It’s honours time of the year across many of our sports. On Friday Cricket Ireland presented their Annual Awards at a function in Dublin.
Ed Joyce and Kim Garth took the main awards sponsored by Hanley Energy and Toyota while the Sunday Independent awarded the Emerging Player of the Year award to 14 year old Gaby Lewis who last year became the first person born on the new millennium to be capped at senior level in any international team sport across the globe.
The awards season is a time to look back and forward and Cricket Ireland CEO Warren Deutrom was reflecting on the importance of grassroots sport in his address to those gathered.
Richer in scope
“Irish Cricket is richer in scope, and has greater depth than at any time in its long history. Nearly 47,000 people, men and women, boys and girls, able-bodied and disabled, Irish and non-Irish play our game from Limavady to Limerick, from Laois to Lurgan. It’s that breadth and diversity, and that pride in club and province – not just the elite end – that we celebrate today.”
“And that long history is unfolding in occasionally unexpected ways. When I began this job in December 2006, there was no World T20, no pathway to Test cricket and the only game in town was 50 overs. Hasn’t the world changed?”
“Now, we are trying to compete across three formats, balancing the needs of men and women, senior and junior, international and domestic, elite and grassroots, on-pitch and off-pitch – trying to achieve the same as a Test nation, on unequal resources.”
“At various times of the year, we have to face choices – is a player pay-rise more important than another development officer; do we invest in the provincial unions or develop a financial reserve; do we prioritise a qualification competition over a psychologist; do we send a media manager to the World Cup or do we play an extra warm-up match? The easy answer is to do everything – the hard answer is the one we usually face.”
Legacy
“If you ask me what is the most important thing we have done in the last 4 years, what is the legacy I hope will endure beyond my time here? It has been the inter-provincial competition. At first, it was all about the cricket – best v best domestically; bigger player pool; bridge between club and elite – but I believe it has become much more fundamental than that.”
“It has done nothing less than revolutionise our thinking on the role of the provincial unions in Irish Cricket. As the Hanley Energy inter-pros plug that gap between club and country, so the Unions themselves are the real key to us becoming a nation worthy of Test cricket.”
“They will become the fulcrum on which Irish Cricket balances, and our job will be to support them, in turn to support all of us, so that we are properly, to steal a phrase from the ECB, developing cricket from the playground to the Test arena.”
“And as our resources grow, so we can start to invest even more in our grass-roots and club structures through those Unions. Yes, it’s taken a while, but I stand by the decisions we have made, and I believe we have invested in the right priorities to get the game to where it is today.”
“What is Cricket Ireland Doing for us?”
“Often I have heard the question, ‘what is Cricket Ireland doing for us’? Well, quite a lot actually – it’s just that I’m not sure we’re not very good at communicating it. Let me cite some examples.”
“All of the regional development officers are paid for by Cricket Ireland; we are line managing them until the unions are ready to do so; through public funding, we pay for and line manage active community coaches and active clubs coordinators in Northern Ireland; we pay for all training courses for umpires, scorers and groundsmen; we look after Garda vetting north and south to support the clubs; we organise and deliver the coach education programme; we oversee the club accreditation scheme; we fund and deliver senior and junior inter-pro competitions; we are contracting with all the inter-pro players and coaches until the Unions are ready to do so; we provided grants to Unions through hosting the World T20 qualifier; we provide hosting fees and commercial opportunities to clubs for hosting our main matches. The list goes on, ladies and gentlemen, and the list will continue to grow as our focus deepens to embrace more of our sport.”
“The other answer to that question is that the role of supporting and sustaining club cricket belongs to our Provincial Unions. But as this beast called Irish Cricket grows, so the capacity of overworked volunteers stretches to breaking point – it is Cricket Ireland’s job to provide those volunteers with the opportunity, capacity and the resources to keep going, to enable them to support club cricket.”
“I’ll repeat what I said last year. It’s not about Cricket Ireland on one side and grass roots cricket on the other. The members of Cricket Ireland are its Unions, the members of the unions are the clubs, and the members of the clubs are its players, officials, parents and social members. Our committees and our Board are comprised primarily of people who play or have played club cricket. They keep us honest and focused on what is in the best interest of Irish Cricket.”
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