I am delighted to be asked to write a short piece for the NACC newsletter, writing about my journey within cricket as well as my role with Cricket Wales.
Sports and in particular cricket have played a major role in my life and continues to do so to this day. My first interaction with cricket took place in a local park in Grangetown when I was introduced to tape ball cricket by my brother and his friends. Since then, I have been in a craze with the sport, and I was able to start my cricketing journey at Llandaff Cricket Club formerly known as Welsh Asians Cricket Club. From there I was able to make a move to Cardiff Cricket Club and go onto represent Cricket Wales at age group level, Glamorgan Academy, Wales Minor Counties, Cardiff MCCU, Glamorgan 2nd XI, St. Fagan’s Cricket Club and currently Newport Cricket Club. Throughout this journey I have also had the opportunity to coach at a variety of ability levels and age groups for the clubs I have played for as well as within my local community and I was also the first Cardiff born cricketer of South Asian descent alongside with Prem Sisodiya to be included on Glamorgan Cricket’s Academy.
My dream since I was a child was always to be a professional cricketer, however being able to be able to influence young people to engage in a sport which I love would be just as rewarding. A few years ago, I was made aware of the importance of having positive role models and people that care within the community. As an aspiring young cricketer in Grangetown, many young boys and girls would come up to me for help with their cricket and since then I have made a conscious decision to be a positive influence for the young boys and girls in my local community and not to isolate myself.
As soon as I was made aware of this opportunity with Cricket Wales to make a difference for the BAME community in Cardiff and Newport as well as other areas in the country, I thought that this would be a fantastic opportunity to give something back to the community that supported me so well.
The main responsibilities of my job are as follows:
- Create and set up street cricket activation to run schemes in inner city Cardiff and Newport, to create local street cricket opportunities and signpost talent, indoor, winter and all year-around provision
- Connect all street and local ‘pop-up’ work as satellite projects to mainstream cricket clubs
Working with identified cricket clubs to:
- Build and grow junior sections, e.g. All stars and Dynamos Cricket
- Build Women’s and Girl’s cricket within these clubs.
The focus, however, for me in my job is not to create professional cricketers from the inner-city areas of Cardiff and Newport or other areas of Wales, but rather to give young girls and boys the opportunity to express themselves through cricket and to enjoy the beauty of the sport, giving them an opportunity to develop themselves as well as meet with and interact with new friends and people. When I was a child, cricket was played constantly in the local parks across Grangetown and Riverside were as kids we would play from midday until it got too dark to pick up the ball and then we would go back the next day and do it all again, unfortunately as I grew older the numbers began to drop as the responsibilities of life crept in for a lot of the kids in the parks who began to find themselves or full time work or education. The sport of football, due to its appeal across all seasons of the year, with both artificial and grass pitches began to grow in popularity across the South-Asian community in Cardiff and Newport, resulting in a massive decline for participation in cricket.
That is something, that myself and Cricket Wales are hoping to change as soon as possible with the main goal in mind being sustainability in the long-term. In the short while, I have been in this role with Cricket Wales, thankfully we have been able to set up the following activities to improve participation in cricket:
- Pop up cricket at Grange Gardens- Due to the popularity of football within Grange Gardens due to the artificial 3G football pitch that was built in partnership by UEFA in 2017, these sessions took a little while to get going. For the first couple of weeks, there were only a couple of children at the sessions that we were running, but thankfully over time through constant exposure and promotion, these sessions have really kicked off, with numbers now getting to around 15-20 children per session every week. They are targeted for boys and girls between ages of 5-11 years and within these sessions there have been a variety of children from all ethnicities and cultures with kids from, Yemeni, Pakistani, Bengali, White Welsh, Somalian, Indian and Romanian background taking part.
- Pop Up Cricket at Riverside Park- The sessions at Riverside are the ones that have taken off on social media and have been extremely popular, with numbers getting to around 20-25 children per session every week. The sessions themselves are targeted for the ages of 12 to 18 years, allowing for more technical skills to be taught.
- Women’s & Girls’ softball cricket at Sophia Gardens- One of the main aims of our work was to increase female participation and it was something that I saw as one of our main challenges as due to religious and cultural reasons it was not a session that I could run as the sessions were targeted for women who were 18 years of age and over. However, due to the brilliant work of Ayesha Rauf and Alia Khan, these sessions have really taken off with numbers getting to around 15-20 women per session. These sessions are run at the Indoor Centre at Sophia Gardens and are completely free of charge. A big shout out to Glamorgan Cricket and Cricket Wales for their constant support.
- Inter-faith league at Sophia Gardens- Another popular activity within our work in the Inter-faith league. The league itself is a 6 a side league and is played with a taped tennis ball. Once again, thanks to Glamorgan Cricket and Cricket Wales there is no charge for these sessions, and everything is completely free. The league itself had a great response with multiple places of worship getting in touch to enter a team, unfortunately due to Covid regulations we were only able to enter 4 teams into the league. The teams are made up of the following local places of worship; Gurudwara, Temple and two local Masjids.
- Dynamos Cricket- Due to the funding provided by the ECB, we have also been able to offer a free of charge Dynamos Cricket programme, that can run for up to 8 weeks, in partnership with the South Riverside Development Centre and Esther Yeboah Afari, who is the Go4Girls Co-ordinator at the development centre. These sessions are going to be run by Esther, alongside other activators and a Cricket Wales female coach.
- Working with Primary Schools- I have also contacted a variety of Primary Schools within Cardiff and Newport, in the hope of working in partnership to offer cricketing activity to young boys and girls.
Thankfully, we have been able to set up all this activity in the space of a couple of months, however this is only the start of our journey. Cricket Wales and myself in the long term hope to create a plethora of volunteers, activators, qualified coaches within the inner city communities of Cardiff and Newport with the aim also of inspiring children to take up cricket for life and encouraging parents to sign their children up for national programmes such as Dynamos and All-Stars Cricket.
