Brighton College seeing increase in boys and girls in Sussex pathways

Former Sussex man Mark Davis has brought innovation to the cricket programme and facilities

Brighton College's focus on providing cricket facilities for its students all year around makes it stand out from the crowd, according to master in charge Mark Davis.

Davis, the former Sussex professional, has overseen the development of a full winter programme, with the construction of a bespoke indoor facility at its heart.

And it is that project which he feels has taken the school's cricket offering on considerably.

"When I arrived, we had no provision for offering a winter programme or being able to pull boys out of class for extra one-to-one sessions," Davis said. "The underground car park was going to be used to store our fleet of minibuses but I managed to convince the headmaster to convert the space into an indoor cricket centre."

^{Davis has been encouraged by the increase in boys and girls in the Sussex pathways (supplied)}

Davis was thrilled to discover Brighton College had made The Cricketer’s top 100 once again. "It's a great honour to be chosen– it's amazing and something which we don’t take for granted. There is still a lot of work to be done as a cricket school but a challenge we enjoy. We have gained a lot of ground on the other schools in Sussex and have committed a lot to both the boys' and girls' programmes," he said.

"We now have a lot of the boys on the Sussex age-group pathways and an increasing number of girls too. We've had girls join our programme from other schools in London, who were involved in the Surrey and Kent setups who then moved over to the Sussex pathways."

Girls' cricket at Brighton College is upwardly mobile. "Our girls are incredibly exciting. We have a lot of lower and upper fifth formers (years 10 and 11) playing in the first team, so it's a very young side and ensures we have a strong squad going forward," Davis said.

"Our under-15 boys went unbeaten in their block fixtures and are now moving through to senior cricket, the challenge now is keeping them engaged and helping them make that next step up. Our first team won all but the opening game of the season and have the added bonus of using the Sussex facilities during the winter, while our juniors use the indoor centre."

Brighton College now has four boys in the Sussex academy, which Davis notes hasn't happened for some time, describing it as 'encouraging’' It sounds like there is much more to come.

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