“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” Kurt Vonnegut
Good Morning Everybody!
Incarcerated in a local asylum during the week, our sectioned 1st team wicketkeeper Rob sent me some interesting reading around why young kids seem to to give up so early and far too easily at cricket.
It is something we coaches have puzzled over for years and this season we see a predictable and depressing recurrence. Whilst we may have healthy numbers at the early stages, our drop-out rates continue to be alarming.
The piece in question is not rocket science but it does offer an insight into the huge challenges faced not just by cricket but by recreational sport in general. Indeed the same author writes equally convincingly regarding rugby.
I wrote much the same many years ago – Ch24 – in my Booker failed nomination Fifty Not Out. Perhaps a worldwide circulation of 100 explains why my message was lost?
The article draws an obvious question; if the grassroots cannot provide the players of the future then what hope of sustaining our clubs? And, if football have introduced walking football, then will cricket have to do the same as we lurch to our dotages.
Of course, some would argue a few have pioneered walking cricket locally.
Starting from the assumption that cricket is a tough sport to learn let alone master, the author outlines a common scenario faced by anybody who has coached at junior level; the disparities in standards are vast and have widened beyond imagination in recent years.
In truth, most sports are hard and the majority of us that participate never reach more than the level of enthusiastic mediocrity. We learn to savour the odd high and drown the frequent lows.
Having played football for over three decades, by the time I retired I still could not trap a ball and my career goal tally was stuck around the single figure mark.
Useless I may have been but what a bloody marvellous time I had amongst so many other entertaining, enthusiastic, occasionally psychotic and equally crap players; by the time we had enjoyed a few beers, we were all world-beaters.
Back to the cricket piece and it’s main theme is that we now have two distinct levels of junior cricketer. This may have been the case for a long time but never has it been so obvious, exacerbated by the lack of opportunity for so many.
One has a cricketing dad and has been born into the game; the other’s only experience is a once a week at his club, school sport having vanished with the dinosaurs. He/she is about to leave primary school and can barely master catching and throwing a ball.
I pity the kids of today who can barely throw a few yards for they lack the year-round opportunities we were granted.
Although we practised throwing at cricket sessions, in late summer we turned to hurling crab apples at the bus conductor stood by the open door; by Bonfire Night we were assaulting old ladies with bangers raining from the skies.
In winter we had snowball fights so a weak arm meant a pummelling.
For the majority it is a mountain to climb to get to a level of competence where he/she can survive even against experienced and still fiercely competitive old lags in senior cricket.
For them there is no street cricket and even if there was who would they play with or against? Over 90% of kids are educated by the state where the provision of sport is broadly abysmal with little chance of meaningful aspiration and competition.
Early into my coaching life I remember seeing several boys from our juniors with cricket bags over shoulders and this in January; they were the lucky ones attending Bradford Grammar School.
In the state school sector how about this from a parent commenting on Facebook last week about the state school his lad attends that “has **** with a soft ball off 15 yards at the moment (do they talk to clubs, read any ECB guides?)”
The school in question is my old secondary where we did play cricket albeit on a “testing” strip of rolled mud. We learnt to survive well before the advent of helmets.
Promoting cricket as I do in primary schools there is a pitiful lack of physical literacy on show in the state school sector.
Add to this the fact that most state schools out-source sport now to external companies who come in offering a generalist approach and what chance of kids developing technical competence to compete?
It is an exercise in box-ticking that represents a failure of successive generations and if the desired outcome was a “no winners” environment then they have achieved it.
You might conclude that the chances of clubs producing sufficient quality club cricketers is remote and you would be right.
The ECB’s Chance To Shine (C2S), which I promote, is laudable in that it is better than nothing but, ultimately it is a blind exercise in number chasing. However, there is an alternative as I have witnessed this last month.
All of the primary schools I deliver C2S to are broadly of a similar demographic but one stands head and shoulders in cricket abilities than the rest.
The reason is not to denigrate the others merely that the school in question has a teaching assistant who is an ex-league cricketer on duty every lunchtime. How else to keep the kids occupied and pass the time than a game of cricket?
It proves several things; kids will play sport if allowed: skills develop with repetition: the existence of a school team to aspire to is positive and sport needs to be delivered by specialists rather than generalists.
Another truism is that the more affluent the area, the better chances of at least some cricket provision but sport should not simply be the preserve of those who can afford it.
And there is no more guarantee of the privileged making it upstream into the tougher waters of senior cricket. Breaking into a man’s game was always tough but today’s kids simply quit too easily.
The writing is writ bold and clear without a radical rethink from top to bottom.
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