大象传媒

Big sympathy with Carl. I too have only just been able to begin playing cricket competitively at the age of 28, after a full state education. My secondary school had no grass playing fields at all. I find it interesting that now I am playing the facilities I use seem to have a common theme: we net at Clifton College (private secondary school) and play matches at Bristol Grammar School (ditto) and Queen Elizabeth Hospital (again) playing fields, all in Bristol. At the same time we fill the pockets of these private schools who do take sport seriously, and people sometimes wonder why we have so few cricketers/rugby players from a state education. Even though these are fee-paying schools, they still receive significant funding from the state and I would like to see this finance come with a proviso that all facilities will be made available -free of charge - to local state schools or community groups, with coaching included. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether I can see the private schools agreeing to this and - maybe more worryingly - the state schools subscribing to it when they have to focus so much of their time on results for league tables.

Cricket has so much to offer our communites. What other event could I go to with my wife, my parents in law and my wife's gran with everybody having a great time? And whilst it is a bit of a cliche, what activities - beyond formal education - do we offer kids in which success depends on discipline, discretion, intelligence and, most importantly, enthusiasm? Shame that I'm preaching to the converted here.

David (7&8), I would expect that if your school is a sports college it would be involved in competitive sport with other schools, and credit to your local CC for their generosity with their facilities. Unfortunately, that does seem to be the exception. It is widely acknowledged that Private schools engage in more competitive sport than state schools. They devote more time, money and staffing to sport and this option is afforded to them because they have - generally - more intelligent pupils who are able to acheive better grades with less teaching time and of course because they have more money. If this weren't the case, there would be no need for such initiatives as this. I acknowledge that my perspective is slightly skewed because I come from Bristol, where the state schools suffer horrifically because of a disproportionately high number of private schools, but I would suggest that no other city could highlight so clearly the stark differences in opportunity between children in state and private education. I would simply like to see the wealth shared. All credit to those state schools who do put the effort into sporting education/achievement. I wish I had gone to one, but I fear they are the exception.

Re. the points about these initiatives always being focussed on inner-city areas, I sympathise a great deal. I suppose that the authorities are simply trying to make the opportunities available to the most kids for the least money, and the inner-cities have the highest concentration of kids. They also seem to have more problems (or more high profile problems at least) to which sports such as cricket may provide an answer. And finally, more often than not these are the poorest areas, and so any state funding will usually be channelled in their direction.

Either way, the more success Chance to Shine has, the more people it will reach, so lets try and support it in any way we can.