Why free, and why summer

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Most of the young people we work with live in Burngreave, Fir Vale, Firth Park and Shiregreen. Six in ten of the children who signed up with us this year live in neighbourhoods ranked in England’s most deprived 10%, and almost one in five in the most deprived 1%. These are not families short of ambition. They are short of options.

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Every hour of sport has a cost behind it: venue hire, qualified coaches, kit and equipment, insurance, and the planning behind each session. Funding covers those costs so that families don’t have to, and for a household with three or four children that is the difference between a summer of sport and a summer indoors.

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Our directors are all under 30 and grew up on these same streets. When we were teenagers in the 2010s, youth centres were closing across the country, more than 900 of them in that decade, and what was left wasn’t built with lads like us in mind. So we built what we wished we’d had.

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In 2020, before we became a CIC, we asked Sheffield’s cricket community what stopped them playing, and the two answers that came back most were somewhere to play and the price of it. Our sessions run free or for a few pounds all year; this summer, thanks to the funding behind our youth programme, every session and trip was free.

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The holidays are when young people have the most time, so that’s when we go all in. Six weeks, long days, longer evenings, and parents telling us the same thing every July: there’s nowhere for them to be.

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Something on most days

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From the week schools finished, most days had something on. Rehan, who has been with us since he was ten and now plays county age-group cricket:

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“It’s not like we just do cricket. Yesterday I went to the football session, we do swimming on Wednesdays, badminton Thursdays, padel. It’s for any young kid who wants to get involved in sport.”

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Badminton began as a winter experiment and is now one of our busiest nights. On Friday mornings we filled three padel courts, most of the players holding a racket for the first time. Through August, girls had sessions of their own, led by our female coaches. And most weeks, a day out of the city: a hike, a golf day, cricket in the open.

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The sport is why they come. The people are why they come back. Abubakr R., who came through our junior programmes and now plays men’s cricket: “Some people that I’ve never met before I’ve met through a football session and now we’re really close.”

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From players to coaches

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Several of the coaches on our team this summer were our players first. They played in our sessions and leagues as teenagers, qualified through our coaching course, and this summer coached alongside our senior coaches.

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Haseeb captained our Junior Hundred side a year ago. At 17 he qualified as an ECB coach; at 18 he coached every week alongside our head coach, Jawad. “I was given the opportunity to take part in the coaching course which allowed me to spread the knowledge I know to younger participants.”

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Abubakker Qureshi now leads our football: “It is more than just delivering cricket and other sports sessions; it is about creating a safe and welcoming environment where young people can enjoy themselves, build confidence, stay active and develop new skills.”

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Abdullah Asad ran junior sessions, and describes “a young participant who started the programme very shy and unsure, gradually growing into someone who led warm-ups with confidence.”

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Since 2025, twelve young people have trained to Level 2 coaching, first aid and safeguarding with us, ten of them this year. The sessions they grew up in are now the ones they lead.

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What they told us

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Every year we ask the people who come to our sessions what’s working, what isn’t and what they want next, and we build the following year on the answers. This year 55 participants and parents across our programmes answered. 98% feel part of a supportive community. 96% say their confidence has grown. 96% say they are fitter and 95% that their mental wellbeing has improved. Two in three come every week.

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Parents notice it at home: “He’s more confident, less isolated and looks forward to the session.” “They have become more talkative around other people.”

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Asked what they wanted next, the answers all pointed the same way: more sessions, longer ones, more padel, five-a-side, boxing, trips. One lad wants “windball cricket outdoor under lights on a 3G pitch with my friends every week.” We’re taking that as a brief.