How a former Lancashire bowler is making Roedean girls converts to cricket

Mike Smethurst has been the Sussex school's director of cricket for almost six years

Turning girls who haven’t so much as held a cricket bat into enthusiasts is "the best thing" about Mike Smethurst’s role as head of cricket at Roedean School.

While more pupils are arriving in year seven with previous experience, linked to the cricket replacing rounders in many primary schools, others are novices who have yet to be captured by the sport. 

Thanks to the work of Smethurst, new groups of girls are becoming immediately captivated by cricket.

"That is the best thing about it, without any shadow of a doubt," he said. "The girls that come to us who are already playing at a good level, perhaps club and even county cricket, they love it and we can help them to further develop.

"But what’s really exciting, and I think what sets us apart, is the number of girls with little or no previous experience, who then enjoy it so much that they choose to join a local club and begin to play cricket outside school as well. 

"I joined Roedean two months before lockdown began in 2020, so it was two years before we could run a full cricket programme and for almost all our girls that meant starting all over again.

"I had to figure out how we wanted them to approach the game and therefore how we needed to coach them, both technically and in their mindset. 

"We want them to be engaged enough to keep coming back and empowered enough to do things in their own way. If what they are doing will transfer, and continue to work in future years, that’s a pretty powerful combination."

Smethurst has ring fenced softball cricket for all teams below A and B level, normalised the use of a leather ball at an early age and removing that fear factor for pupils.

"In the early days if someone accidentally bowled a beamer, you'd get the batter screaming and running out of the way," he explained.

"Now, they just whack it, which shows how far they’ve come; they’re much braver and excited by the challenges of the game.

"We try and get them out of softball as soon as they're ready.

"Softball is brilliant, but if you if you're doing it for too long, it almost becomes a different sport, so those that are confident enough are moved onto hardball very quickly and that’s when you begin to see the real development."

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