The last 12 monthshas seen continued successfor the Gloucestershire Cricket Board (GCB) in the face of a number of new opportunities and challenges.
The successes included being named Chance to Shine County Board of the Year whilst the launching of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) national programmes has kept us on our toes.
Tasked with delivering All Stars Cricket and Women’s Softball programmes the team not only met but exceeded the exacting targets they were set.
In my nine years at the GCB the ability to meet challenges head-on and turn them into successes has been a defining characteristic of us as an organisation. I am proud to say thisview has been reinforced over the last 12 months.
The more directive approach from the ECB represents a significant change in their relationship with county boards and it is one that increasingly we will need to adapt to. I am confident that with the team we have we are well-placed to continue to deliver whatever is asked of us.
The team’s ability to deliver new projects was demonstrated by the success of All Stars – the ECB’s entry-level programme for five to eight-year-olds. With 1370 children across 42 clubs, Gloucestershire boasted the highest average number of participants per centre of any First Class county and was second only to Oxfordshire overall. The programme has been a huge success nationally and locally. Within Gloucestershire many of our clubs have seen a huge increase in youth numbers while others have been able to use All Stars to start or restart junior sections from scratch.
The other new national initiative to be successfully launched in the county was the Women’s Softball Festivals. Designed as a fun, sociable way for women to get back into cricket or try it for the first time, we saw fantastic events run right across the county. In addition to the four festivals, 13 clubs received six weeks of coaching from qualified coaches. In total 150 players from 17 different clubs took part. The momentum has continued during the close-season with 130 players from 17 teams playing in three indoor softball leagues.
The women’s softball scheme was part of a magnificent summer for women and girls cricket that reached a peak with England winning the ICC World Cup in front of a sell-out crowd at Lord’s. The tournament included eight matches at the Brightside Ground, Bristol. All of these included match-day involvement for local children as well as coaching in nearby schools facilitated by GCB staff in partnership with Gloucestershire Cricket and the ICC.
The inspirational summer of women’s cricket also included a maiden Kia Super League title for the Western Storm. The team includes a number of notable GCB connections including their manager - our very own Lisa Pagett - and Gloucestershire Women’s allrounder Danielle Gibson who was named in the 15-strong squad for the first time. Danni – who was also selected for the England Women’s Academy - has been part of our performance programme for a number of years and we hope she will be the first of many Glos girls to graduate to the Storm squad. There are already a number of other Gloucestershire players knocking on the door with Natasha Wraith and Charlie Phillips training with the Western Storm Regional Development squad during the winter.
Danni, Nat and Charlie were all part of the Gloucestershire Women’s side that secured back-to-back promotions during another successful summer for the county’s performance squads. On the boys’ side both the Under 12s and 13s won their respective Taunton Festivals, the latter going through the whole season unbeaten. The Under 17s reached the semi-finals of the ECB One-Day competition and there were also a number of individual successes. Will Naish – at the time just 14 – took part in the prestigious Bunbury Under 15 Festival representing the West. Under 17s Milo Ayres, Tom Price and Ben Charlesworthall played in the ECB regional Super 4s after impressing for Gloucestershire. It was also lovely to see another local lad – George Drissell - become the latest player to graduate from our age groups to the Gloucestershire first team. He joins a growing list of players to make that jump in recent years – a list that includes James Bracey who made his maiden First Class hundred for Glos in the penultimate match of the season. With Tim Hancock having extended his role in 2017 from GCB head of performance to head of talent pathway – spanning everything from Under 10s to Academy – I have no doubt we will see more players following in James’ and George’s footsteps in the near future.
One of the undoubted highlights of 2017 was being named County Board of the Year at the Chance to Shine annual awards. On handing out the award, the judges commented that it was not only for the last 12 months but for running an outstanding schools programme over a number of years. I was really pleased for Chris Munden and the army of GCB staff and freelance coaches who work so hard delivering our education programme and linking schools to clubs.
