the everydaysexism hashtag to accompany my (honestly relatively minor) gripe. I should say I have the luxury of being a complete nobody so this was not heavyweight trolling, you understand, this was two blokes.

They objected to my high-handedness and accused me of that kind of hypocrisy whereby you *support* something you don’t really support because (probably) you read that this is right in the Guardian. They said that the Women’s Ashes was poor and I shouldn’t be pretending otherwise, effectively: also that you can’t force people to watch something.

I know what they meant and that there is such a weasley phenomenon at work in the Liberal Mind. And I suppose I fall into that category. But they were wrong.

Firstly I hadn’t said or implied anything about the quality or otherwise of the game. Secondly they misunderstood – probably wilfully – the essence of my disappointment. Not wishing to use too much battery time on the discussion, I signed off promptly –
Have a good day, Genghis.

With the SSE Swalec emptyish rather than fullish as Brunt and Shrubsole went about their opening business and in the knowledge, frankly, that on a purely economic level it made sense for supporters to take in both internationals, I expressed disappointment. Why not support the women’s match, even if you find it less dynamic or entertaining – even if the ‘standard’ offends you? Don’t get it. Unless #everydaysexism.

To clasp that nettley comparison – this;
a) it’s both faintly ridiculous and mildly dumb to compare men and women – they’re simply different
b) (if) levels of power are the central issue maybe something could be done on type/weight of ball and/or length of pitch – if we become sure that women’s cricket needs to replicate men’s by becoming increasingly about elite-level mega-dynamism. If we don’t, then maybe (wonderfully/hilariously/enlighteningly) women’s cricket will be a/the game for skill, subtlety and patience, as things develop.

Finally on that, things have developed. Meaning despite the ‘distance yet to travel’ inferred by much of the writing on the Women’s Ashes, cricket played by women and girls is a cause for celebration and it seems essential and right to support it. Not indiscriminately but support it. Sure the scores are markedly lower, sure the hitting is markedly less wallopacious, sure the event is of a different timbre – currently and maybe permanently. But there has been and there will be rapid ‘progress’ as wider opportunities for top level competitive play/training/competition emerge.

Finally finally, watching from directly behind the bowler’s arm, I loved it that Anya Shrubsole (who bowled a flawed spell, ye-es!) swung the ball further than anyone of any sex on that double-header of a day. I also really enjoyed Brunt’s Proper Fast Bowler Attitude from t’other end.

Throw in Sarah Taylor’s nonchalant excellence behind the sticks and there you have three reasons to be cheerful. Obvious Positives. Now if we (the English/Welsh) can sort the Buttler batting thing out – oh and the Lyth one – and then get to the fascistic world-governance scene-thing, imagine how fabulous cricket could be?

Dead Rubber?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Interesting how few folks seem to think the last Ashes Test is a ‘dead rubber’. Maybe the odd Croatian thinks that but most of us, despite the slam-dunkingly emphatic void where the competitive reality should be, can still feel the juices rising. The dander will still be up and the banter spiky as an echidna’s arse – as they say in Vauxhall.

It’s possible the Oval may be less of a cauldron than (say) Edgbaston was but even if us Poms do drift implausibly and non-demonstrably towards a rain-affected draw there will be meaning in some of this. Meaning for individual players – some of it life-changing – and meaning for the fans and for the game.

Pre- this final test, one rumour suggests Moeen may open with Cook and Rashid enter the fray, heralding multiple All New Possibilities for import or revelation.

Should this prove to be the case, it would necessarily imply medium-complex stuff – either the outright dropping (terminally or otherwise) of Lyth and/or a deliciously double-edged conversation with him (or about him) that may (who knows?) offer the hope that he would return should the second spinner syndrome no longer prevail.

How Lyth might actually read that hypothetical situation – even if there was a Scouts Honour-ability to any discussions with the coaching staff – is anybody’s guess; my guess is that he would publicly be A Brick and privately be pooping his panties. Being told however skilfully that the door is not closed is surely ver-ry nearly as cruel as being ruthlessly cast off?

‘Fella this is NOT ABOUT YOU. ‘S purely tactical – we’re looking at the options. So you go do what you do best… and force us to pick you.’
‘K boss.’  (*Cue manful trudge*.)

