Men’s Cricket Indoor League Season 1&2: October – December 2022

After the success of our first Indoor league which ran in 2019, we decided it was finally time to run another and unite the community together using the power of cricket. In doing so we recruited players and teams from various parts of Birmingham of multiple ethnicities, age ranges and social backgrounds. The leagues were designed to be midweek, weekly occasions where men could get out the house, meet new and existing friends, exercise and be able to watch and/or take part in some friendly yet fiercely competitive cricket.

The format of the leagues were very similar, a round robin of fixtures where six teams of seven players per team would play each other in a ten over game, once (in 2022) or twice (in 2019), before the top four teams in the leaderboard would then play off (1st vs 4th and 2nd vs 3rd) before a grand final. In 2019, the demand and capacity was such that we had two divisions, so a total of 12 teams competing for two titles on two different nights and we were engaging 80+ men from areas such as Smethwick, Cape Hill, Alum Rock, Small Heath, Handsworth, Lozells, Bordesley Green, Sparkhill and even Dudley. Season 1 was held at S&S Indoor Cricket Centre in Smethwick whilst Season 2 was held at Ark Victoria Academy in Small Heath. Matches were played from 6:30pm to as late as 10:30pm with players as well as other locals coming down to watch some thrilling indoor cricket. Rewards were given out to the winning teams and captains as well as individual awards for players who scored the most runs and those who took the most wickets in the league. Additionally we also provided 52 free playing tops customised to each individual teams preference of design, colour scheme, logos, names and numbers.

How did it start? Our head coach had seen many other successful Indoor Cricket campaigns and felt the opportunity to unite men using cricket as a tool was too big to miss out on. We did some outreach work and such was the demand that we soon began designing a flyer and for each league, teams were registered in a matter of days with numerous teams missing out and being put on a mailing list so that they can stay up to date on future leagues. Some of the roles included umpiring, leg umpiring, scoring, filming, organising fixtures and liaising with captains, updating leaderboards and tables as well as creating graphics for social media and flyers. These were shared out across a team of Street Futures staff and volunteers, without whom the leagues wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as they have been. Learnings from the first season to the second were to have the venue in a central location and for the scoring to be more digital, both recommendations which we took on board and acted upon.

Season 2 was funded by Arnold Clark and A7 Sports who supported the running costs of the league which included venue hire, balls, trophies and staffing. We are already planning season 3, so if you are interested please do stay in touch and get your expression of interest in early.