Teaching state school kids to love cricket is hard. I know. I’ve tried

In recent years, the divide between cricket at state schools and private schools has become increasingly apparent. Cricketers, commentators, coaches and fans have bewailed the predominance of privately educated players at the game’s top levels. While shows like Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams and books like Crickonomics bring awareness of the problem into the mainstream, the perspectives of the children it affects are often overlooked. As a teacher at a large West London state school and a member of a club nearby where most young players are privately educated, one Tuesday last year gave me a first-hand insight into the experiences of both.

The yellow box on my timetable jumps out from my laptop screen the second I open it. “COVER DUTY: YEAR 7 BOYS PE, 09:50-10:50”. I sag into my chair involuntarily. It is the second Tuesday of the summer term, my Year 13 form are beside themselves with anxiety about their A-levels, my GCSE English class are days away from their first exam and there is a stack of overdue marking on the desk next to me. A morning corralling 11-year-olds on the Astroturf is the last thing I need.

In a bid to improve the shining three-and-a-half minutes I have before the school day begins, I wade against the corridor tide of puffa jackets and Nike backpacks until I reach the cavernous PE lock-up. There, surrounded by broken badminton rackets, bags of mismatched bibs and a precarious pile of rusting javelins, stands Mr Edwards. This two-metre titan wheels round to fix me with the warm, gormless gaze of a man to whom athletic endeavour has always been second nature. “Ah! Will! Thanks so much for covering Year 7. Do you fancy doing some cricket with them?”

Do you fancy doing some cricket with them?

Although I manage a blank stare and a strangled “Y-yeah, sure”, my brain is in crisis. My eyes flick to the scattered jumble of plastic kit by Mr Edwards’ side, and I have a brief vision of umpteen 11-year-old boys engaged in a battle royale with mismatched stumps, like Hieronymous Bosch rendered in school-shop polyester. I think briefly of my own cricketing education and wonder whether to include some thoughts on acceptance of one’s own mediocrity alongside my explanation of the lbw law. A glance at my watch reels me back into the rhythm of the school day, and I start to mentally rejig my year 10 non-fiction lesson to include some CLR James.

“Great. We’ll set them up with some games of Kwik Cricket – I’ll brief them and then head off to this meeting I’ve got. You’ll be fine. It’ll be a breeze.”

I smile weakly.

The first hour and a half of the day passes in a distracted haze. My year 11s scratch away at a practice essay on Macbeth’s hubris. I am certain that I am just as guilty as the Scot of biting off more than I can chew, and my fiefdom is only slightly less likely to be the site of mass bloodshed immortalised for centuries to come. Nevertheless, come Period 2 I find myself striding out across the playground towards the Astroturf. There, scuffing the goalmouth in a medley of Kickers, hand-me-down Air Maxes and orthopaedic plimsolls, are 60 small boys. Mr Edwards’ bright blue eyes are glinting in the sunlight, and his parting gift to the boys is a brief introduction to the game, complete with gravelly Welsh inflections. Then it’s over to me.

As he windmills his arms enthusiastically to demonstrate bowling, I look down the Astroturf. At neat intervals on the two sides of the pitch and the far goalline are no fewer than 10 separate sets of stumps, with cones arranged in 10-foot triangles around them. I have never previously considered whether I would rather run 10 tiny games for six kids each or one giant game for 60 kids, but the choice has been made for me, and in any case, Mr Edwards is finishing up. “… and remember, Mr Yates is in charge, and a little bird tells me he’s brilliant at cricket, so I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Now, into your groups of six and go and stand by a set of stumps.”

No sooner has Mr Edwards thrust a bag of yellow plastic bats with split rubber handles into my hand and quit the scene than the keenest boys are scrabbling to yank them from my grip. I recognise a few of them from my class: they are boys from Pakistani and Afghan households, and they are already talking animatedly about who will bat first. “Ay, I’m batting first. I’m gonna smash you,” asserts Dev, wearing a baselayer and tracksuit bottoms despite the unseasonable heat. “Nah, nah,” replies the shorter, rounder Mohamed in football boots that look like socks, “I’m baaaare fast, innit.” Before I can join in their conversation, they’ve sprinted off to the far corner of the Astroturf.

