England Blind primed for action

Cricket is a popular sport for blind people © Getty Images

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The England Blind cricket team have begun preparations with a two-day training session at the National Performance Centre in Loughborough as they gear up for an exciting summer.

They spent the weekend of 15 and 16 March making use of the excellent facilities at the ECB’s home of training and development, improving their skills.

Coach Jason Bowen was highly enthusiastic about the time they spent in Loughborough, telling ecb.co.uk: “It was excellent, we had no problems at all.

“We had a fitness trainer from Warwickshire come up and he did a pilates session and a dynamic warm-up.

“We did some fitness drills after that - mainly for speed, agility and quickness (SAQ). Then in the afternoon we had batting drills, with the guys divided into groups. They did some core stability as well.

“On Sunday we did some more fielding drills and SAQ stuff, then we did a bit more batting using the bowling machine and then an open net session.

“We also took some photographs and video footage as well, so we could do some video analysis.”

The blind team take on West Indies in three matches in August this year, sandwiched between two other festival tournaments in May and September.

Amongst that, they have just four two-day training sessions in which to hone their fitness and skills.

“It is difficult because we only meet every six weeks,” Bowen admitted. “With fitness things we are trying to introduce a lifestyle mentality so they have got to take responsibility for their own fitness.

“We do run fitness sessions in order to give them an idea of what they need to work on. It is an important part of what we do.”

There are 11 ‘domestic’ teams in the UK, coming from areas in Birmingham, London, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Wales, Sussex, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire, who play in the British Blind Sport cricket league.

England's blind squad line up for a photo opportunity

“They have a domestic league and they play competitively throughout the summer,” Bowen added.

“The only difference with the domestic game is that it is played with a slightly different ball to what we play with internationally.

“It means we have to get guys from the domestic game and then almost have to retrain them a little bit, in order to play the international version of the game.

“They use a small cricket-ball sized plastic ball for the international game - obviously that has got bells in it - and the bowling is done underarm.

“In the domestic game they use a size three football with bells in and that is bowled over-arm.

In addition to the differences between domestic and international cricket, there are also changes to the laws used in a single game, dependant on the level of sight of each player in the teams involved.

The teams are composed of 11 players from up to five different sight categories B1, low partial, B2, B3 and B4.

B1 is totally blind and the sight categories then move upwards in levels of sight, with each sight category subject to different rules and compensations when batting, bowling or fielding.