Street scheme expands to meet inner-city demand

The fate of Cheetham Hill CC is far from unique in English recreational cricket. Traditions are proving hard to maintain. The club, heading north from Manchester city centre, folded last year. There is talk of revival, maybe in 2016 or 2017. But when it comes to cricket the club website is largely moribund, the ground has been out for hire and most of the activity at this sporting complex surrounds football, squash and old-time jazz nights.

Running an amateur cricket club can be a burden, reliant on hours of voluntary labour, but something is clearly out of kilter. Travel across the city, a couple of miles from Old Trafford, home of Lancashire, and Chance to Shine Street, the project that is bringing cricket to thousands of young people in inner-city areas, is pulling in youngsters galore.

They are predominantly but not exclusively from South Asian communities. They are identified by an enthusiasm to play cricket. That enthusiasm is being satisfied by Chance to Shine.

Chance to Shine Street, a serious project getting serious results, is expanding its programme next year and is currently drawing up favoured options with county boards to determine how to build on schemes in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Dewsbury, Hull, Liverpool and Manchester.

It has now reached over 38,000 youngsters since 2008 and is taking cricket to young people who have been excluded, often because of a lack of social cohesion, from cricketing opportunities. There is unease that, on the margins at least, the tension caused by the Paris attacks could undermine the steady progress towards building that cohesion in traditional clubs that have approached the task with uneven levels of commitment.

As many as 85% of participants since 2008 were not members of cricket clubs. Enough of them make the progression to traditional forms of amateur cricket to help it flourish in challenging times. Beyond that, the scheme fires a sense of belonging amongst all cricket lovers. Some players have even reached county age group sides. One day somebody might play for England having first hit a ball with any seriousness on a Street programme.

Rehaan Rather has seen his numbers swell markedly since Cheetham Hill CC called it a day, hopefully temporarily. Rather, who played for Lancashire at Under-14 and Under-15 level, works in a tough area including Moss Side, Longsight and has since expanded into Cheetham Hill to try to fill the gap. In more than four years, more than 2,000 young cricketers have benefited from his commitment. Those efforts were recognised at the Kia Oval when he was named as the outstanding coach at the Chance to Shine Street annual awards.

He runs four youth projects, five young adult projects and now has 25 teams in an indoor league. Indoor games are played with a tape-ball - a tennis ball wrapped in tape, something youngsters with a South Asian background do not need telling. This is cricket in the community, the sort of commitment that is essential if the game is to retain a presence at the centre of sporting life in England and Wales. The clubs that do not embrace it are the ones that are dying.

"I sincerely think there is a lot of cricket interest that still isn't being touched in Manchester," Rather said. "There is often a lack of social connection between the cricket club and the Asian communities.

"In a cricket club it is often if you are not good enough you won't get any opportunity to play cricket. It's important not to turn anybody away. I'm involved with an amateur club in Manchester and for those not selected we create hardball games, softball games. We should be offering some form of cricket for those who are not picked.

"I played a good standard of cricket with Lancashire age groups at U-14 and U-15 level but I had friends all around me who were less fortunate. None of my friends were playing at all, so it isolated me a bit. I think that was one of the factors that stopped me taking it more seriously. I would turn up for 11-a-side and have 10 strangers in front of me and at times it was quite daunting. It's part of playing high-level cricket which I understood but I also wanted to play with my friends."

Luke Swanson, chief executive of Chance to Shine, said at the annual Street awards at Kia Oval: "If cricket conjures up images of leafy villages, green fields and leisurely teas, Street cricket challenges you to think again. This is cricket for anyone to play anywhere, at any time of the year.

"This is cricket played with real passion, spirit and skill, and the impact goes way beyond the sport itself. This is cricket as a vehicle for developing life skills and bringing communities together.

"That impact is enduring because our players progress to other things. They join cricket clubs; they get picked for district and county age group teams; they become coaches; they volunteer to bring other people into the game; they develop skills like confidence, teamwork, resilience and respect - skills that are going to matter whatever they go on to do.

"I'm excited to say that - thanks to the continued support we receive - an expansion of our Street programme is going to be a central part of those plans. We have secured funding for the Street programme for the next two years, and we are right now working with County Boards to identify some new locations where we will launch new Street projects next year."

Chance to Shine programmes cost around £5m to run each year. Sport England continues its funding of the charity's work in secondary schools, Lyca Mobile has come on board as a major sponsor of the Street project and the ECB has committed an annual £1.25m investment for Chance to Shine until 2017.

You can find more details about Chance to Shine Street here