'The school is seeing a clear increase in the depth and quality of the cricket on display. Many factors have contributed to this, including growing interest in women's cricket thanks to the success of England'
Guildford High School have embraced cricket with open arms.
The sport was added to the curriculum in 2019, with the large uptake prompting the all-girls school to engage Ben Collins as their cricket specialist for both junior and senior sessions. The school now boasts over 25 cricket teams, providing a constant supply of talent for local clubs, and attracts over half of the pupils to extra-curricular sessions.
And in June of this year, they took their programme one step further by embarking on the school’s first ever cricket tour: a long weekend in Brighton for 24 pupils.
Taking the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the sport, the students attended a Friday night T20 Blast fixture - Sussex Sharks versus Gloucestershire - at Hove before playing an Under-13s and an Under-15s match against Hurstpierpoint College. The girls also found time for an internal match and an impromptu game of beach cricket before heading back to school.
Guildford High School beach cricket [supplied]
"It was all selection-based," explains Collins, "so it gave the students an incentive to work hard. They had four weeks up to the selection to perform well in lessons and fixtures, be keen and improve. All of them wanted to be on the tour.
"The standard of cricket across the trip was really high – we'll definitely look to run that fixture [against Hurstpierpoint] again. And the internal game, it was great to see the Under-15s mixing with the Under-13s. It was nice for team bonding and seeing the older girls saying, 'Wow, you’re really good!' to the younger ones."
Addressing the off-field pursuits, director of sport Keely Harper said: "[Going to a match] at the start of the tour really inspired them. Some of them had never seen a high level match. We had hoped to get to a women’s T20 – and that’s still on our agenda – but they got really into the spirit of it.
"We were right at the front of the family stand with our four and six cards, they asked loads of questions and were really in awe of the quality. We were going to leave early but they were so into it that we stayed.
"As for the beach cricket, we thought it would be half an hour, having a little hit before we went out for tea. But we were at Brighton Pier for over an hour, playing a little tournament with mixed year groups and proper softball matches – it was meant to be their downtime!"
Brighton Tour June 2022 [supplied]
And while on paper Brighton isn’t the most exciting place for a sports tour, Harper believes it was the perfect destination for the school’s first trip since before the pandemic.
"This was our first tour for a couple of years and for many of the younger ones – our year 7 and 8 pupils – they’d never been away from home before because of Covid, so being a small tour, it allowed us to cater for that and look after the girls more," she said.
"We really enjoyed being there with them, seeing the girls in a different light and getting to know them outside of cricket, particularly the younger ones who we don't know as well because of the pandemic. And sport does so much for the girls; we had so much good feedback from the parents and students. They all want to go back next year!"
The school are also seeing a clear increase in the depth and quality of the cricket on display. Many factors have contributed to this, including growing interest in women’s cricket thanks to the success of England, support from the school’s cricket-mad headteacher, and the enthusiasm of the staff in picking up and delivering a new sport.
However, for Collins, the key to the school's rapid growth and success is the amount and variety of cricket on offer to pupils: "We teach cricket from reception to year 10. As they start so young, by Year 2 or 3 the pupils are really engaged and going to local clubs. In the senior school, they have one lesson per week and two extra-curricular sessions.
"We do softball cricket, pairs cricket, tornado cricket, diamond cricket. For the lower-ability groups and the pupils who don't want to know the ins and outs of the technique, it’s mainly games with skills incorporated. With the extra-curricular sessions and high ability pupils, we'll focus on skills and game-related practice and scenarios and do more with the hard ball."
"It's very accessible for everyone," adds Harper. "Going from a sport like rounders where everyone’s involved all the time, if we’d gone straight into hard ball with all levels and abilities, I don’t think we'd have had the same uptake. Year 7 and 8 all play and then they get a choice, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the number of girls continuing to play."
The school have seen huge intake in partipcation, fielding as many as 5 teams [supplied]
However, such enthusiasm does bring its challenges, with Harper and Collins often struggling to find schools with enough teams to match Guildford’s demand. They managed the problem during Covid by creating internal 'Super Leagues' on week nights but with normal fixtures back underway, Harper is keen to find opportunities for all of the girls to play.
"We try and rotate teams – our C team might actually be our E team, just to give everyone an opportunity to play – but it’s important to get that balance. We don't want to play a weak team and disrespect the other school, but we want to let them all play. The sport is still growing, and we are a bit limited fixture-wise.
"We want to keep girls playing sport. We don't want to say if you're not in the A, B or C team then you can’t come because you won’t get a match. That’s not the message. We want them to do as much sport as possible, leave school and keep playing cricket. That’s our biggest challenge: managing expectations and catering for everyone."
Additional fixtures are, therefore, high on the school's list of priorities with other future plans including introducing more of the girls to hardball cricket, building two additional outdoor nets to cater for demand, upskilling the staff – "it would be great to get Lydia Greenway in again. We need to invest in ourselves to give back more to the girls", and, perhaps most excitingly, an overseas tour.
"It's certainly on our radar," said Harper. "We want to play the great cricket schools and be in the position where kids and parents are prioritising cricket as the tour they want to invest in."
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