Schools must come up with some canny ideas

Phil Relf believes there are many reasons cricket in schools is in decline and he says the game’s administrators have to find ways of making it appeal more to youngsters.

The duration of the game, a lack of specialist know-how among teachers and the growing demands on their time all contribute.

However, he and former Kent spinner Darren Scott, who works as a coach at Kent College, have experimented using pink balls and he would like to see innovations like coloured clothing introduced earlier to capture children’s imagination.

He said: “Cricket used to be the main summer sport but that’s not always the case now. It’s mainly a grammar school game now unfortunately but that’s why Herne Bay High (where Paul Beeson is in charge of cricket) and us, are I suppose, beacons in the area.

“What you’ll find is that a lot of the schools round here think softball is a better option but while it’s a striking game, it doesn’t have the intricacies or the technical skill of cricket.

“Schools have got to be quite canny at how they market the game to kids.

“Darren (Scott) and I have played games where we’ve used a pink ball and it’s worked well, You can pick it up a little bit better and it comes off the bat a bit quicker if you play on a good wicket. Darren feels the cricket product for kids needs changing, get coloured clothing in a lot earlier, white or pink balls because that’s what they see on TV.

“It’s quite a nice spectacle so I think the kids quite like it. We need to chat to them and find out what is it they like.

“Sometimes, an 11-a-side 20-over game for a 12-yearold on a 22-yard pitch with the boundary miles away it is a deadly game.

“It looks daunting and it’s also pretty boring. If you think it’s April when the weather still hasn’t turned, you’re a kid, it’s your first game of cricket and you’re stood at mid-off and someone has hit the ball hard at you, you’re not going to get a bowl. It doesn’t sound attractive.

“I guess we’re typical of most schools. Football is our most popular sport, and during a typical lunchtime, there are kids kicking footballs everywhere but during the Champions Trophy, we started to see kids playing cricket, which is brilliant.

“Our cricket programme has excellent links with a lot of the local clubs and we’re proud that we’ve started to grow the game within the school over the last few years at a time when cricket in state schools has suffered.”