"We want it to be a place where people can say ‘no matter who I am, I can go and play for them and I’ll be welcome,’” says Michael Coleman of The Metronomes.
Founded via Twitter (now X), The Metronomes are an inclusive side bringing people together to enjoy cricket and raise money for charity.
The Metronomes were brought to life by Michael’s wife, Bex. In early 2022, Bex was approached by Heaven Help Us CC with an invitation to play a charity game for autism awareness and to raise money for the National Autistic Society, a cause close to the Colemans’ hearts as their eldest son is autistic.
The team name Metronomes comes from his love for ticking clocks, particularly a metronome that Michael bought for him to help him sleep.
After accepting the invite, Bex found herself in a position where she had a fixture but no players, so took to Twitter to find a team.
“We were inundated with people saying ‘I’ll play, I’ll put my name to it and do something good for a good cause,’” said Michael.
“We came together for the first training session just before the first game and we even had Roberta Moretti Avery, who at the time was the Brazilian women’s cricket captain, and she came all the way over from Brazil to play.
“We had some neurodiverse players, some players who hadn’t played in a decade, some players who’d never played before but loved cricket, and we all turned up and had a net.”
The main purpose of the game was fundraising. “We had people from all over Twitter donating prizes and we were auctioning them off,” said Michael.
“In the first year we raised four-and-a-half thousand pounds.”
After the success of their first summer, The Metronomes organised even more fixtures for the next year and put a call out on Twitter for more players.
“We wanted to find players who didn’t feel like they fitted in. There were a few players who thought they weren’t really fitting in with club games because they wanted to be a bit more relaxed with it and not have the pressure of trying to win a game.
“We only ask their name. We never ask if they’re neurodiverse, or whether they’re LGBTQ, or anything. They turn up and they tell us who they are and they play. That’s the important part of it for us.
“We’ve got a player who wanted to be known as ‘The Pirate’ and we were like ‘yep, no problem, you can be known as The Pirate, that’s who you are.’”
The Metronomes wear a rainbow kit to signify that everyone is welcome to play for them and it is a safe space for all. They play an annual fixture against London-based Graces CC - the world’s first LGBTQIA+ inclusive cricket club - the most recent game taking place last weekend.
“We’ve played against Graces three times now, we’ve done three consecutive years. We’ve always been beaten by them, they are a very good team.”
The annual fixture came about when Graces reached out to The Metronomes after seeing the good work they’d been doing.
“They saw what we were doing and they loved it and they got in touch. After the first game, everyone had such a great time.
“We’ve got a photo of it, there’s a smile on everyone’s face, there’s a massive group of people. We played two T20s back-to-back.
“We all sat there after the game and they wanted to hear a bit more from me and Bex. They wanted to know why we had the logo, the pride flag, on the shirt. And Bex said ‘we wanted people, whoever they were, to know that they were safe and that they could play.’ They loved the idea that we were a strong ally.”
The Metronomes’ next game is against Wicket Whippets in Regents Park, London, on May 25, while they also have plans for another fundraising auction.
“We’re trying to see if we can gather enough stuff to have another auction - a small one, maybe, not as big as the first one.
“We get signed kit that we can auction off, signed photos; we’ve had a lot of donations of things like that.
“So, we’ll try and organise something like that. Some of our players have stepped up recently and taken away some of the burden from me which is helpful and they’re looking at sourcing a bunch of items to auction off.
“Hopefully we’ll have a fundraiser later in the year to raise even more money.”
If you’re interested in donating to The Metronomes auction or playing for them, visit metronomes.cricket for more information.