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Hampshire Cricket Board (HCB), in partnership with New Forest Junior Cricket Association, North Hants Cricket Development Association, South East Hants Cricket Association and Winchester Warriors Junior Cricket Association have been looking at the future of junior club cricket within the county.
The current landscape of volunteer led committees has served junior cricket successfully, with enormous credit to all involved but there are concerns for the sustainability of this structure in the coming years. We have seen a move, across the country, away from a volunteer workforce to a professional and centralised management committee. In all cases these moves are not designed to fix something that is broken but to future proof junior cricket.
Having discussed the future prospects at length with each district committee, the HCB in conjunction with the four districts, have created The Hampshire Junior Cricket Championships (abbreviated to HJCC or The Championships) to serve junior club cricket in Hampshire.
The Hampshire Junior Cricket Championships will start from April 2024 and will be led by HCB. The new competition will encompass all leagues (mixed & girls) currently in existence from under 9 to under 17 across the county. The competition will be administered by a HJCC management committee, containing representatives from the HCB as well as club cricket volunteers, and would see clubs continue to play in localised leagues.
The principles of the Hampshire Junior Cricket Championships are:
Providing safe and inclusive opportunities for all children and young people to enjoy and play cricket - Creating cricket playing opportunities that are safe and inclusive for individuals and communities
Delivering Player-Focused opportunities - Always consider the players needs as the most important factor
Developing a lifelong passion for the game - Ensuring the Hampshire programme is helping foster and develop a lifelong passion for the game.
Providing a player pathway to enable junior cricketers to reach their full potential - Ensuring our structure helps to nurture talent for clubs, communities, and Hampshire Cricket
Championing Player Retention - Retaining more players in the game across all levels and age groups
Innovating and Leading the Way - We want to do drive change to help grow the game in Hampshire.
The potential benefits of the Hampshire Junior Cricket Championships move include:
Sustainability - Reduced reliance on a small pool of volunteers
Consistency – Uniformed formats & rules across the county
Scale - Opportunity to negotiate cost reducing deals on balls, equipment & clothing
Speed of action - Early fixture production & quick reaction to consultation
Commercial – Centralised marketing communications to find sponsors and promote the league, minimising costs for clubs and players/parents.
Expansion - Look for continued opportunities to increase the number of children playing cricket in Hampshire
Feedback from early consultation has bought up a few common questions:
Q - Will there be a loss of local knowledge? Would centralised management mean less local engagement?
A - We will work to counter this by bringing the local knowledge into the new management committee. There will be at least one representative from each existing district on the new committee.
Q - Rules; How would the complex individual rules from four districts be bought together for one county wide league?
A - We would look to engage with all existing rules committees and work together to form a uniformed set of basic rules. We can then add local variances to a match day menu.
Q - Age group playing days; Would all age group games need to take place on the same day across the county?
A - No, age group games would still be played on different days across the county. We would ask clubs upon entry to nominate their favoured playing day for each age group and then form the leagues and fixtures from this.
Q - Is it possible or likely that clubs would be in a slightly different pool of clubs or will leagues and fixtures align with existing district?
A - Yes, this is possible. We hope that clubs would play those closest to them, especially at 'B' & 'C' team level. 'A' team players may wish to travel slightly further to play higher quality teams but this would be still regionalised. We can start with a blank sheet of paper geographically so hope clubs would play those closest to them. All of this would be decided once we have team entries and leagues would be devised at that point.
Q - Might there be potential for a central district as in the HCL?
A - Yes, certainly. There could be up to 8 regional leagues but this is all to be decided once team entries come in.
Q - With 200 juniors one of our concerns over the last 2-3 years is the initiative towards smaller team sizes, the additional pressure this puts on pitch availability and volunteers to support the increased matches and therefore in fact having the reverse desired impact for offering more cricket. Would this move mean less localised decision making and an "enforced" move to smaller team sizes ?
A - Formats, including team size, have been decided through consultation with Districts acting on behalf of the clubs in their area. Research has been done into the best playing set up for players and clubs. We have had enough games played in the new guidelines of smaller teams since 2019 to study the evidence and get feedback from all involved.
Further detail and context can be viewed below in the Club Presentation. There is also the opportunity to ask questions and add comments via the Club Questions form.
