This article by Adam Hopkins was published in this week's edition of The Cricket Paper.
“What we’ve found is that everyone is able to use it, it’s really inclusive,” says Richard Feist, Lime Tree Primary School’s head of PE, when asked about his school’s QuickHit cricket setup.
“It’s quite quick and easy, it’s good fun.”
The Cricket Paper visited Lime Tree to watch a QuickHit cricket session, a format of playground-friendly cricket launched in 2024 by Inspired Schools.
Inspired Schools is an organisation with the goal of getting children and families active with the knowledge that physical activity is not just good for a child’s health, but also their attainment, attendance and behaviour.
“In games like Kwik cricket, you have the same children who dominate the game,” said Ben Kirk, co-founder and co-director of Inspired Schools.
“Even if it’s pairs batting and one person bowling, children are disengaged. You’d have children picking daisies, doing cartwheels.
“When I started to think about what QuickHit could and should look like, I was very much thinking about those kids who’d be disengaged in a PE lesson or at an after school club and how we can switch those kids on and give them an opportunity to find a sport that they might end up loving.”
QuickHit can be set up in any playground with specialist fielding position markers on the floor so children know where to stand. After each delivery, the children will move round a fielding position, keeping them switched on, engaged and part of the game.
“There’s one ball bowled and then everybody moves around,” says Kirk. This is partly also to ensure children who are a bit more self-conscious about bowling or executing and attempting skills in front of others feel less pressure because all the attention is not on them.
“That feeling of ‘everybody is watching’, how can we solve that? Everybody who is fielding is so concerned about where they are moving next.
“We weren’t 100 percent sure that element would work, but it really does. It’s so dynamic. It’s less about where the ball’s being hit and how many runs are being scored, it’s about the game in general, having fun, following the rules and taking any performance element away.”
In the playground at break times and lunch, it is all about taking part, but Kirk also stresses the usefulness of QuickHit in specialist cricket PE lessons where children are receiving coaching and not just playing purely for fun.
“We want to teach the foundations of the game, get more kids playing the game, understanding the game and being aware of the game.”
The game is designed so that it makes cricket easy to follow so that children can run it themselves, without the need for a coach or umpire or for it to be part of a proper PE lesson.
“We had the training done for our sports crew and sports leaders so they now run sessions at lunchtime as well,” Feist added.
Also in attendance at the session was Jak Martin, head of the GLF Schools Foundation, a multi-academy trust for primary and secondary schools across Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex and the London Boroughs of Wandsworth and Croydon, of which Limetree is a member.
“We raise funds to pay for things [such as QuickHit] to go on in schools,” he said. “I run that across our 43 schools.” Surrey skipper Rory Burns is an ambassador for GLF and they are his chosen charity for his benefit year.
“This new facility at the school that gives the kids more chance to play makes cricket a bit more fun, makes it engaging and makes it easier to be led without a member of staff there.”
For more information about QuickHit cricket, visit inspiredmarkings.com.