A Brief History

29 years and counting… Cricket for Change was originally set up as London Community Cricket Association (LCCA) after the Brixton Riots in 1981, pioneering projects aimed at getting unemployed and directionless young people to train as cricket coaches.

1980's

During the 1980’s we began our “Unemployed Leagues” which led to the setting up of the Haringey Cricket College (later to become the London Cricket College), a very successful project that in its 10 year history, provided 25 first class cricketers (these include Mark Alleyne, Frankie Griffiths and Keith Piper as well as our very own Mikey and Tony). These inner city coaches have had a long career as professional coaches and are still doing great work today.

Mid 1980’s

Meanwhile we were pioneering the setting up of training programmes and cricket clubs for women and girls. Our Women and Girls Programme has since been adopted by many county cricket boards and a number of women who trained with us are now working as development officers with various counties and other sports bodies. It also identified a number of players including Ebony Rainsford-Brent who has gone on to play for England.

End 1980’s

At about the same time we set up the London Schools Cricket Project another pioneering and now much copied project that was aimed at putting a halt to the decline in school sport that was happening in the late eighties and early nineties. Still running as an independent project, it has provided cricket to almost every primary school in London and a large number of secondary and girls’ schools.

1990’s

To provide coaches for this and other programmes and to create employment opportunities for individuals from the inner city we have run coach education course for over 307 coaches as part of our Inner City Coach Education Programme. For five years we also ran the London Under 25s a representative team aimed at giving opportunities to play to players not known by the counties and giving them high quality training and matches against teams like Oxford University and English Universities. Andy Caddick played for the team before he was picked up by a county and then England.

Mid 90’s

On a completely different level we had started to do some ground-breaking and again much copied work in a number of London’s prisons including Pentonville, Holloway and Wandsworth where we ran the first ever Coach Education course qualifying 15 inmates as coaches, two of whom worked with us on the Special Needs Programme on their release.

End 1990’s

Our special needs work was and is at the forefront of creating new opportunities for children and adults with a disability. We are the experts at creating new coaching techniques and new programmes and we are now much in demand as trainers of coaches, teachers and youth workers working with cricketers with a disability. This included the setting up of the England Blind Cricket team to compete in the first ever blind cricket World Cup in India in 1998.

New Millennium

In the summer of 2001 we were commissioned by the Home Office to run crime diversion programmes on a dozen inner city estates that were seen to be at risk from ethnic based social unrest.

Mid 2000’s

Our resulting Housing Estates Programme has over the last three years worked on some of London’s most deprived inner city estates including Broadwater Farm and Kings Cross. The summer long programmes give young people the chance to be part of a team and gain pride in their local area.