Our schools work continues to grow and evolve. With Chance to Shine now exclusively funding primary school delivery we are now in 189 primary schools and 18 secondaries. There have also been a number of exciting developments over the last year. In September 2017 we joined forces with the Bristol Sport Foundation to increase the number of schools we could reach around Bristol. We also brought out Active Futures - our first coaching programme that wasn’t solely-cricket-based. This multi-skills scheme is designed to help give children a broad foundation of physicalskills rather than specialising in cricket at a young age. To support this all of our GCB coaches have all become level two qualified multi-skills coaches. With the Chance to Shine programme falling in line with All Stars Cricket to focus on working with Key Stage One pupils, our coaches have also received a significant amount of specialist training to develop their skills with this five to seven-year-olds.
As a Board we continue to develop the county’s coaching workforce through running ECB Coach Education courses. In both 2016-17 and 17-18 we ran more level two courses than any other county in the region as well as a handful of Coach Support Worker and Activator courses. We were also the only county in the south west to run the coach development modules that sit between level two and three in successive years. The 2017-18 season also saw us run our second ever “Women’s Only” course in a bid to get more women into coaching.
Supporting and developing clubs continues to be one of our main priorities and there has been much to celebrate on this front over the last 12 months. For the past two years we have been able to support a record number of clubs – 29 in 2017 and 33 in 2018 through the ECB Small Grants Scheme. This has meant that more than £160, 000 – which includes £22,000 from the GCB - has been allocated to small-scale projects at our clubs during that period. Each year the region is also allocated a pot of money for larger-scale club developments. It is testament to us having dedicated club support officers - Eric Woodmason and John Peplow - that we have managed to secure the lion’s share of this funding for Gloucestershire projects in both of the last two years. This has allowed projects like the fabulous new pavilions at Dymock, Frocester and Bourton Vale to go ahead as well as securing new nets for Hatherley and Reddings, Bradley Stoke and Upton St Leonards.
Helping our clubs to achieve and maintain Clubmark accreditation (the new version) has been another big focus in the last year. 16 Gloucestershire clubs were awarded Clubmark status in 2017 including five for the first time. A further 25 passed their annual health checks. This was no small undertaking and I would like to personally thank our team of Clubmark officers who went the extra mile to support clubs through this process.
We have also sought to support clubs by adding to our list of official partners and sponsors –respected companies who are able to offer products and services to Gloucestershire clubs at discounted rates. In 2017 we were pleased to welcome top grounds equipment and machinery firms Lister Wilder, Dennis and Sisis to our roster of partners. We also added Stroud-based drinks firm bottlegreen and First Class Comms as sponsors.
Another success story from club cricket has been the way that innovative formats of the game have been used to better meet the needs of players and ensure young cricketers in particular stay in the game. In 2017 the Under 19 and Jelf Under 16 club T20 competitions continued to prove popular. And building on these competitions the brand new Jelf Under 15 Girls T20 Blast competition enjoyed a hugely successful first season. The nine-a-side competition – which featured coloured kit and music – was played over a series of festivals rather than traditional fixtures. 11 teams entered compared to just four in the equivalent competition on 2016. This clearly shows the value of being flexible and thinking outside of the box when it comes to finding the right formats to fit the changing needs of our players. 2018 will see the introduction of the ECB’s new youth formats in a number of our local leagues and it will be interesting to see the impact they have.
Looking ahead to 2018 there is much to look forward to, not least a new member of staff. I am delighted to welcome Andy Wheeler to the team as Super 1s Disability Development Officer – our first member of staff dedicated entirely to disability cricket. He brings great experience and expertise in this area and we look forward to working with him from April.
One of the most significant developments over the next year is the planned restructure of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and its proposed merger with the GCB. I have been working closely with the county club – and will continue to do so – in order to help them implement a restructure by the end of this year. If this goes ahead as planned we would then be looking at the possibility of unifying both organisations in 2019. A great deal of thought and discussion has already gone into the process and this will continue to be the case going forward. We feel that working more closely together will benefit both organisations – and ultimately the Gloucestershire Cricket family as a whole - across a wide number of areas.
Once again, I’d like to thank my wonderful team, our very supportive Directors and the vast number of volunteers that do so much throughout each year at clubs, leagues and within cricketing organisations. Without you, cricket in Gloucestershire would not be as successful as it is so my heartfelt thanks go to each and every one of you.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the very best for the 2018 season and look forward to continuing to work with you to develop cricket in Gloucestershire.