Busy season for deaf cricket launches with county indoor cricket tournament
The England Cricket Association for the Deaf (ECAD) are looking forward to a busy season, and it all gets underway on Saturday 21 March, when they host the inaugural indoor county cricket tournament in Derby.
The event will be staged at the Willow Sports Centre in Derby, and will see ECAD Lions, Gloucestershire Deaf, Lancashire Deaf and Surrey Deaf compete in a four-team round robin tournament scheduled to be played across the day.
Bringing together the four teams for this tournament is another step forward for deaf cricket in the UK. Deaf cricket continues to make great progress which in the past 12 months has seen the formation of the Gloucestershire, Lancashire and Surrey deaf teams, with others also in the pipeline. And the staging of first ever county vs county deaf cricket fixtures in the inaugural ECAD T20 tournament back in July of last year.
A new website - www.englanddeafcricket.co.uk has been launched, and a development programme has been implemented during the off season in order to further strengthen the pathway from Deaf cricketers into County, Lions and ultimately England Deaf Cricket.
Looking ahead to Saturday’s action, Darren Talbot, ECAD Development Officer, said:
'We are really excited about the prospect of bringing four teams of deaf cricketers together for this indoor tournament.
As well as providing a great start to the 2015 season, this is a great opportunity for talented deaf cricketers to be noticed with the view to breaking into the England Deaf Cricket set up via the ECB’s Regional Talent Centres.'
The tournament gets underway at 11.30am with the ECAD Lions taking on Gloucestershire whilst Surrey Deaf will play Lancashire Deaf, with the tournament’s Grand Final and Plate Final scheduled for 4.40pm.
Talbot added:
'We are grateful to Gloucestershire, Surrey and Lancashire Cricket Boards for all their help in making this possible. We hope in time that other County Cricket boards will go on to create development opportunities and teams for deaf cricketers in their county and region to compete against one another.'
