NEWS
Over the last two weeks the Cricket Forth Valley Under 12 and 14 squads have been on tour to Yorkshire and Cumbria respectively.
The Under 12 tour to Yorkshire included watching a T20 Blast between Yorkshire and Worcestershire. We also went on a tour of Headingly with the players being shown areas in the ground generally reserved for County players. We managed a game against a local club side which they managed to win quite comfortably.
The Under 14 went on tour to Cumbria playing games against East Cumbria in Carlisle and West Cumbria in Cockermouth. The lads played against very good teams whose players were mainly Under 15 with at least eight of the Cumbria players having played County Cricket.
The tours were a success and it was all about given the Forth Valley players an opportunity to experience different conditions and broadening their cricket knowledge.
Forth Valley Sportsman’s Dinner
Saturday 21st March saw the inaugural Forth Valley Sportsman’s dinner, with guest speakers Paul Nixon (ex England wicket keeper batsman) and Grant Bradburn (current Scotland coach and
ex New Zealand international) in attendance. The evening’s festivities were marshalled by the very entertaining Doc Morton (Stirling C.C.C.)
50 guests experienced a great evening listening to stories from Paul’s career including his debut for England and his approach from an Indian bookmarker. Grant kept the audience entertained by
teaching them Maori!, giving his thoughts on the World Cup and his aspirations for the Scotland team moving forward.
On Sunday Paul lead a master class with thirteen keen cricketers at McLaren Sports Centre (Callander), where he put them through their paces with various different drills and exercises. All who
took part went away with big smiles on their faces, having enhanced their skills.
The weekend’s activities culminated in raising over £700 for grass roots cricket.
Ian Shaw CDM (Central, Angus, Fife & Dundee) commented ‘ it was great to see that everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly on the night, and that we raised a great amount over the
weekend. A massive thank you to all who helped make the weekends activities such a great success, including Doc Morton, Paul Nixon, Grant Bradburn, Stirling County C.C. and the
caterers’.
CRICKET SCOTLAND HONOURED IN ICC EUROPE AWARDS
Today ICC Europe has announced the winners of the Pepsi ICC development Awards for the Europe region, with Cricket Scotland winning a hat trick of awards.
For the third successive year Cricket Scotland was awarded the Best Overall Cricket Development Programme Award for its work in a number of different areas. The Summer Squad Coaching Programme was a great success which included over 3,400 sessions and 4,100 coaching hours to over 50,000 juniors across Scotland, participating in cricket through the club-school link coaching programme. The programme engages 17 development groups, over 80 clubs, over 350 schools, and over 28 local authorities.
The organisation has now collected the European Development Programme Award for the eighth time, with the first awarded back in 2002.
The overall development programme also included a national schools competition which involved over 350 schools, 60 new coaches went through the new ECB certificate courses and the first `Last Man Stands` competition was started in Edinburgh.
Cricket Scotland’s Development Manager, Ian Sandbrook commented, “We are delighted to receive the news that Cricket Scotland has won this prestigious award. In what has been a huge 12 months for cricket in Scotland this award just adds to the growing momentum and profile of the game.”
“There`s no doubt that the real heroes in winning the award are the huge number of volunteers who continue to passionately move our game forward. Good people are the key to any success, and we`re extremely lucky in Scotland to have this in abundance. There`s no doubt in my mind that if we continue this approach of working together more success, both in the grassroots of the game and at international level, will come our way.”
Natalie Hamblin picked up the Women’s Cricket ‘Behind the Scenes’ Award for Scotland for her work as a coach at both junior boys and girls level, but also as a coach at her local women’s club, Galloway Ladies CC. Natalie has been instrumental in setting up a team at Castle Douglas High School and Dalbeattie High School and getting girls to engage in cricket who otherwise would never had recognised cricket as a sport to engage in Cricket Scotland’s Women’s Development Manager, Kari Carswell, said, “I'm thrilled that Natalie has won this award. She puts in a huge amount of time, effort and enthusiasm into all her coaching and organising.
Galloway CC have found a real gem! Volunteers are so crucial to the ongoing development in cricket, not just women's cricket but cricket and sport in general.”
Photo of the Year for 2014 was awarded to Ian Jacobs’ image captured at the Pepsi ICC Europe Division 2 held in Essex, England in June 2014, who has worked previously worked alongside Cricket Scotland. It captures an acrobatic catch, at one of Europe’s most important pathway events to the ICC World Twenty20.