20 Oct 2015 | Cricket
Glamorgan and Cricket Wales lifted the ECB Diversity Project Award at Lord's last week for the Cricket Without Boundaries initiative, selected ahead of other excellent programmes being delivered by Sussex CC and Leicestershire CC.
The aim of the Cricket Without Boundaries project is to make cricket more accessible for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in Cardiff and to create a thriving BME Cricket network capable of increasing and sustaining participation in cricket.
Glamorgan and Cricket Wales BME Co-ordinator Ali Abdi tells us a bit more about the scheme.
Ali, congratulations on the award, can you tell us more about the scheme?
The project was about getting more people from BME communities into cricket. We ran pop-up cricket successfully across six or seven communities in Cardiff during the summer and now its about pushing that into the Winter with a girls programme as well.
Asian youngsters are known for their love of cricket the world over, why is there a need for this initiative?
There's a lot more on offer nowadays to young people so cricket may have fallen off their list of choice, so we've been trying to make it more accessible, unstructured and getting them excited and fun with caged cricket. Its then about signposting them towards clubs in the community to help develop them further.
What's the aim, as there's never been a professional Asian cricketer at Glamorgan?
There are two players now from the local community in the Glamorgan development squad and in Muji in particular who is from Grangetown there is a role model for the younger people so there are signs of progression and change as part of the diversity project there is going to be an event, a kind of talent day, where young people from these communities will be invited to The SSE SWALEC, trained by coaches and to find out where the talent is.
There's plenty of talent and cricket being played out there isn't there?
There is a lot of talent out there, so this programme is reaching out there to develop them further. There is still a lot of cricket being played out there and the idea is to make the Swalec more open and accessible to these communities and we're doing that by developing them through this programme.
Do they see county cricket as not for them?
We're breaking down barriers slowly but surely and the young people are now seeing The SSE SWALEC as their Stadium as well.
The example given previously was Yorkshire who had this huge Asian population but were unable to develop a professional, but that's not the case now, are more willing to play the county game and could that happen in Wales?
Yes I think so, I think it's a matter of culture change as well, a lot of families themselves in terms of their children, education and attainment hinders them from wanting their children to pursue sport, so it's a balance for them to play cricket and still have an education. We need to keep doing more to raise that awareness within these communities and help change perception.
What happens now?
Initially it was a summer programme, but we're now looking at rolling out a winter programme too, as a result of the success and hopefully go strength-to-strength along with a girls programme being implemented too to encourage more girls to play cricket, so the sky is the limit.