As Durham Cricket started the 2019 season under a new brand and in anticipation of the biggest summer of cricket, the season proved to be just that and more.
The Cricket World Cup final captured the attention of a nation as England won the trophy and Durham’s own Ben Stokes played a pivotal role in creating a unique opportunity to inspire the next generation of fans and players and grow the game.
Stokes, for more than six weeks, in the World Cup and in The Ashes series was a force of the game and helped give cricket a once-in-a-lifetime chance to leave a lasting legacy.
Durham Cricket’s development department, formerly Durham Cricket Board, ensured the impact of the summer was maximised in playgrounds and at all levels of the game across Durham.
In 2019, Durham Cricket continued to maintain a strong club network across the county, providing opportunities for girls and boys to play the game, attracted over 2,700 five to eight-year-olds to local cricket clubs and continued to inspire their youngest players through initiatives connecting them to the elite game and Durham Cricket’s first team.
Cricket World Cup Impact
The CWC arrived in Durham at the end of June as Durham Cricket’s Emirates Riverside played host to three ICC World Cup matches, including England’s final group game against New Zealand.
The Cricket World Cup Fanzone in Durham city centre created visibility for the sport to over 25,000 people on the last weekend of June and with three sold out fixtures at the Riverside, over 42,000people got to watch cricket live.
The game reached more people than ever before and created a legacy, which inspired many to take up the game as watches, fans or players in 2019 and will continue to impact the game in the future.
Schools
Durham Cricket delivered school activity in partnership with national cricket charity Chance to Shine and national governing body England and Wales Cricket Board to over 26,000 pupils in over 200 schools and through 78 inter-school competitions.
Chance to Shine, that support Durham Cricket to make the game accessible to pupils in KS1 and lower KS2, play an important role in inspiring children to take up the game by creating a pathway into ECB’s entry-level programme All Stars Cricket.
Durham Cricket recorded impressive transition rates of every 1 in 10 Chance to Shine participant continuing to play cricket in their local cricket club.
Durham’s delivery was recognised for a second year in a row at the Chance to Shine annual awards when Durham’s Lanchester EP Primary School was named the Primary School of the Year.
The school fought off over 5,000 other primary schools that have received the Chance to Shine programme during the last academic year to claim the award.
All Stars Cricket
Over 2,700five to eight-year-old boys and girls took part in All Stars Cricket across Durham this summer, more than any other year before that.
ECB’s entry level programme ran in over 60 clubs across Durham, giving children a great first experience in cricket.
Durham Cricket’s All Stars campaign led the way nationally in terms of girls signed up to the programme, recording the highest breakdown of female participants in the country– 26.3%.
Over 700 girls took part in All Stars Cricket, proving crucial for Durham’s long-term strategy to involve more girls in the game and make cricket a gender-balanced sport.
The All Stars campaign in Durham was the fourth most well-attended campaign nationally in terms of overall number of participants.
The programme, aimed at boys and girls aged five to eight, has been consistently growing across Durham in the past three years, and has been particularly important to increasing participation at a younger age and growing the junior game.
Women's and Girls' Cricket
Durham Women had their most successful season yet earning promotion to Division 1 of the ECB Women’s T20 League.
The team, led by Former England Player and Hundred Head Coach Danielle Hazell, finished second in Division 2 with five wins out of eight games to earn promotion.
In 2020 the Women’s First XI as well as the County Under-17 team will compete under a new name and brand, following the merger of Durham Cricket and Northumberland Cricket Board at these levels to create a united high performance pathway for women and girls in the North East.
The joint pathway will be headed by Danielle Hazell and will include the already shared Girls’ Academy to create a competitive pathway for the best talent in the North East, giving the region an opportunity to create and nurture a strong presence within ECB’s national competitions.
At recreational level, Durham Cricket expanded their competition offer by adding an Under-11 Girls League to their club competitions.
In the Women’s T20 League, Philadelphia Cricket Club retained the trophy after topping the table, ahead of runners-up Leadgate Cricket Club and third-placed Willington Cricket Club.
Durham Cricket also launched a junior Super 4s competition following the success of the senior tournament, first introduced in 2018 to strengthen the women’s pathway in Durham and bridge the gap between the T20 League and performance level cricket.
The junior competition gave promising cricketers the chance to play the highest standard of girls’ cricket in Durham, outside of county level.
Connecting grassroots cricket with the professional game
Durham Cricket’s Sticker Book – an initiative designed to welcome All Stars participants across Durham, Cumbria and Northumberland to Durham Cricket’s family – also enjoyed a fantastic success this summer.
The initiative which offers All Stars participants free junior memberships and discounted adult memberships saw more than 950 children and their families become part of Durham Cricket, a record take-up in the three years the initiative has been running.
Vitality U19 Club T20
In the Durham Under-19 Club T20 Tournament, Sacriston Cricket Club and Richmondshire Cricket Club made their way to the final at Emirates Riverside in a repeat of 2018’s final.
Richmondshire came on top, winning by 9 wickets under the lights of Durham’s Emirates Riverside.
Result: Richmondshire Cricket Club (87-1) beat Sacriston Colliery Cricket Club (86-9) by nine wickets.
Junior Cricket
In its sixth year, the DCB Junior League continued to run its five divisions, providing competitive opportunities for teams from U9 up to U19.
The Junior League introduced an under-9 format in 2018 and last season the U9 friendlies continued to grow as more clubs took part and continued to carry a powerful message across clubs that there is a clear progression path for young players from the age of 5.
Looking ahead to 2020, the new season will bring new opportunities to play with ECB launching a follow-on programme to All Stars Cricket for children aged 8 – 11 years old.
The new programme will make cricket accessible for even more children throughout the country and provide the next step for All Stars graduates.
In 2019 Durham Cricket adopted ECB’s Junior Cricket Format Recommendations at participation (within the Junior League) and at performance (in county age group cricket) level. The new format was received well across the county and ensured that children get the most out of the games.
Burnopfield Cricket Club reached the ECB U15 Club T20 Finals marking the first time in more than 10 years that Durham have been represented in national junior finals.