Dev and Mohamed are, however, in a minority. Most of the boys walk slowly over to one of the sets of stumps, taking as much time as they can to process Mr Edwards’ rushed explanation of the rules. I notice a couple of the louder boys have played fast and loose with the PE dress code, and I scrawl their names on my hand so I can make a note on the school behaviour system later. Several of the boys have started by kicking an orange Windball from cone to cone, their preference for football over both cricket and anything vaguely resembling adult authority laid bare. Abed, drowning in his black polo shirt, is looking at the floor and fiddling with the knots on the goal netting while softly protesting, “I don’t understand what’s going on”. Checking briefly that none of the other 59 boys needs immediate attention, I persuade Abed that all he needs to do is stand behind a set of stumps and throw the ball back when he it reaches him. He manages this for about four minutes before busying himself with the weeds at the edge of the pitch.

Once all 10 games are underway, I take in the scene and work out what, if anything, I can do to share my love of the game with 60 boys at once. It soon becomes clear that the intricate choreography of the game’s laws will have no appeal for these boys: the concept of a straight bowling arm is almost entirely absent, and the length of overs is decided entirely by who is able to throw fastest, even if it’s at head height. Nor is technique something that I can instil in the boys: in a bid to hit the ball as hard as possible, boys swing baseball-style at everything, and aerial shots go uncaught by crocodile-handed fielders. Overwhelmed by the scale and scope of misunderstanding, I circulate at a distance, offering vague encouragement to the more nonplussed groups.

As I go, I ask a few of the boys about their involvement with the game. Dev tells me his dad watches the IPL on an online stream and plays tennis-ball games on an artificial wicket at a local park, but he doesn’t like the local cricket club because membership is expensive and games clash with his work. Darren, who comes from a Jamaican family, says he prefers playing basketball with his brother because he can watch the highlights on TikTok, and that he’s never seen cricket live on TV. Mati, a Polish boy in the school’s Gifted and Talented programme, asks how to hold the bat so that he can control his shots better, but he’s very small for his age and can’t keep up with the pace of the ball.

None of the boys I speak to has ever played hard-ball cricket, although a few of them talk excitedly about their older brothers playing in a borough pairs tournament a couple of weeks ago – the one guaranteed opportunity for competitive cricket available during the school year. I ask nine boys if they can imagine themselves playing cricket at break, and every one of them says no.

The hour draws to a close, and while the boys put cones and bats into haphazard piles, I debrief with Mr Edwards. “Crowd control, right?” he grins. I explain that I haven’t been able to teach them much, but that a couple showed talent. “Yeah, a few of them have pretty decent hand-eye,” he replies, “but we only get one week on cricket before going on to rounders. We’re trying to get someone from the local club to come and run after- school cricket, but it’s a bit hectic at the moment.” With that, he saunters off, bag of bats under his arm. The boys are chattering about Liverpool’s chances of winning the quadruple. It’s as if the last hour never happened.

I check my watch. Year 10 are waiting. I think I’ll leave CLR James for another day.

Six hours later, with lessons long since finished and my marking still not done, I cycle from the school to my own cricket club for one of our first training sessions of the year. The ride takes me from roads a stone’s throw from the M25 back towards comfortable suburbia. You can chart the income change across neighbourhoods by the state of their cricket grounds, cut fresh for the start of the season.

The first pitch I pass abuts a high-rise tower on one side and a caged football area on the other, with nothing but the odd tree trunk to stop balls hit down the ground from rolling into the adjacent B-road. A couple of miles later, I pass a pair of pitches separated by a narrow footpath. They belong to one of the local state schools, and I know from weekday evenings playing T20s there for my club side that the pitch is a precious money-spinner for the school, seeing more external than internal use.

The final pitch I pass is part of a vast, lush complex only visible at a distance. It’s at the end of a long drive adjacent to the local non-league football ground, and it’s mostly concealed by a thick ring of trees at the edge of the fields. The rhythmic clip of sprinklers and quiet buzz of a ride-on mower are the only things I can hear. I can just about make out three pitches and a glass-fronted pavilion, but some of the boys walking past are carrying tennis racquets and football kit too, suggesting that a wealth of facilities lie unseen. Their branded and logoed kitbags give them away – the sports ground belongs to the local private school. Let’s call it St Joe’s.