In contrast Moeen’s extravagantly rising star makes me think of Caesar and yaknow, firmaments. Except that there appears to be no fatal arrogance and no apparent threat to the man’s Polaris-like pre-eminence, despite his widely-perceived limitations as a bowler. Batting-wise, he’s creaming it: rarely have the fortunes around a tactical masterstroke gathered so beautifully as around the insertion of the Bearded One into the All Runs Are A Bonus zone.

Moeen’s multifaceted brilliance – stonewalling/stylishly gutsy/expansive and fearless with that bat, busy in the field, decent plus with the ball – has made him something of a darling for the fans and placed him absolutely at the centre of every strategy imaginable. You want an opener at eight or an opener at two or a counterattacking momentum-shifter hilariously and subversively low in the order? Here I am; me – Ali. Floating, stinging and doing just everything from that insurance policy thing (freeing everybody else up, right?) to just making this Test Cricket look pret-ty simple.

The quality of the clamour around Rashid these last few months tells us he is gorgeously ripe with potential. The Oval therefore provides another relatively de-stressed opportunity. All the selectors have to do is pick him: all he has to do is still the nerves entirely and tweak the ball fearlessly before giving it right old clout with the bat. Easy.

Bayliss and Farbrace must know they are lucky, luck-ee geezers to be offered another early chance to blood Rashid when the high-risk essence of the leggie’s game is mitigated favourably by circumstance – by the fact that the Aussies have been pre-battered. (Allez-loo.) There’s a strong case for playing a First Spinner alongside Moeen even if the conditions scream seeeeeeaaammmmerr!! Get the lad familiar with all this; work to be done in the Emirates and in South Africa.

But look, micro-climatic issues of selection, whilst providing all of us with ammo for the bantfest, may be less central to our Ashes Summer than the general level of public warmth. Allow me to indulge on this?

Some of you will know I’m proud to work for Cricket Wales. I’m charged (and I mean that in every sense) with going into schools (mainly) to fire up kids for sport.

As what we call a Community Cricket Coach I dredge up unseemly amounts of enthusiasm and energy and belief in the good stuff that cricket can bring. (Read earlier blogs or take my word on it; sessions in schools can be… powerful.)

I’m spookily on message with the cricket mission simply because it’s right and essential to get kids educated re sport – physically literate, if you like. It may be my job to say stuff like that but don’t go taking me for a government man. The more I see kids lit up by games the more I know we must make the case. Cricket is such a magical conduit for such a diverse and real and developing carousel of activity and learning that I’m happy to plant myself astride the whole sales-pitch.

I/we make a difference. We encourage and we coax a zillion skills into our players – from thoughtfulness to dive-catches. And yet…

It really could be that even my inviolable positivity shifts the earth a whole lot less than (for example) a magnificent Ashes series. A year of the Cricket Man’s coaching is a thing of daft and infectious beauty and some significant influence… but I ain’t kidding myself. Cricket on the telly, in the news, on the BACK PAGES is a whole lot more impactful.

What @cricketmanwales does is kinda great but not an Ashes series. Not an extraordinary and victorious Ashes series. Not like a Broady eight-fer or a Jimmy Jimmy visibly in his pomp. My lack of visibility works agin me.

In fact ALL the magnificent work that all of us Community Coaches do – and by God we do! – is wee-wee in the ocean compared to highlights or column inches that capture something of the sensaaaaaayshunull nature of this game, this rivalry, this victorious series. We proudly march to stir the grassroots (barmy)armies but we need drama and exposure – as do all sports.

Cricket doesn’t always get it. The Sky Sports conundrum epitomises difficulties around progress, pop-ness or whoredom. In a universe reduced to garishness and gathering market-share, this unique and superlative sport needs glorious, pitch-worthy moments to bung its smelling salts beneath the nostrils of the masses. We need to be on the news, in the news. We (England and Wales?) need to be heroically winning. Ideally.

We need unimpeachably brilliant role-models and we need them on terrestrial telly. Then the Cricket Man will work around that.

So the Oval is big. Big for Rashid/Lyth/Ali. Big for all of us. As a fan and as a ‘professional’, I’m looking for more from our guys. More stories and yeah, more glory.

Converting.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’ve always been a sportsman not a salesman. But now I have to factor in stuff from outside of that previously ‘natural’ territory where I just run/ran around innocently clouting or throwing or hoofing things. Things like ‘delivery’, things like ‘migration’ now muscle into my consciousness in a way that’s both a challenge and maybe sometimes a concern.

