Under 9s Club Cricket in 2021

Message from Wiltshire Cricket Limited and Wiltshire Youth Cricket League

Under 9s Cricket 2021

With such uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 restrictions that would be in place for the 2021 season, a decision was taken by Wiltshire Cricket Limited and the Wiltshire Youth Cricket League earlier this winter to hold off communicating plans for under 9s festivals. This was on the basis that we felt it would be unlikely that large scale festivals would be able to take place during large parts of this season.

Following the release of ECB’s Outdoor Recreational Cricket guidance for the 2021 season, we can confirm that whilst no group size limits have been specified for outdoor cricket events, the guidance has also stipulated that all outdoor cricket activities should take place with a full risk assessment having been undertaken. On the subject of festivals, the ECB guidance reads as follows:

Tournaments and festivals can take place subject to a COVID risk assessment and full compliance with social distancing and legal gathering size limits on and off the field.

Based on the need for festivals to be carefully risk assessed, and in order to ensure that events do not become so large as to make social distancing a difficulty, it is Wiltshire Cricket’s recommendation that large under 9 festivals, as we would have experienced pre Covid, should not take place in 2021. However, Wiltshire Cricket and the Wiltshire Youth Cricket League are still keen to support clubs in organising under 9s cricket, and would therefore make a recommendation that under 9s cricket either takes place between two clubs. i.e. as a normal fixture, or in a localised festival format, e.g. 4 clubs join together to each take it in turns to host a festival. At each festival there would then be 4 teams who would play round robin matches across 2 pitches.

We are conscious that some clubs may have gone ahead and made their under 9s plans already. However, for those clubs that haven’t made any plans, Wiltshire Cricket invites you to respond on two points:

  1. Would you like to be added to an under 9 database that the WYCL will collate and then circulate to clubs detailing key under 9s contacts? If so than please provide contact details of your Under 9 organiser. This will enable key under 9 contacts to contact other clubs to arrange fixtures
  2. Would you like to be included in a recommended under 9 localised grouping? Based on responses received to this question, the WYCL will make a recommendation of local clusters of clubs who could work together to provide under 9s festivals

It would be much appreciated if clubs could respond to [email protected] on the two questions above by Sunday 25th April.