Walking cricket has given thousands of older people the chance to reconnect with their inner child, to remember how exciting and fun (OK, maybe not fast) cricket can be and, like any self-respecting Bazballer, to hit sixes. While 50-over cricket is having a bit of an existential crisis, over-50s cricket is thriving. If he’s not still taking wickets at Test level, Anderson will be eligible to play himself in September 2032.
The one fast thing about walking cricket is its growth. Participation numbers are rising rapidly and last year The One Show sent Angela Rippon to Yorkshire to do a feature on it. More recently, in March, the indoor school at Lord’s hosted the inaugural inter-county walking cricket festival. “It was an amazing day at Lord’s,” says Aimee Illidge, a project officer with Kent Cricket Community Trust, the charitable arm of Kent CCC. “We realised then how big walking cricket is becoming. All the counties have thriving teams.”
At the end of last month, on a brisk Monday morning, The Spin visited the Three Hills Sports Centre in Folkestone, Kent, to see how walking cricket works. As you’d expect there are a few adjustments to the official rules, but it is recognisably cricket. The main thing is that everyone has the same involvement – if you are out, you keep batting but the bowling team is awarded five runs. At local level the rules are made of plasticine, which allows each group to manipulate them for maximum enjoyment.
Illidge has a background in community-based theatre and instantly recognised the best thing about the game. “Walking cricket,” she says, “is just a different form of community engagement.” The group we watched was exclusively male, but that was a coincidence – there are women players at all the other Kent hubs – rather than a representation of a diverse, testosterone-free sport. The oldest player in one of the Kent hubs is 87, and none of the usual barriers of an implicitly ageist society are in place. There’s an organic purity and infectious positivity to the whole thing. In a way the most important player is the least talented, because they represent what those involved cherish most: inclusivity. While everybody uses that word, it is spoken with enthusiasm and pride rather than opportunistic cynicism…
FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/may/08/the-spin-walking-cricket-over-50s-new-lease-of-life
Original source: https://x.com/OCR_PhysEd/status/1788547093721694581
