Northern Counties juniors make debut against Ross County at Northern Meeting Park in Inverness
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Inverness cricket club Northern Counties hosted their first junior match in over 20 years against Ross County on Wednesday.
It was a closely contested match at Northern Meeting Park, Ross County claimed victory by seven runs.
It’s the next step in an effort to promote cricket to children and develop the next generation of first team players for the club.
Coaches have gone into primary schools to deliver sessions, while the All-Stars programme has helped bring a new structure to Counties’ youth set up.
“Kids love competing,” club president Jon Ford explained.
“You can only keep them interested for so long by doing coaching drills and playing games against each other.
“One of the first questions they will ask me is if we’ve got any games coming up.
“We’re now in a position where we can start to organise games for them.
“Having enough coaches is key, and having those coaches with the time to get into schools to do after-school coaching is critical.
“I just think there haven’t been the people around until the last couple of years or so.
“I can only talk for Northern Counties, but we’re putting an emphasis on growing the youth section because that’s where the future lies.”
Counties have been able to make an impressive amount of progress thanks to their renewed focus.
Ford has long felt that not enough effort has been made in youth development across the board, but now believes there is an exciting future in store for young cricketers in the area.
“Not enough thought has gone into future planning in the past.
“Teams have been content to have a senior team or two that they can put out at the weekend, and there has been no succession planning.
“We’ve been working at schools recently, and every school that we’ve been at have expressed an interest in getting a school team together.
“We have our club team, so already we’ve got five potential teams to form a small junior league.”
