A Lot of Ground to Cover

Jane Cable delves into the world of the Hampshire Cricket Board

There is a great deal of cricket played at – and organised from – The Rose Bowl. Not only the Hampshire professional squads and Academy, but just about every other sort of cricket in the county is run from here. Not by Hampshire Cricket itself, but by the Hampshire Cricket Board.

The relationship between Hampshire Cricket and the HCB is often misunderstood. The Cricket Board is funded by the ECB and runs cricket development and the recreational game across the county. Schools cricket, age group cricket and disability cricket all come into their remit.

The links with the professional game are close, as Cricket Development Officer Mike Pollard explained to me. “We work very closely with The Rose Bowl, for example as we speak there’s a County Under 17s match taking place. They provide facilities for us to play, we work closely with the ticket office to bring clubs and schools into the ground on match days, they allow us free space for meetings and of course our office is here. Our relationship’s got a lot closer over the years, which is beneficial to both parties. In addition we hope that the better players from the County age groups will eventually feed into Bobby Park’s Emerging Players Programme.”

The HCB has a lot of ground to cover with relatively few personnel. Ben Thompson is Cricket Development Manager who is responsible for the whole team and Mike deals with girls’ cricket, schools and clubs to the north of the county and around Winchester. His colleague Greig Stewart looks after disability cricket, the volunteers and south east and New Forest clubs and John Cook manages the coach education programme and organises district cricket festivals. They are supported by two administrators and four community coaches.

Mike’s own workload gives an excellent flavour of what the Hampshire Cricket Board does. “Every year it’s getting bigger and bigger, with the schools’ competitions, the Kwick Cricket competitions over the summer, and our 14 outdoor schools’ festivals which take place all over the county. This year we’ve had well in excess of 200 schools taking part at Year 6 age group level. There are 90 schools taking part in the girls’ competitions, which is about 15 up from last year, so all in all the primary schools are doing really well.

“We also run a state schools’ twenty20 competition with the final taking place on the nursery ground at The Rose Bowl. It’s run over two age groups [years 7 & 8 and years 9 & 10] and we have about 35 entries for each, but it’s an area that’s been declining over the last few years, mainly because the private schools are so dominant.”

Getting girls playing cricket is a subject very close to my heart. “Perception is the main barrier” Mike explains. “People think that girls can’t play but now the England Women’s team is doing so well I think the perception is starting to change. We’ve got quite a few girls playing cricket with 14 or 15 clubs across Hampshire having a girls’ section and my role is to get them playing in competitions. The biggest challenge is getting them games so I’ve set up leagues they can play in. There are 10 clubs playing in the Hampshire women’s league which has probably doubled in the last three years.

“Our community coaches go into schools from September to December and recruit girls for the clubs to do winter training and then play matches in the summer. We’ve done that for two years now and as a result seven new clubs have started girls’ sections – and we hope we can keep increasing that. There are a couple of girls who are showing real potential and we are hoping it won’t be long before we see a Hampshire playing breaking through and playing for England.” The highlights of the 2010 season to date for the Cricket Board include girls from Oakley Primary School in Basingstoke winning the national final of the Kwik cricket competition, which was a first for Mike. In disability cricket, the hard ball team have won five out of five matches and are top of their league, and a visually impaired team has been set up and who won their first match.

Securing the funding for the state schools’ twenty20 competition from the Hampshire Cricket Youth Trust was also important – something to bear in mind next time you see the Golden Gamble ladies making their way around The Rose Bowl on a match day. The Hampshire Cricket Board may be at the sharp end of improving standards and increasing opportunities to play cricket across the county, but we can all do our bit.

Jane Cable

Back to news