Cricket: ACE programme announces trial days for 2024
- Featured image credit: Parrot of Doom, Wikipedia Commons
Lancashire Cricket is gearing up to host its ACE Academy trials on 24th November, which aims to give more opportunities to aspiring Black cricketers within Manchester and Lancashire.
The trials are scheduled to take place at the Emirates Old Trafford Indoor Centre, and are open to anyone of Caribbean and African heritage aged 9 to 21.
The African-Caribbean Engagement programme is an independent charity that aims to support underrepresented talent throughout cricket, from the grassroots to the elite level.
The charity also aims to improve African Caribbean engagement at a grassroots level. Currently, less than 1% of people with African Caribbean heritage in Britain play cricket at a recreational level.
Daily Mirror Journalist Dean Wilson feels that carelessness from administrators has played a part in the decrease of Black British Cricketers. Speaking to Sky Sports in 2021, he said: “It is not a simple story.
“Clearly, the reduction of cricket in schools and urban areas plays a big part [in the decrease of Black British cricketers], as that is where the Black population is at its greatest.
Grassroots
“The love and passion the Caribbean community had for the game, it was just taken for granted that it would always be there.
“Actually, if you don’t do anything to support it and feed it, you end up where we are today. I think it is a problem that has arisen from a lack of action. A carelessness, actually.”
The ACE schools programme is set up to reverse this lack of grassroots engagement. By providing free cricket sessions to local state schools, they give a basic introduction to cricket.
On the ACE programme website, it states: “We are able to filter players into our local community hubs as well as established clubs for more sessions and coaching opportunities […] we can also filter talented players into the Academy for those we believe would be able to thrive and realise their full potential in that environment”