Scarborough College marching onwards in spite of adversity

Head of cricket Piet Rinke has masterminded another year in the Schools Guide despite facing a number of challenges

Piet Rinke has been a busy man at Scarborough College over recent years.

Combining his role as head of cricket with the responsibilities of a housemaster and, until recently, acting director of sport, there has been little downtime.

Now, however, things are starting to return to a level of normality, and Rinke has time to fully focus on cricket. His sense of relief is palpable, as is his pride in Scarborough making the Schools Guide cut for 2023.

The school has been named in the top 100 despite the major blow of seeing a devastating fire rip through their famous old pavilion.

^{The school has close ties with Yorshire and Lancashire with a number of players heading in each direction (supplied)}

"It's a massive honour being recognised and is a big drive for the programme," Rinke said.

"It gets our name out there, that we are taking cricket seriously and the programme is only growing. The programme has grown from seven boys on our gold programme to 19, and we now have 32 on the silver programme as part of our centre of excellence.

"We run three sessions a week of small group training sessions and one-to-one sessions, with exposure to different coaches. We run a full pre-season and start off on analysis of where they have come from and targeting what they want to achieve, looking at short, medium and long-term goals and ambitions so they all have something to work towards."

Rinke is trying to expose the players to a professional setup, ensuring they acclimatise to an elite environment.

"We've got quite a few students on our books who play for Lancashire and Yorkshire, working on a similar pathway as our programme," he said. "Equally, they can send their students here, who are looking for an educated based training programme… we are a very good option for them to send their kids our way and vice versa."

^{Scarborough College 1st XI (supplied)}

Girls' cricket is also significant at Scarborough College, with every girl given a chance to play the game during the summer term.

"We've got a full fixture card for girls' cricket and is in keeping with the boys' fixtures," Rinke said.

"The area is relatively strong in terms of girls' cricket, with all our local derbies hosting games throughout the age groups. We have players as young as under-13 being exposed to hard-ball cricket if they are good enough. The transition from soft-ball is a challenge but one we look to develop in order to increase participation."

The Cricketer would like to thank Durant Cricket for their ongoing support of our schools cricket coverage. For more on Durant Cricket, including booking a site visit, please click here

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