the kids into the clubs
CRICKET:Jon Swift
IT IS not beyond the bounds of reason to suggest that cricket is a way of life as much as it is a sporting pastime. The cricket club has become a home-away-from- home for more players, ex-players and just pure lovers of the game than perhaps any other sporting institution.
And it is – rightly – at this hugely important level that the United Cricket Board (UCB)is addressing a concerted campaign as part of their development programme. “We have to get the clubs involved,” says Ali Bacher. “The leap from development cricket to provincial level is just too great. The cricketers emerging from the development programme need to play club cricket. We have to fill this relative vacuum.”
True. But the existing problem is a bit bigger than that, as Bacher’s own apprenticeship in the game attests to.
“I used to go every week to Balfour Park to play tennis,” he recalls. “One weekend they were short of a player in the fourth side.” Bacher was roped in at the age of 13. It started the playing career of perhaps the most cerebral skipper ever to lead his province and his country.
“We need to get the kids to the clubs and get them playing at the lower league levels,” says Bacher, mindful of the fact that the generation of emerging players from the disadvantaged communities have still to reach that part of the cycle where they will be taking their own sons along to watch the game at weekends.
And this, as much as the very necessary priority of getting the development kids playing – and mixing – is lacking.
Bacher points to the immense pressure on facilities at the Soweto Cricket Club Oval and the initiative taken by the Roodepoort Cricket Club to accommodate players from the parts of Soweto bordering the West Rand municipality. “They’ve managed to get the kids to come along and it’s worked.”
There is, however, more to the involvement of the clubs than merely putting out the invitation. There are commitments of both time and money that will have to be made. Equipment costs money. Transport for youngsters – especially those from areas a distance away from the participating clubs – needs organisation. In short, you have to get the kids there, you have to kit them out and help nurture them … and then you have to get them home safely.
It is a tall order and one that will need some UCB financial backing and some Bacher evangelism to get moving and ensure the momentum is maintained.
But as Bacher says: “It has to work. If it doesn’t, nothing works.” Indeed.