Late winter nights the secret after Scarborough College's national success

Cricket training running as late at 10.30pm at Yorkshire school

It paints a picture about the culture of cricket and just how successful their 2025 season was at Scarborough College that when the hockey season restarted this year, students across the school were using their sticks to shadow bat. 

They thrived on the field as the Under-15s won the National One Day Cup and off it too as they fielded three senior boys teams and two senior girls teams for the first time in their history.  They even had a fixture for a girls Under-8 side last season. 

It encapsulates a cricket programme at the school which fostered a “love and passion” for the game from a very young age. 

The school’s head of cricket Piet Rinke explained: “I think a lot of the love, growing the love of the game for us starts in reception and those are kids aged three and four. 

“A lot of the skill-based stuff is cricket orientated as well and I'm trying to grow the passion of it. Every time that we can incorporate a cricket ethos into their game sessions and their ball skills activities, that's what happens. I mean, just silly little games that are played, for example, we put a cricket bat and a tennis ball in their hand. So it really starts at a very early age and trying to grow the love and the passion of the game.”

The programme can then develop into the production of professional players, helped by the opening of a school of excellence in 2020 and a tiered system, split into gold, silver and bronze, for individualised training for students. When it was first started, they had six students on individualised programmes, which has now risen to 58 this year.

“We give them as near enough a professional setup and getting them ready to be on a professional pathway as much as what we possibly can in amongst the school environment,” Rinke added. “Obviously, first and foremost, education is still the first priority here. And then cricket, if the players or students choose to try and follow cricket, we provide as close an opportunity to them as getting into it. 

“There are time constraints and commitments that the players and the students need to do in terms to fulfil their academic lessons. So, we run sessions from 7am, and then when it gets really busy come January, February, March time, some days we'll go as far as working or running sessions until 10.30pm.”

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