Capital Kids Cricket was formed in 1990 when the alarming disappearance of cricket from the sports curriculum of inner London state primary schools became clear.
A savage decline meant only about 20 primary schools - out of more than 800 in the 16 inner London boroughs - were still teaching even the most basic form of cricket.
We’ve come a long way since then.
Now at least 600 of those 800 primary schools actively teach cricket to their children - thanks to Capital Kids Cricket and its supporters.
Among the millions of London schoolchildren who have thus been given the opportunity to enrich their lives with a knowledge and love of Britain’s national summer sport, Ravi Bopara has become the first Capital Kids Cricket “old boy” to represent England at Test and One-Day International level – we started him off as a 9-year-old in his Newham primary school – and many others are currently playing regularly in the County Championship.
But cricket is not just a competitive sport. It is an educational opportunity for children to learn many essential ingredients of social behaviour: personal achievement, team co-operation, ambition, leadership, respect for leadership, and respect for rules.
Capital Kids Cricket’s main objective is to get London’s kids out of gangs and into teams.
Although the game's decline as a state school activity is a nationwide problem, elsewhere in the country - even in urban areas - there are nearby clubs and village teams happy to enrol juniors for coaching. Central London has virtually no such clubs with their own playing facilities and thus no such safety net.
Operational help to rescue this huge reservoir of potential talent is now generously forthcoming from the Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex county cricket clubs and the MCC. But the hoped-for natural progression into some 250 state secondary schools in the region did not take place. With nearly a quarter of a million children between the ages of 11 and 16 lost to cricket - after an all-too-brief love affair with it at primary school – Capital Kids Cricket was forced to launch its Inner London Secondary School Project at the turn of the century.
Victim of its own success, it now has to fund separate development programmes for boys and girls (competitive unisex cricket is not encouraged by the authorities beyond the age of 12) and provide advanced equipment and more grass facilities at a time of fast-disappearing playing fields - as well as maintain the primary school initiative.
We are grateful to the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, the Lord's Taverners, British Land plc, the City of London law firm of CMS-Cameron McKenna, Sportsmatch and many smaller benefactors for support, but we desperately need more financial back-up to maintain the programme.
In almost every case, volunteers have been found within the teaching staff of every school to keep cricket practice and training sessions going, once the initial equipment and coaching skills have been introduced.
About half a million children are being educated in the state schools of London's 18 inner city boroughs. If the situation were again allowed to deteriorate to the dire straits we found it in 20 years ago, most will have forgotten about cricket long before leaving secondary school. For sport, for Britain, and most of all for the children themselves, that is not acceptable.
Capital Kids Cricket is a registered charity, No 1056817.
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