Wayne White shares professional hopes for Emanuel School charges

Former Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lancashire player backs youngsters to be "knocking on that door"

As an academically-focused school in London, overseeing cricket at Emanuel School comes with specific challenges.

"We have some pupils who play cricket 24/7 and others who play it more as a social thing, and that’s a nice balance to have," says director of cricket Wayne White.

"We do feel the pressure of the academic side. But we've had a good buy-in this year to the idea that some pupils can switch off to play their sport sometimes, then switch back on at exam-time. That balance is always there, especially in the upper-age groups.

"We've moved up to training all year round. We play across two sites, so there's a fair amount of travel. At weekends we try to keep fixtures fairly close between similar co-ed schools.

"We've just brought in Sam Lavery as our director of sport. That's a great appointment. So with Sam, myself, Adam London and Mark Stear that’s a strong portfolio of coaches. And we're trying all the time to up-skill our academic staff to help us run midweek cricket. We're building all the time."

White brings to his role the benefit of a 12-year professional career with Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lancashire, plus nigh on a decade in National Counties cricket. Last season White, who has just turned 39, captained Cambridgeshire to promotion in the three-day Championship and won the East Anglian Premier League with Sawston & Babraham CC.

White loves red-ball cricket above all, but for a time Emanuel did pare all cricket back to T20. They are gradually phasing back in a healthy diet of 30, 40 and 50-over cricket too.

One area where Emanuel have been strong is in girls' cricket.

"We continue to put really strong girls' sides out. We have some girls in the upper ages of Surrey pathways.

"But we need to make sure we stay ahead of the curve. We had a headstart, but it’s very competitive in this area now.

"One way we can be better is to enhance links with clubs, so that our girls play more of that are maximising their cricket savvy for those tight games.

"There's never been a better time to be a women's professional cricketer, and I reckon we could have few of ours knocking on that door soon."