The new £55million School of Science and Sport has allowed their cricketers to work on their fitness in the high-tech strength and conditioning suite, and on their cricket skills in the basement, which has been converted into an indoor nets facility
A bit like the motor industry, cricket at Brighton College is building a hybrid future.
The independent school a stone's throw from Brighton Pier has lost the use of its 1st XI cricket pitch for the last four years due to the building of the sumptuous £55million School of Science and Sport, which was completed in 2020.
But the school have used the time to relay the square on the historic ground and install 10 hybrid pitches, which will give wickets longevity for both matchplay and practice – setting the school up for years to come.
It also places Brighton College at the cutting edge of pitch preparation, alongside first-class counties in introducing such part-synthetic pitches, which are intended to recover quicker provide more pace and carry than a purely grass wicket.
"Once the square settles down it will be up there with the best grounds in the country," says head of cricket Mark Davis. "It really will be something special.
"The main thing is the hybrid pitches just allow pitches to come back better after use, and it means we can play more matches on the main square.
"We’ve had a few years of playing quite a few away games, and we can’t wait to get back on our main ground."
Action from Brighton College's cricket programme [supplied]
The college also have use of cricket pitches at their Jubilee Playing Fields a short drive away, with beautiful views of the South Downs behind the ground. This year's match against MCC took place there.
Added to that, the new SSS building at the historic school site has allowed the college’s cricketers to work on their fitness in the high-tech strength and conditioning suite, and on their cricket skills in the basement, which has been converted into an indoor nets facility.
That is in addition to the college’s longstanding access to Sussex CCC's indoor school at the County Ground in Hove. Few schools enjoy such close links with a neighbouring county, especially with Davis involved at Sussex as a player and coach for 17 years.
He says: "The new indoor nets have been great. It's allowed us to take kids out of lessons for an hour and a half for winter nets."
Brighton College is probably best known for its unparalleled track record of producing girls’ cricketers, long before the wider English game started to invest seriously in women’s cricket. Clare Connor, Holly Colvin, Sarah Taylor and Freya Davies have all gone on to play with great success for Sussex and England.
Brighton Girls' 1st XI are currently captained by Ella Lockhart, who plays county cricket for Kent Under-15s and her club cricket for Tunbridge Wells. In 2018 she was the youngest ever girl to score a century for a Kent age-group team, aged 11 years 198 days.
Davis says Brighton are blessed with a very strong intake of current Year 9 girls, which means they should be set for four or five years of the same crop. Perhaps some of Brighton’s current girls will start breaking through to the regionalised women’s game over the next few years.
It is all a juggling act at a school which was named UK School of the Decade by The Sunday Times in 2020.
"I'm not sure why we’re so strong at that age-group – it's a mixture of factors," says Davis. "Parents like the school because it is academically-driven but with a strong sports scene.
"We do try to juggle everything. Brighton is a very academic school and parents send their kids here expecting good exam results.
"We have girls playing hardball at a very young age, which means when they reach Year 9 they're experienced in hardball cricket. And you tend to find that the good netballers and hockey players can also play cricket well. Our best players are playing in boys’ teams too."
As Davis speaks, he is preparing Brighton for the annual end-of-year BOWS Festival, also featuring Oakham School, Wellington College and Sedbergh School. The festival, held at Wellington this year and alternating between the four proud cricketing schools, is approaching its 15th anniversary as a high-quality finish to the school season.
Brighton boys play on a competitive schools circuit, and their 1st XI has been strengthened by the acquisition of a couple of recent additions on cricket scholarships from state schools, which the college offers for boys and girls at 11-plus, 13-plus and 16-plus – an oft-overlooked factor in the debate about private school dominance of cricket. And in late June the college Under-15s won the Oxford Festival for the first time in the school’s history.
Ultimately, though, Davis says it has simply been a joy to resume a full programme of cricket after two years impacted by the pandemic, with Brighton edging back towards 120 matches a year as they were pre-pandemic.
"Everyone's just delighted to be back playing cricket again on such a big scale.
"Yes, we had about four or five weeks this year where availability was impacted due to exams, but if it’s a choice between having fixtures during those times or not, then obviously I'd choose fixtures, and the chance for our boys and girls to play more cricket."
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