This is because I now work (as well as volunteer) in sport – as Community Cricket Coach for Pembrokeshire. Get the sick-bowl ready people because I’m gonna have to tell you that I’m absolutely all over this work; I love what I’m doing and I’m kindof defiantly proud of the nature and the impact of what us Cricket Wales Peeps are doing at the lily-white coal-face of the game.

I know, for example, that our/your Community Cricket Coaches are right now lighting up the lives of children – today, now. They are organising/running and fronting festivals wherein children play what we call kwik or festival cricket in the most fabulous and intelligently competitive way. In my own region we’ve clicked over from delivering sensaaaaayshunnal and bright and profoundly educational sessions in schools into this, the Festival Season, where most of my ludicrously freeform Good Energy pours into Big Days Out.

Recently we had 19 schools attending the Girls’ Finals Day. Except that they weren’t attending; they were gallivanting, they were giggling, they were smashing and sprinting and munching sandwiches too fast too early before springing up to bat/bowl/field. Each one batting in every single game; each one bowling in every single game – so sharing the experience, the opportunity in a way that utterly confounds the difficulties around How This Game Works for Everybody. Playing four or five games per Big Day Out.

Likewise at the Pembroke Cluster of Schools Festival, held at Pembroke Dock Cricket Club on an immaculately bright sunny day on their immaculately sunny ground, prepared as if for a visit from royalty or from Sky Sports.

Maurice and John and Andrew having plumped the cushions to offer unknown and unseen children a wonderful, cricketacious day, perhaps in the hope that some might return and fix themselves into the fabric of the club, perhaps simply because they’re good blokes who love the idea of kids doing sporty stuff, who understand the world this way. Eight schools here, including Orielton, a tiny ‘country’ primary punching mind-bogglingly above their weight in terms of achievement on the park.

Imagine. Stackpole and Cosheston and (in huge contrast) Pembroke Dock Community School; St Marys and Golden Grove; schools so extraordinarily diverse the gathering in-ness of the occasion was an essential part of the holistic magic. On twitter later one school reported its pride at the behaviour of their team, on a day when a zillion skills including attention, focus and thoughtfulness were called for just as much as rip-roaring expression with bat or ball. It was triumphant in its insidious charm; they always are.

At Haverfordwest CC – where the level to which the club ‘accommodates’ our Festivals is such that we should run out of knighthoods, never mind superlatives – the H’west Cluster gathered yesterday. In cool, cool sun. Fifteen schools, about 150 children, for more Mixed But Actually Simply Your Best Team-style action. (About 30 girls, I’m guessing.)

I, in welcoming the expectant throng, ban stress for five hours and ask the children how many batters/balls/overs/smiles is going to make this thing work? They emphatically assist with any concerns I may have and together we dart into the fizz and doink of the matches. We’re generous re wides and no-balls. Teachers score whilst The Coach wanders and monitors and encourages, mainly. Three groups of five teams at this one with top two proceeding to the County Finals. Lots of real cricket breaking out, with Hook Primary School notably prominent. Brilliantly so, in fact.

A taster for and of now. The summer mission to run successful days. Maybe to convert a teacher or Headteacher or two – nurdle them towards getting it. How could they not, in the presence of all this lifeskill-rich, learning-supportive activity? All evidenced (actually) by the total engagement of allegedly disaffected or disengaged children, or by the maturity and flawlessness of Bethan’s bowling action – learned at sessions in the school. Physical Literacy not so much embodied but ecstatically performed.

I make no apology for implying (or, okaaay ladling on) the notion that Festival Days are special. I have no doubt they leave a huge and almost uniformly wonderful imprint on hundreds of children… and that’s just in Pembrokeshire. Sporty children are stretched but supported by the appropriate scope and structure of the game. Competition is pitched just right. I really do pretty much outlaw stress – enforcing with targeted bantz or panfuls of encouragement.

Less confident or developing players get ‘a go’, an equal, significant go. It may be less impactful in terms of the score but nevertheless it registers on that Physical Literacy ladder and perhaps more meaningfully – within the thing that defies measurement – the confidence of the child.

Around and before these halcyon days I go into schools and deliver. I’ve written elsewhere about the essences of that work and remain clear of the value of that contact. Cricket in Wales benefits because many hundreds of children are exposed to a game they may not, in the age of Sky Sports, be familiar with and children get to play and learn with a spookily well-trained sportsgeezer. Me.

