New pathways for young cricketers...

THIS year’s winter training programmes for our girls and boys county age groups and performance groups have taken on an added importance, and also an added enjoyment and a sense of thankfulness having had the winter in 2020/21 wiped out due to Covid-19.

The start of this winter has also seen a slight ‘reset’ in our girls and boys performance pathways; the entry into the younger girls county age groups have been widened and extended in order to capture more girls into our programme and to increase the amount of contact time that they spend in a county environment.

This can only be good for the girls and women’s game in general and has also strengthened the importance of participation programmes such as All Stars and softball festivals which have fed the under-11s girls group with players that have a real passion for the game.

The older boys age groups have seen the squad selection process extended with more entry and exit points into the programme in order to enable better player decisions to be made.

The group sizes have also been trimmed so that we are able to invest in those players that we feel have best potential to move up to the next level.

With regard to the next level, we continue to deliver our Boys Emerging Player Programme, a programme which provides more in depth and individualised support to those players that we feel have first-class Academy potential, with Warwickshire being our first-class county partner in the delivery of this.

This programme is replicated on the girls side with a Girls Emerging Player Programme which is linked into the Central Sparks Regional Academy.

We have been very fortunate to have been able to deliver batting and bowling sessions for selected players on our boys pathway which has seen additional technical and tactical input designed to improve the players’ games further.

The MCC have supported a free programme in the south of the county which is aimed at young people from state schools with potential to play County Age group cricket; an excellent programme which makes county age group cricket more accessible to a considerable number of talented young people.

The seamless pathway from county age group cricket into the Staffordshire set-up has been created with the establishment of an under-21s side which provides opportunities not only for those players who have been involved in our under-18s side, but also those who have impressed in league cricket in the county.

The summer will see four fixtures for the under-21s with excellent opportunities for all involved to further their journey into the senior set-up.

Staying on the senior side of things, the women’s side will have an expanded playing programme for the summer of 2022; a T20 programme at the start of the summer will be followed by a 50-over programme with a regional final taking place at Moseley in September.

Our men’s seniors are seeing incredible interest and have been hard at work in the winter nets; we’ll be looking to run two over-50s, two over-60s and an over-70s side this summer, which will be a fantastic achievement.

We are all looking forward to the summer, a summer that will see some fantastic opportunities for players in all of our representative sides.

A mixture of formats, opposition and ECB competitions await, supported by a strong network of coaching and scouting to ensure that our players receive the best possible chance to further their games.