Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Culture, Media and Sport – in the House of Commons am 2:30 pm ar 8 Mehefin 2009.
Tony Baldry
Ceidwadwyr, Banbury
2:30,
8 Mehefin 2009
The cricket board's "chance to shine" programme is an excellent initiative, but it is able to get into only about a third of all state schools. Of the competitive matches it has organised, only a tiny percentage—about 4 per cent.—are played with cricket balls. How on earth are we going to beat the Windies, India and Australia in the future when so few youngsters are playing competitive cricket and when, of those who are playing competitive cricket, only a tiny proportion are learning to play with cricket balls?
Annotations
Michael Bourne
Posted on 16 Gor 2009 10:48 pm (Report this annotation)
Not even a third - yet. Another five years have to go before a third of all state schools are covered. Funds are limited and more money has yet to be raised.
Mr Baldry might like to know that in the early stages of learning by children under the age of 11 years or so, a hard ball would not be suitable. The use of a hard ball would call for proper (and costly) protection - pads, gloves, box, helmet. There are various kinds of balls of a sufficient hardness with which to teach younger children. The overwhelming majority of competitive games are those played by primary school children.
But, Mr Baldry, how many test or first-class cricketers, in the last fifty years, can you name that came straight from a state school, having learned the game there, and who never passed through club cricket at junior or senior level? For the vast majority of players, the game is learned at the clubs, not in schools. The same applies to players in the national and county schools cricket associations.
(By the way, it is the Cricket Foundation, the independent charitable wing of the ECB, that should be given credit for Chance to shine and not the Cricket Board, itself.)