There is this year a further area of work for the Pembrokeshire exponent of the Art of Conversion. Under the outstanding and insightful guidance of Cricket Development Officer Matt Freeman I’ve linked schools sessions to setting up Cricket Hubs in three of our local Leisure Centres. So post the work in schools, children have been invited to continue cricket games with myself and colleague Ceri Brace at a facility down the road. We may be the only region adopting this pathway so let me briefly explain.

There is evidence that Yrs 3 and 4 at primary level are under-supported in terms of sports provision; often Yrs 5 and 6 (the top two years in primary, for those still thinking in old money) collar most attention and therefore funding. Given this, and the fact that we found most Pembrokeshire Cricket Clubs are at capacity, we decided to approach Leisure Centres to host winter/spring sessions for children aged around six to nine.

If some of these children subsequently wanted to migrate into a local club come summer, then hap-pee days. If not the sessions themselves would have an intrinsic value. Children do however get ‘signposted’ to clubs to enable the ideal, long-term, lifetime-in-the-sport scenario.

This pilot scheme has been successful on several levels. In Milford Haven 15-20 boys and girls have been attending weekly cricket sessions. At least one of them (I have no doubt there are more but await confirmation from other clubs) has come across to my own club where he’s developed into a keen and enthusiastic member. Intriguingly and encouragingly, this fella is not an obvious candidate; he’s grappled bravely rather than coasted towards cricketdom.

Down in Pembroke there are two lovely and contrasting stories. Two girls, one of whom I’d worked with school and the other who’s bowling was a thing of beauty (aged 8) at a recent festival. They both now attend the Leisure Centre where their apparently divergent learning curves are now soaring together towards the vertical. And they’re smiling; whilst exploring, really exploring and then de-constructing/re-constructing the possible. The word development barely does it justice.

Meanwhile Crymych CC posted a thank-you on twitter last night to some geezer calling himself @cricketmanwales following fifteen Under 11’s bouncing in to their junior practice. – good numbers for a deeply rural club.

This follows work from yours truly in Eglwyswrw and Y Frenni schools in the winter and sessions at Crymych Leisure Centre during the spring. I initiated those but Rhodri from Crymych CC took over, built numbers up, and Pied Piper-ed his posse over to the club he loves. Superb and successful model. Bringing me back to the festivals.

Tomorrow it’s Crymych. Eight Welsh-medium schools on an idyllic village ground at Glandy Cross. Weather set fine; red kites likely.

The case for sport – the case for cricket.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Anything to declare? Yes…

I work as a Community Cricket Coach for Cricket Wales. I get sport and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’m not impartial and I’m not tolerant, particularly, of the idea that sport is somehow narrow and only relevant to those who can run/jump/throw/catch. Neither am I going to define sport – other than to say that clearly it does not need to be competitive. It’s often most brilliant and transformative when acting upon young children and sometimes we barely recognise this.

I want to say something about this need to recognise/appreciate/understand what sport can achieve. How it can work upon the lives of young people; this is my area of ‘specialism’.

Forgive me but I’m going to get either my retaliation or my apology in first, dear reader, by saying that I have earned the right to campaign on this through a lifetime playing, coaching and sharing sporting experiences and by training, reading, observing. So whilst I am neither going to write nor argue in the manner of an academic and whilst I am easily de-flowered in terms of any scholarly authenticity, I’m expecting you to listen. Okay?

Imagine then, a bloke like me, charged with going into a Primary School to deliver four or six sessions of cricket. What might that look like? If classes are mid-twenties, some children may not ever have seen cricket and (let’s say) certain individuals may not actually be attending but for sporty activities provided by the school.

Yup – that’s right. There are children at this school (and, by extension, at plenty of others around the country/world, right?) who would likely truant if (let’s say) Mikey wasn’t doing his Free Running in the hall from 8 a.m to 9 o’clockish. Please note that in the Evidence for Sports Provision column. Fact – they queue (early!) for sport and this is what gets them in the building.

The essential tools in my kitbag – as well as bats balls and teddies, obviously – are;

1. My alarmingly irresistible good energy
2. A gert big heart
3. All that training around progression/physical literacy/the links to numeracy, to adding educational value to the game(s)
4. A stack of ideas (some planned, some responsive to how the group feels) around which a series of lessons are built
5. (In all innocence) a love of children. And the ability to communicate with them – make them laugh and listen
6. Information about what happens next. Which club or leisure centre children can go on to.

