YCCC Charitable Youth Trust: Funding cricket in Yorkshire

What do you know about the YCCC Charitable Youth Trust?

With all cricket currently paused due to lockdown, what better time to showcase the work of an organisation that has supported Yorkshire cricket for decades.

Well, they’re a charity partner of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and the CYT is quietly doing its bit to fund programmes that make a difference to young people.

The Trust was set up in memory of Sir Len Hutton with his son Richard and Bob Appleyard being the principal fundraisers in the early days.

For 30 years, the Yorkshire charity has offered grants to clubs, associations and schools that enables them to buy equipment, receive coaching or hire facilities.

Their goal is to encourage as many as possible to play cricket and the Charitable Youth Trust (CYT) work with the likes of the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation (YCF) and Yorkshire Cricket Board (YCB) to make that happen.

Enjoy Cricket and Pop Up Cricket

Between 2017-2019, the Trust provided £175,000 of funding to encourage youth participation in cricket, of which £141,000 was earmarked for YCF and YCB programmes.

Pop Up Cricket are free sessions that take the game into inner-city, deprived or remote areas of Yorkshire. Qualified YCF coaches lead sessions in walks of life where cricket is ordinarily far from thought.

Meanwhile, Enjoy Cricket supports Yorkshire-based cricket clubs with funding to run their own courses to develop and introduce cricket in their local community.

These popular courses are low-cost options for children, aged seven and older, to have fun with organised cricket and offers a route into clubs.

In 2020, Enjoy Cricket was an emphatic success in Yorkshire, despite the difficulties of Covid-19 that meant negotiating less coaches available, less time to organise and local lockdowns.

The Yorkshire CCC Charitable Youth Trust funded the return from furlough of Kendal James, the YCF Participation Manager, to see what junior cricket could be implemented.

Despite all of the uncertainty and fluid logistical speedbumps, Kendal mapped out 120 days of Enjoy Cricket sessions at 30 centres for nearly 3,000 kids.

It’s a huge credit to her and all of those cricket clubs involved who were able to arrange so much at such short notice.

From Walton to Monk Bretton and Nawton Grange to Hull Zingari, children got a chance to play cricket; even more important given All Stars, Dynamos Cricket as well as the Pop-Up sessions were all cancelled.

School cricket

On behalf of the CYT, the Yorkshire Cricket Board has a programme of visits to primary schools, in addition to the national Chance to Shine programme. 

The CYT-sponsored initiative reaches children at schools in more deprived areas where the links to local clubs might not be as well established. 

YCB coaches provide support for teachers and introduce cricketing skills and competitive games to the children.

Unfortunately, these were not possible due to Covid-19 and so the programme was reluctantly put on pause.

Although most school activity was not possible, there were pockets of volunteer-led opportunism.

One such group led by John Green in Scarborough managed to run a 3-day indoor Enjoy Cricket in the October half term, benefitting over 40 youngsters.

Online cricket coaching courses

As we all turned to Zoom or Microsoft Teams to hold meetings, talks, AGMs or awards evenings, coaches Kevin Gresham and Dale Kerruish saw an opportunity.

A shortage of qualified cricket coaches is a barrier to any club’s development of young cricketers so they persuaded the ECB to allow them to run a pilot of online Level 2 cricket coaching courses for Yorkshire clubs.

The Yorkshire CCC Charitable Youth Trust gave financial support for this plus subsequent Foundation and Level 1 training so that 65 people became qualified as a result.

Much as we need well-trained umpires and scorers in the grassroots game, the enjoyment and progression of junior cricketers lies partly with coaches.

What does 2021 hold?

As with senior cricket, coronavirus decimated the amount of junior cricket that could take place in Yorkshire.

For 2021, the Yorkshire County Cricket Club Charitable Youth Trust will be channelling its efforts in these key areas:

• Supporting schools’ visits programmes to more deprived areas
• Providing bats and balls for Pop-Up cricket and Beach cricket
• Expanding Enjoy Cricket to introduce children to a club environment and all year-round
• participation with indoor programmes
• Encouraging enthusiasts to get coaching qualifications

How can you donate?

The Charitable Youth Trust welcomes donations as it seeks to help as many young people in the county as possible have access to cricket.

To make a donation, please contact the CYT secretary, Julian Vallance by email via [email protected]. 

You can also follow the Yorkshire CCC Charitable Youth Trust on Facebook or they are @TrustYccc on Twitter.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this dip into the work of a Yorkshire-based cricket charity you might have not known too much about. There’s a lot of good work being done behind the scenes to facilitate as much cricket as possible.