News
23 August 2022

Girls Community Cricket Programme inspires 1000’s to take up sport

It has been a momentous summer already for women’s sport. Football finally came home with the Lionesses beating the Germans at Wembley to claim the Women’s Euros last month, and women swept to gold in a host of events at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. With interest and participation in women’s sport reaching unprecedented levels, women and girls across the country are now looking to a new generation of sporting heroines. Sport has always been central to the Aldridge Foundation’s mission to equip young people with transferable skills and attributes that will help them throughout their life at school and continue benefitting them as they go on to further education and the world of work.

Developing skills through sport

It is because sport is always a great leveller. When you are on the pitch, at the crease or in the starting blocks, your background doesn’t matter, but your mindset does. In that moment, no one is asking where you live or whether you can afford designer clothes, but instead, they want to know whether you can hit the top corner, find the boundary or be first over the finish line. In sport, what matters is your passion, your determination, your appetite for risk, teamwork, creativity and problem solving.

That is why we invest heavily in sport programmes that provide people with the chance to use sport to harness these skills. Over the last 12 months, our Girls Community Cricket Programme in Brighton and Hove has been another huge success. Ranging from primary and secondary school programmes, through to breakfast and after school clubs, holiday camps and club competitions, the programme has given girls and young women from across the area, the opportunity to learn how to play cricket and how to be part of a team.

The community programme is delivered in partnership with Sussex Cricket in the local community, schools and at the Sir Rodney Aldridge Cricket Centre and grounds at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA). Sussex Cricket are also our partners in delivering the Aldridge Cricket Academy programme where students are coached and play cricket alongside their academic studies at BACA.

The impact of the programme is best summed up by one of the young girls’ parents who explained that cricket was “her first ‘real’ sport activity of any kind and she’s loving it. Without it I am not sure at all we’d have got her into any sport.” And the proud grandfather who explained that “My granddaughter tried cricket for the first time and she absolutely loved it and has not stopped talking about cricket ever since. We came home signed her up for the next camps, the hub and a local club.”

The Girls Community Cricket Programme continues to grow with more than 1000 girls engaging with the initiatives each year. The programme also benefits from longevity. Depending on a girl’s age and the initiative she is enrolled onto, she may be involved in the programme for a few days or for a few months. This enables our coaches to open the girls and their parents’ eyes to the range of skills needed to be successful in sport, but also the variety of job opportunities that exist in sport. It isn’t just the 11 who take to the crease. The coaches, the sport scientists, the technologists, the nutritionists, and the sports masseurs are all integral to how elite sport works. We open their eyes to all of this on the course.

This matters because without this programme, it is highly unlikely that girls from these communities would ever have had the chance to play cricket, to learn valuable skills through understanding how to be good at cricket and who knows, perhaps go on to careers in and around cricket in the years ahead.

For women’s cricket these are exciting times. It has recently been announced that England will host the Women’s T20 World Cup in 2026. Our aim is to see if we can inspire and support girls from our programme and through the Aldridge Cricket Academy programme, to potentially be part of this historic event. Whether they are or not, they will have learnt valuable skills that will support their progress in learning and life.

It feels very much like a moment for us to ensure that this summer of 2022, like the Olympic summer of 2012, provides the foundation for a legacy that endures and inspires even more women and girls to take up sport, so that they can develop key life and employability skills that have the power to improve their lives.