Some of that may need explaining. The unsound stuff about energy and heart I stand by completely. I want these kids to like me and latch on to the buzz that I can generate.

If that sounds like a cross between ego-mania and stand-up comedy then I can live with that. This work is certainly about performance, and/or projection, and/or role-modelling. But I am trained to think about getting a positive message, a dollop of praise into every individual young life. So I flit around whilst children are bouncing and catching and giggling, pointing at Sarah or Jack with a “Wadda Catch!!” or a “sen-SAAAY-shunnell dribbling!” I make them feel special because I am trained and built to know that’s important (that’s how I understand life, right?)… and because they are. Who knows, maybe next week they will want to attend because Cricket Man is in today?

There’s a continual flow between big ideas and micro-management, aspirations being both monumental and tiddly. Can I get these guys to communicate? Can I get that fella to hold a bat the right way round?

A bit more on the ‘hows’. I try to do the coaching whilst offering just a few questions rather than zillions of ‘snippets’ of quasi-technical advice. If I demonstrate catching I will say watch me and then tell me the things that worked. “You coach me”.

How did I stand? Did I have my ‘game face’ on? Hands? Did any of it work?

Then (almost as though it was planned) we find ourselves doing quite a complicated series of shuttles requiring memory/calculation/teamwork/co-ordination and (oh yeh) catching skills. And we make it a laugh – or a race if we want. (On that one, you try stopping some of them.)

So we construct games or activity which is cricket-based but projects positively and often powerfully into life-skills such as sharing, consideration, managing disappointment, even.

Not unimportant fact(oid); twenty something percent of what I do is around prompting ways to share the bat.  Think about that. Then maybe 50 percent is about capturing attention in a way that is designed to make the players better learners. Over time, children are challenged to devise or organise their own games; to develop understandings about what works for everybody and maybe not just me.

This is pretty grown up and philosophical stuff, right? But I am talking about Year 3 through to Year 6; sixish to eleven year-olds. Of course the challenges are re-calibrated according to the group but I am clear that as well as offering great healthy physical activity it is achievable (and right) to aim to;

• stimulate children to think and work together
• support literacy, numeracy and communications skills – oracy
• light up individuals re- their love of the/a game
• light up or foster a willingness to attend (in every sense) and to learn.

I’m thinking these are not only ambitious but generous and deeply (ohoh deadly dangerous word alert) civilised targets. Hand over ticker I can say that I am proud of the level to which we the Cricket Wales posse actively and practically endorse these values by coaching to develop the child at least as much as the game.

I’m reading lots of stuff just now that reinforces the argument that this (ohoh over-used word alert) holistic approach not only works for some immeasurable greater good but also, interestingly, for the individual performance. It seems that England and Wales Cricket Board mission statements towards making better people as well as better players are not just altruistically maaarvellous but predicated on the idea that well-rounded people often make great players.

So however unforgivably pompous or contradictory it may sound, it’s official. I am in the playfully daft-serious business of melding personal growth with clouting and running. Happy to be freeing the spirit, improving the learning of children and increasingly aware of the evidence legitimising what I do.

Meanwhile the cricket-specific objective of enthusing kids for the game and perhaps offering or (let’s hope) inspiring them towards playing more, more, more at the local leisure centre or club is symbiotically twinkling.

Post the Cricket Wales in-schools extravaganza, we always signpost children to cricket activity outside of school, led by ourselves. Rates of transfer from school to club vary but it may be that that greater figure, the number who start to get this sport thing, whom we are gathering in to a life-long love of activity – as opposed to those who will choose cricket specifically – is the one that delivers widest, most significant benefits. We naturally hope for both fascinatingly diverse but inevitably related boxes to get ticked.

I am inviolably optimistic – on this and everything else. But if you happen to be either doubtful or undecided, or if you happen to be making tough choices about what gives at your school, please consider what’s been said here.

Consider how fabulous is that very real possibility that a game or two with @cricketmanwales might yet be influential in turning Joe or Alexis or Sam towards a life in sport? And how big and necessary is that, for him/them/society/the NHS?

When their capacity to be a fit, happy and engaged child who enjoys (never mind attends) school really may be contingent upon the provision of Intelligent Games why not then support those games?

Frankly I don’t care much if this sounds like a sales pitch. Why wouldn’t I champion the case for sport? When I myself see daily the ‘anecdotal’ evidence that is children made vital, comfortable and engaged with learning via or in the form of sport. When I hear or read the clear evidence from academic or other, experiential sources.

