Innovation is the long and short of it at St David's cricket festivals

 

I was going on the other day about the role of tradition in ongoing excellence in schools, and that it’s OK to sometimes bring in new things. Innovation is the opposite of tradition in a way, and there’s nothing wrong with it, as long as it’s in the service of the educational role of sport as a school activity.

So, while the big Inanda Hoops basketball tournament at St David’s this weekend (and I know there are other schools tournaments around the country too), is far removed from traditional school sport, and a bit weird to my conservative way of thinking, it’s a great innovation because it exposes a couple of hundred boys at a time to all sorts of new opportunities to learn sporting and life lessons.

Then, on day two of the Inanda Hoops, the St David’s prep school cricket festival kicked off. And it’s pretty innovative too. It’s for players who will still be at primary school next year, the teams wear brightly coloured shirts and have been given colourful names along the lines of the IPL teams – St David’s Dynamite, Montrose Meteors, St Stithians Supermen etc. And they are playing 10 overs-a-side matches, three in a day.

It’s all the idea of Dave Nosworthy, director of cricket at St David’s, the same man who turned traditional 1^st team festivals on their head by doing away with the usual variety of formats over four days and saying, we’ll play two two-day games at our four day event instead.

I bumped into him at St David’s on Saturday and asked him about the contrast between their two festivals – the longest format in schools cricket at one, and the shortest at the other.

I liked his reply because his reasons are grounded in educational principles and the development of the boys is at the heart of them. They are about boys at opposite ends of their school cricket lives, he told me. The U19 players at the two-day Fasken tournament are about to enter the senior ranks and they need to learn how to play multi-day games where you can build an innings, bowlers have longer spells and fielders are on their feet all day, he explained.

“This prep schools tournament is at the other end,” he said. “We want these boys to become hooked on the game, if they are going to give up a weekend they must be having fun, so the games are short and sharp, the boundaries are brought in, meaning there a plenty of runs, and they play lots of games each day. And we have introduced local rules that are aimed at full participation for every player.”

The growth of cricket is the aim, he explained, and the game is in trouble at primary schools. “Cricket isn’t being played in the third term very much anymore, with the Grade 7s being prepared for high school sports like rowing. rugby, water polo, basketball etc instead,” Nosworthy said. “We want to remind them that cricket is still a wonderful game.”

It is that, and the boys in action at St David’s this weekend are having a wonderful time, you can see it in their faces.