The WCB half term Chance to Shine Youth Street cricket tournament is a great opportunity to catch up with WCB Community Participation Manager Eaton Gordon. February is the perfect time to take stock after a busy and successful 2021, but also look forward to some excellent projects in the pipeline for 2022.
“It’s an exciting time for our Community Participation team,” says Eaton Gordon. “Obviously, we were delighted to have been named, along with our colleagues in schools, as Chance to Shine’s Cricket Board of the Year in 2021. We want to continue building on that success during 2022 in a number of areas, including girls’ cricket, the Ramadan League, wellbeing projects and the ACE Programme to name just a few.”
Eaton, how would you summarise 2021?
For much of 2021, we were getting back to pre-Covid levels of activity. Our community projects participants have missed a lot of cricket over the last two years, so it’s been a case of getting that all back up and running, and re engaging with the participants. Our team of Community Coaches have been relentless, working hard to get cricket back on again for our participants.
The best thing about 2021 for me was seeing the growth in girls playing cricket in our community projects. I have been involved in girls’ cricket for many years (Eaton coached the Warwickshire U11 girls as far back as 2012) but now we are seeing more girls coming to all our community programmes. We have had a decent turn out of girls playing alongside the boys here at the tournament this morning. For me, that’s been the biggest plus of today – seeing them take part and compete. We haven’t seen that before and I think it’s a direct result of the rise in the profile of women’s cricket. Continuing to grow the number of girls participating across the board will be central to our plans for 2022.
Looking forward to 2022, what other key community projects will your team be delivering?
Ramadan League
We are currently busy planning the 2022 Ramadan League. Obviously 2021 was the first time we ran the Ramadan League and we were working with Covid restrictions in place. It provided the opportunity for under 18 cricketers to play street cricket at Edgbaston at night after breaking their fast during Ramadan. This year, our focus with the Ramadan League is in the following areas;
- Stabilise the tournament at Edgbaston, opening it up beyond CTS Youth to include a format for adult teams as well
- Make some adaptations for a related event for girls
- Bring the Hundred ball format into some element of the competition
- Create a solid base for expansion in 2023 to other venues beyond Edgbaston, when we have tested the enlarged Edgbaston format without Covid restrictions.
Focus on Wellbeing
In 2022 we want to extend our focus on wellbeing, alongside cricket, in all our community projects. After the effects of the pandemic and lockdowns on people in our region, we want to bring positive messages on mental health and wellbeing into everything we do – Street cricket, Glow in the Dark cricket, Women’s softball festivals etc. We will be using a combination of the excellent Chance to Shine Life Skills programme, plus relevant local contacts we can work with in partnership. Our team of Community Coaches fortunately includes Waqas Khan, who has extensive experience of wellbeing from pastoral roles in schools and has recently joined the NHS, in a specialist mental health capacity. The pilot we are running here today during our CTS Youth cricket camp, providing wellbeing workshops to participants in between their matches, is just the first of many such initiatives we have planned.
ACE Programme
Having successfully introduced the ACE (African & Caribbean Engagement) Programme into Birmingham in 2021, our objective for 2022 is to grow the programme in the West Midlands and expand the activities at our Handsworth Hub. We will host another Open Day this year, on 3rd June at Handsworth CC. The focus of this open day will be to grow the programme in the older 11+ age group. We will be back in local schools, providing coaching and a clear pathway to our ACE sessions at the Handsworth CC hub. I am also excited by our ACE partnership with the National Asian Cricket Confederation, which we are hoping will involve a match between the ACE Academy and the NACC Academy this year.
Women and Girls’ Programmes
As I mentioned earlier, our intention is to keep growing the numbers of women and girls participating in our community cricket projects, whether that is in our Street sessions, Glow in the Dark cricket in secondary schools and festivals, our women’s softball tournaments or our Bollywood cricket groups. There is a session to suit all ages and ranges of ability.
My WCB colleagues Mina Zahoor and Gabby Basketter are busy organising more and more sessions to meet the demand for women and girls’ cricket, much of it inspired by The Hundred last year. Having the Birmingham Phoenix team on our doorstep was an important influence in 2021 and I am sure it will continue to be the case, as will be the inclusion of women’s cricket in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games this summer.
In many ways, the women’s game is leading the way in the development of our community programmes. For a number of years, we have run Glow in the Dark cricket festivals for girls. It’s an exciting format of street cricket, played in the dark, involving the use of specialist UV equipment and kit. We are now going to introduce Glow in the Dark cricket into our other Street programmes, for boys as well as girls.
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It’s clear to see the huge range of community projects Eaton is responsible for delivering at WCB. He also provides the linkages between them, sharing knowledge, ideas, resources and best practice. It is entirely typical that Eaton has given this interview whilst simultaneously coordinating the results for the half term cricket camp he is running. He’s been giving the interview, keeping an eye on matches and writing down scores, occasionally breaking off to give direction either to coaches or participants. Everything happens without any drama, and everyone is happy. Partly this is a result of Eaton’s own understated personal leadership style. He doesn’t seek the limelight, but everyone knows he is in charge, and he is respected by coaches and participants alike. The other factor is the incredible team of loyal, highly capable, coaches and colleagues Eaton has built around him over a number of years. With Eaton at the helm, and such a great team on board, 2022 should see the WCB’s community projects flourishing.
(Photo credit – Mohammed Arif)
