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The Lancashire Cricket Board has been an innovator when it comes to providing opportunities for people with impairments to play cricket.
For four years, the Board has funded – through its grant from the Cricket Foundation - a programme of coaching for young people in Special Schools across the whole of the county.
In 1999, Lancashire were the first county to officially adopt their team for players with physical or learning difficulties as a Board representative side – and were rewarded when Lancashire became the first winners of the ECB County Championship. Under the guidance of Team Manager and Coach Pete Edmondson, the county went on to repeat their success again in 2000 and 2001. Several of the young players who had been identified through the schools coaching programme were among those winning the opportunity to play on the Test Match wicket at Trent Bridge.
Two of the players have qualified as ECB coaches. Alan Foster is now a Level 2 coach and 19-year-old Andrew Whitaker became a Level 1 coach over the winter. Both players managed to secure Millennium Awards funding, through the charities SCOPE and Whizz-Kidz, and were able to extend the coaching programme to bring in more schools and stage extra tournaments. Andrew's project concentrated on young people, like himself, who had attended mainstream schools but had been unable to take part in school PE and Games lessons. He hopes to have assembled a Lancashire Junior squad by the time his project ends on September 30th
Visually Impaired Cricket
In May 2000, the Board agreed to support the establishment of a team for visually impaired players after being approached by Gary ONeil, a partially-sighted player from Preston who had represented England in the first Blind Cricket World Cup. With the help of funding from The Primary Club and Preston Galloway’s Society for Blind People, recruitment and coaching of players began in winter 2000/1. The team, known as Lancashire Galloway’s, entered the British Blind Sports National League in the 2001 season and – also under Pete Edmondson’s coaching – reached the final of the cup competition at Lord’s.
Mark also won an international call-up for this summer’s series against Pakistan.
More Opportunities Planned
Lancashire’s Cricket Development Officer with lead responsibility for disability cricket is Bobby Denning who works closely with the English Federation of Disability Sport officers in the North West. Bobby is currently establishing a North West Disability Cricket Development Group whose aim will be to develop cricket for people with physical, learning, visual or hearing impairment across the Region. The Group will include CDOs from Lancashire and Cheshire but will mainly be made up of players, coaches and volunteers with a vested interest in expanding the game.
“I see this as a self-help Group,’ says Bobby, ‘not a talk shop. It will be a group that does things – like finding funds, getting more coaches working with disabled players, arranging tournaments. That sort of thing.”
“ECB has just published its National Strategy for Disability Cricket and this new group should enable us to make sure that Lancashire – and Cheshire too, perhaps – can stay ahead of the rest of the country in implementing that strategy for the benefit of people in our area.”
Pioneering Disability Training for Coaches
Bobby – along with Pete Edmondson – has also been a leading figure in the development of the new ECB Coaching Module for coaches wishing to work with disabled players. The module, which was piloted largely in Lancashire, has been under development for more than two years and the two Lancastrians have delivered practical workshops at the Staff Coaches Conferences in 2000 and 2001 as well as at the World Cricket Coaches Conference. The module will be officially unveiled at Lilleshall on Sept 21st.
