On May 13th 2010 the CFC team went to New York City, USA for part 2 of the British Airways supported programme to set up a USA Blind and Visually Impaired Cricket Team. CFC have had in the past a great success rate of setting up international blind cricket teams in places such as the West Indies, Panama, parts of Africa and Sri Lanka. All these teams have really embraced Blind & Visually Impaired cricket and this is the same thing we are hoping to do with the US Blind & Visually Impaired squad.
CFC have been working very hard with Clifford Hinds (USACA NY region) to set up a very strong training programme that would leave the US in a good positon for when we departed for the UK. The first day of the programme was spent in the ‘Lavelle School for The Blind’ where members of the CFC development team (Andy Sellins, Andy Dalby-Welsh, Tony Joseph, Adam Hall & Danny Baker) were met by Principal Diane Tucker at reception. Sge was very excited at the prospect of British people coming to the school to teach a game that the nation as a whole had not a lot of knowledge around. We were greeted by great cheers from 60 young visually impaired people and around 20 staff and teachers. I started the day by doing a little a tal about who we are and what we doand what we are doing in their school. We then went around and met all the teachers and young people and they were highly ammused by our ‘Hugh Grant’ style accents! Danny had a an interesting converstaion with one young man who was a Freddie Mercury look a like and once Danny spoke to him he even tried to speak like Freddie Mercury!!! With all this meeting and greeting said and done we got down to the basics of Vi & Bind cricket for a few hours. We all split off into groups and had around 10 young people each to tach the basics of the game to. The USACA coaches who seems intrigued by what was going on got invovled with the games also. We did games around bowling, batting, feilding and awareness of space. After this was done we said would be returning in a few days to hold some matches and more training for them. The staff at the Lavelle school then held a dinner reception for us whilst we all chatted about the benifits to everyone involved with blind cricket being played in the NY region.
I had been to New York 4 times to this trip and thought i new the place fairly well. All the previous time i had been it had been minus celsius conditions so jumpers and hoodies were packed galore! However this time NYC was in the midst of a heatwave!! Every where was so hot we were wearing sunglasses, t-shirts and shorts! It was great, i had never been to NYC like this before!!
The next day was time to get working with the coaches. We went on the subway over to Queens where a match was being played.. Danny & Tony worked hard in the morning to work with coaches and spread the word of Blind Cricket. A the same time a local T20 match was going on?!
The coaches picked up very quickly the concept of the game and were excited to go and work with some young people! On Saturday night the USACA coaches took us to ‘Hibbicus’ which was in Queens. It was an traditional Guyanese resturant in the heart of an area of Queen called Little Guyana. The food was amazing and Andy S even won a cricket bat in a raffle! We later found out that this was were all cricketers in the NY region hung out and caught up with each other.
The weekend continued with the training of the coaches and on Sunday night the CFC team let their hair down from hard work and some went out to check out the nightlife and myself and Danny went to a world title boxing fight at Madison Square Garden to watch Amir Khan retain his world title!!!
With the Monday now pon us we went to th Lavelle school for the blind, by this point eveyone was a little nervous as story had broke in the US about the return of the ash cloud over the UK. We were due to fly out Monday night with BA!!! With this now pushed to the back of our mind we went got on with the sessions in the great US sunshine! We got down to some really indepth work regards B & VI cricket and also in attendance for this session was John Aaron who is the Executive Secetary for the USACA. He was extremley impressed as were all the USACA coaches as to the amount of work and the level of standards for work that were invovled in this programme! All the young people had a great time . One lad named JC even said that he had never done sports outside before until CFC came to NYC. He was 16 years old!!!!
After this long session the graduation took part with Clifford Hinds and myself handed out accredited USACA certificates which was grea for all the coaches to receive.
CFC then departed for the airport and caught their plane home which was only delayed by one hour!!
CFC learnt some strong lessons from working in NYC. We have built really strong relaionship in the US with USACA. We have also linked them in with the World Blind Cricket Council and all we need to do now is watch this space to see what happens…
The CFC team had a great time in NYC working with and developing Blind and VI cricket and we want to thank British Airways as without them this would not have been possible!!!
