What cricket can offer this summer

What cricket can offer this summer

Cricket is NZ’s most popular summer sport. Over 50,000 primary and intermediate school boys and girls play cricket for their schools or junior clubs.

From the introductory MILO Have-A-Go Cricket programme through to the varying formats of hardball, junior cricket the concepts of flexibility and adaptability have been encouraged to ensure maximum participation and fun.

Flexibility means that the once Saturday dominant game, whilst still played on weekends, is now also played midweek in the evenings during the summer. This has allowed the multi-use of facilities and enabled a large contingent of parents to become involved as coaches at times better suited to their routines.

Parent availability is the key to their children’s participation.

Adaptability through game modification has enhanced the premise of ‘less is more’. That is, less players in a team (i.e. six or eight) means games are usually shorter, but each player’s involvement is much greater.

Players only develop when they have contact with the ball – whether batting, bowling, wicketkeeping, stopping, catching or throwing.

Because there are more gaps, there are more chances to score runs, there is more running as there are less fielders, and there is more opportunity for each player to have a go at all aspects of the game.

What specifically is available to support cricket in schools?

Cricket development personnel, known as the MILO Summer Squad, are present in each cricket association to form partnerships with schools. They have a wide range of programmes and resources at their disposal to foster student, teacher and parent involvement.

Organised MILO Cricket Skills Awareness Lessons are run for year two to five classes to provide youngsters with a ‘taste’ of the game and its skills.

Promotional packs are available for the children, and manuals, videos/DVDs, CD-Roms (‘Cricket in the Classroom’), and resources (‘Backyard Cricket Fun’) have been produced for teacher use along with the NZ Cricket Skills Challenge.

The latter has been designed for year seven and eight students. It comprises a series of lessons to test youngsters’ fundamental cricket skills against a set of easily measurable standards and achieve a bronze, silver or gold award in recognition of their level of performance.

This challenge has proved extremely popular with either whole intermediate schools being involved or neighbouring primary schools using it as the basis of a ‘top school’ event.

On the playing side NZ Cricket has a clear pathway for boys and girls with a progression from MILO Have-A-Go Cricket, through MILO Kiwi Cricket to varying forms of modified and competitive junior cricket.

MILO Have-A-Go Cricket is an introductory programme for six to eight-year-old boys and girls. The emphasis is on fun, participation and learning the basic skills of cricket.