UK Sport partnerships support cricket development in Northern Uganda
This UK Sport supported training is enhancing the work of the Uganda Cricket Association (UCA), who has successfully revived the sport in other regions of the country. Cricket, a sport that is popular with parents in the community, suffered a decline in participation numbers after Uganda was hit by war and is subsequently recovering from political instabilities. The re-introduction of cricket serves as an activity, which can bring people together irrespective of race, gender and language and support the development of future players and coaches.
The CWB team worked with local teachers to deliver universal coaching methods, which can be adapted to their local environments and utilise cricket as a way of delivering social messaging around HIV/AIDS awareness.
Programme plan
This is the first of a three-year development plan to promote cricket as a sport within the region, through primary and secondary schools. This year’s training took place in Gulu, Arua and Lira and aimed to include participants aged 6 to 19 years.
By working with teachers in the community, children are learning these valuable sports and life skills, such as teamwork, from role models in the community.
Role modelling in the community
One of this year’s coaching team commented on the impact cricket has had in discovering female role models:
“We then had Lira’s first game of cricket with the first female Northern Ugandan umpires. It is truly remarkable to see two strong female role models who had no idea of what cricket was 3 days ago, signaling ‘wides’ and ‘4?s,’ though the black panther no-ball signal was quite a sight. Without any CWB manipulation on the scoring, the match was genuinely tied.”
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