Wolmer's Boys' Captain Justin Beckford hits down the ground during his innings of 166 against St Jago High in the ISSA/Grace Shield cricket final at Melbourne Oval in St Andrew on Thursday, April 23, 2023. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)
‘AIMING FOR CRITICAL MASS’
JCA president details work aimed at addressing grass roots cricket
Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) President Billy Heaven says the body intends to increase the number of teams playing the sport at the secondary school level as part of its plans to improve the grass roots aspect of the national programme.
Twenty-five schools are playing the ISSA/Grace Shield, the urban schoolboy cricket tournament this season, while its rural counterpart, the ISSA/Grace Headley Cup, has 18 teams. This is a number that has concerned members of the junior sports fraternity, including ISSA President Keith Wellington. But Heaven says while the JCA is working to address this, one of the challenges is the cost of funding schools.
“We want to increase that number and increase it to the level where we have a critical mass," Heaven told the Jamaica Observer. ” This idea about playing cricket in all the schools or nearly all the schools in Jamaica is not feasible and not workable for a number of reasons. One of them is cost.
“Cricket is a very expensive sport. You cannot reasonably expect to play in all the schools. Not every school is interested in playing cricket. There are just under 50 sports in Jamaica and every sporting body or organisation is striving to get this critical mass. There are some sports that people will gravitate towards naturally. Football, maybe, track and field, and so on, but at the end of the day, every single sport is competing for student participation.
“We should not seek to be playing, reasonably so, in all the schools, hence the strategy that we agreed on. We have a targeted and strategic approach to play and to have a critical mass that we can get the best from and to make us competitive in the world of cricket.”
Heaven says although the JCA is not directly responsible for high school cricket, as that is ISSA’s area, the body sees it necessary to intervene at that level to have what he says will be a better product coming through.
“At the end of the day, the cricket belongs to Jamaica," Heaven said. "So, we have taken a decision at one of our retreats to focus on junior cricket wherever played – whether it is played by high schools or otherwise.”
Heaven says that because some schools do not have cricket programmes, the JCA has set up a junior programme with the various parish associations and cricket clubs across the island, which functions similarly to a sporting academy.
“There are several reasons for this,” he said. “One is that if you look at primary school cricket and you have a good school playing with a good team, sometimes when the kids are placed in high school, they go to different schools. Some of these high schools are not so interested in playing cricket or they don’t play cricket but the kids are there and you run the risk of losing those talents if you don’t have another avenue to capture and keep them in the game.”That’s why the parallel programme, the junior programme in clubs and associations becomes so important. It seeks to address that very issue, that very gap.”
Heaven says the JCA has seen good results from this system and mentions the national U19 team as an example of this, having won the double championship in their regional tournament.
“So, we intend to strengthen that,” he said. “If you look at what we have done recently, we worked with ISSA and we provided 50 schools with 40 kits. That’s 2,000 jerseys for the high schools.
“We have provided kits for the clubs and the associations, to be kept at the home of the club and the associations. These are junior kits from different age group levels from lower to upper schools.
“We are playing, through INSPORTS, in 280 primary schools. That programme, we have rolled out into more than 100. That’s what the technical people told me. We also have gear on the wharves and we are dedicating those to schools as well. We also have the gear from the Indian Government which we are now in the process of distributing. We’re trying to reach as many schools as possible right across Jamaica and we’re doing so through the associations and the clubs, with their input, to help us to identify the schools in their area that they would want to participate.”