With (for example) increasing obesity and despite challenges around school funding I absolutely and defiantly make the case for sport at the core of efficient learning. But there is evidence to back up these cries from the heart.

Good sports coaching develops what some academics are calling Personal Assets in the player, the pupil. Throwing a ball around may be a more enriching experience than you think.

A new season, a new challenge for @cricketmanwales.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Pembrokeshire’s very own Community Cricket Coach is known to hundreds of primary school children as The Cricket Man! (And yes, there generally is an exclamation mark in that greeting.)

Also known as Rick Walton, this particular coach has been bouncing into schools and clubs with a level of energy and enthusiasm that’s won him friends and supporters around the county.

Rick is both trained and genetically programmed to perform and/or coach sport, coming as he does from a distinguished sporting family. In a loose moment Rick might confess to a passion for both rugby and football but he is proud of and dedicated to his work for Cricket Wales. But what does he actually do?

For three years Rick (a.k.a. @cricketmanwales on twitter!) has delivered what he would like to think are dynamic and often challenging sessions of fun, cricket-based games into schools. Generally, he has worked in the primary sector but he has also been involved – for example offering Girl’s cricket sessions leading into the now widely enjoyed Lady Taverners competition – in all the secondary schools in the county.

The work has several aims, some of which may sound rather ambitious. Let’s start with the obvious;
• to enthuse children for the game – for healthy activity
• to offer a link between schools and local cricket clubs – and therefore sustain and enrich that activity.

Nobody would doubt that any sports coach is in the business of facilitating those two ideals but Rick is clear that the scope of his work – his responsibilities as well as his intentions – goes way beyond these fairly narrow sporting targets. So what about these, then, for aspirations?

• to stimulate children to think and listen and work together
• to capture their attention and make them better learners
• to support literacy and numeracy as well as ‘development’ in terms of the physical literacy framework
• to offer opportunities to devise games – and therefore develop understandings about sharing and about what works for everybody, not just ‘me’
• to light up individuals, some of whom may find academic work beyond them
• to provide both a kind of release and a way in to class work for children who have difficulty engaging.

Ask @cricketmanwales about all of the above and he would say simply that ‘daft games of cricket’ can and often manifestly do achieve all that.

Most recently Rick has been working in schools in Milford and in North Pembrokeshire. At Y Frenni in Crymych he not only led sessions indoor and out but hosted a genuine and delightful discussion about what a good game of cricket might look like. Children were asked to help sort out a hypothetical game – drawn out on a whiteboard – in order to discuss what a successful playground game might look and feel like. Their response was fabulous – intelligent, thoughtful, generous.

At Ysgol Gynradd Eglwyswrw, the Headteacher Mr Tim Davies shook Rick warmly by the hand after watching some of his first session.
“Brilliant” he said. “And I can’t believe how it was so much more than cricket!” Another teacher, on thanking Rick after he left the final session, described the impact of his work as “wonderful”.

Now because these things aren’t entirely thrown together, Rick had been signposting the children in the North of the county to Monday night ‘Cricket Hub’ activity at Crymych Leisure Centre (5-6pm, children Years 3,4,5 and 6 most welcome! Call 01437 776690.) Now established, it is hoped that these sessions will be ongoing.

Down in Milford, a similar approach was in place. Rick delivered three or four weekly sessions into Hakin, Hubberston and Milford Junior schools with a view to continuing the cricket at The Meads Leisure Centre. Subsequently 23 boys and girls aged 8-11 turned up to the first Cricket Hub night – making it a remarkable success. (Cricket Hub activity is on a Friday in Milford, from 5-6pm. Please contact The Meads – Milford Haven Leisure Centre 01437 775959 – for details or to book your child in.)

Rick’s work in Milford again demonstrated that cricket games can be hugely engaging and inspiring for children. He made a whole lot of new friends and received outstanding support from the respective Headteachers and the staff who assisted. And children really did wave excitedly every week as The Cricket Man arrived. Imagine how Rick feels when he sees that?

He tells me he feels blessed to be sharing his game. He tells me he is more convinced than ever that what his sponsors call the #powerofcricket is a very real, positive force. Now, word is he might be down Pembroke way next – there’s a potential Cricket Hub down there, alright.

So, will @cricketmanwales be visiting your school soon, I wonder?