I’m one of the last to arrive at club training; nets are already in full swing. With the first four nets reserved for our men’s and women’s teams, the last two nets are full of Under-17 players. Three quarters of them are wearing white shirts bearing the same insignia I saw on the boys near the St Joe’s ground. Most of them are taller than me. As I walk past their bulging kitbags, a couple of them are scrutinising the new bat of the incoming batter, who also sports a brand-new Masuri titanium-grille helmet. The other batter is rushing to change from his bowling boots into his running shoes.

They all play with better technique than the guys in the lower men’s teams’ nets, but occasionally they’ll slack off, announcing their impressions of Marnus Labuschagne’s leave or Adil Rashid’s googly for the amusement of their friends. They are completely at ease in the nets, and it’s no surprise – parents of the junior section pay for the majority of the club equipment through their membership fees.

Nearby stands Rob, their coach. A team leader at an international investment bank and our long-suffering Fourth XI captain, he offers quiet suggestions to the bowlers and shouts instructions down to the batters. He’s already set up a fielding drill for them at the far end of the ground and speaks to individuals between deliveries about their availability for a weeknight age-group match against another club.

“I’ve got a school thing – a concert or something,” says one. A couple of others half-hear this and indicate that they, too, will be unavailable. “OK, how about Saturday for league games?” offers Rob. The St Joe’s boys shift uneasily. “We’ve got games every Saturday until July,” one says, “but we can do the age-group Friday night games here.” One of the others mentions that Tom, already a First XI player here and known to a couple of the Middlesex coaches, won’t even be around then, as he has tennis camp and two separate trips to Spain booked straight after the end of school. Rob knows the score – he was at St Joe’s a few years ago. “OK. Thanks boys.”

About an hour later, the session draws to a close. The boys walk off towards a waiting row of 4x4s, oblivious to the adult players putting away the equipment they have been using for the last hour. Jane, a St Joe’s mum whose older son now plays for our First XI, is waiting by the pavilion. She wants a word with Rob about her son’s availability, as well as the golf fundraiser she’s organised at a local course in a few weeks’ time.

Behind her cycles Ankit, one of the few boys not at St Joe’s. In the absence of weekend games at his comprehensive, he will divide his Saturdays between volunteering at a nearby parkrun and opening the bowling for our Fifth XI with skiddy left-arm swing. He’ll also captain our Under-17s, largely because his availability is the most consistent. One of the older players offers to get him a Coke from the bar, but he declines – he’s got homework to do after he gets himself home.

When I get home, the smudges on my hand remind me that I never wrote up the uniform infractions from the cover lesson. I start to make some notes, but they get buried under half a dozen unread emails about data deadlines, lesson observations and extra revision sessions for Year 11s. Mr Edwards has sent an all-staff about trips planned for the end of term. Halfway through, he mentions that we’ve been given some free tickets to the Army vs Navy game at Lord’s. I already know that I’m not available, and neither is the cricket- mad Head of History – we’ll both be working on sixth form inductions. Any spare time we might have used to start a cricket club for students has long been gouged from our schedules.

Meanwhile, Rob has already sent a couple of WhatsApp messages asking for umpires for the Under-17 game this week. One of the parents, he says, has already volunteered to score, and we ought to show some support to our juniors in recognition of all that they give us. The subtext is clear. I look at the Instagram page of the St Joe’s sports department and am greeted by pictures from a recent rugby tour, video highlights of hockey fixtures and a cricket fundraising campaign running to tens of thousands of pounds. I wonder what our school would do with that money, and what St Joe’s students would make of Dev’s grey tracksuit bottoms and baselayer. The thought takes my mind off my marking briefly. I close my timetable.

This is an article by Will Yates from The Nightwatchman. Guardian readers can claim 20% off the Best of the First Five Years special edition, a collection of 28 of the best contributions from The Nightwatchman. Order at The Nightwatchman and use coupon code GSNBEST at the checkout.