Yorkshire and Lancashire benefit from Queen Ethelburga's floodlit cricket "USP"

School's ability to play outside traditional season leads to county age group representation for pupils

One of the greatest pressures schools face is when to fit in high quality competitive games – especially when inclement early season weather thwarts the fixture list as was the case in 2024.

This isn’t a problem at Queen Ethelburga’s, where their floodlit ground means cricketers can play into the autumn.

"It's one of our main USPs," says lead cricket coach Ben Gibbons, whose charges also have access to a brand new pavilion too. "It's different to other schools because we’ve got three months where our pupils go off and play club cricket but can then come back and get another full month out of their season.

"I ask them to embrace the opportunity. For our students who have experienced it for a few years it becomes natural, but I always go back to the point of how many other pupils don’t get to play floodlit cricket.

"A lot of the time we’re finding a lot of schools don’t seem to do cricket in September, whereas we've got competitive games against clubs and other representative sides going on right at the back end of the season."

And that's paid dividends too, with both the Under-14s boys and girls sides reaching North Yorkshire finals. A number of boys are on the books of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland, while some girls on the programme are finding themselves in regional representative sides too - despite hardball games only having been introduced in the past year.

"With the girls, we now want to take it to the next step of thinking more about the game. They're often really talented sportswomen who excel at two or three sports, and their development is something we’re really pleased with."

That commitment to excellence is taken seriously off the field as well, with those on the school's Performance Sport Programme getting access to cricket as part of their school day. Sessions are tailored to strength and conditioning, diet, matchday preparation, mental health and more.

But there's also room for social players too, including those who don’t come from traditional cricketing nations.

"Our demographic of students in the school is a diverse international community," says Gibbons with pride. "We've had a few success stories of students with Nepalese or Chinese parents who got involved through House events or other cricket activities and have now gone on to be regular cricketers in some form.

"There's a definite end goal for every student, whether you want to play for Yorkshire or just recreationally."