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A simple but impactful goal, building OSCAR youth leaders on the cricket field.

A simple but impactful goal, building OSCAR youth leaders on the cricket field.

By Sara Begg

Over four busy (and brilliantly full) days in Mumbai, we worked with coaches from the OSCAR Foundation and The Right Pitch ( as part of Cricket Unites India, a joint project with the MCC Foundation and Cricket Without Boundaries.) and the generous support of the Barclays Group. The aim was simple, but not small: bring different approaches to youth development together under a shared coaching language that coaches can actually use on the ground.

This week in Mumbai came off the back of project scoping in November, but nothing really prepares you for the city itself: loud, fast, joyful, exhausting and completely alive. We had been immediately blown away by the perfectly coordinated chaos of the Oval Maidan, which honestly might now take the title of the new home of cricket – step aside Lord’s! And yet, standing in the middle of all that energy, one thing was impossible to ignore: for most people in Mumbai, the gender participation gap in cricket is still huge. Girls’ access, space and time to play remains limited, especially for those from marginalised backgrounds. So, this project, ambitious as it might sound in a city that lives and breathes cricket, has a very clear focus: cricket for girls and the coaches who can help make that possible.

To make this happen, myself and Lee Booth worked through the full ICC Foundation content, alongside CWB’s 6Cs of Positive Youth Development, using the framework to connect OSCAR’s work on Life Skills and TRP’s focus on 21st Century Skills. While all organisations use different terms, once we mapped them together the overlaps were obvious. The 6Cs gave coaches a structure they can now use across projects, organisations and sessions, without losing what already makes their work strong.

The content was tailored to each group, shaped by the coaches in the room and delivered in our usual slightly chaotic, always joyful, very hands-on style. We played a lot of games. We stopped them. We changed the rules. We talked. We tried again. It is always a highlight of any coach education and develop when the penny drop moment happens: “ohhh, that’s why we do it like this”.

One of the best parts was collaborating with the coaches and coordinators themselves and building new relationships. In particular, as cricket tragics, being somewhere where talking cricket comes as naturally as breathing was a joy. We in particular loved sharing ideas, testing activities and finding simple ways to bring learning into the ground through “integrated learning” with classic Cricket+ activities like Challenge Busters.

Out of the pilot has come something concrete: the Cricket Unites India Playbook, now mobilised alongside short videos (https://youtube.com/@cricket_unites) to support coaches to recreate the activities later this year. Although I have to admit, the most exciting part is knowing the sessions won’t look the same next time, because we already saw coaches adapting rules, reshaping games and making them their own, which is the point really – the playbook is just a starting point, and we move onward together from here.

With special thanks to Sara Begg & Lee Booth from Cricket Without Boundaries, Angus Berry from MCC Foundation and Nina Bibby, Tom Corbett, Katy Bowman from Barclays Bank Plc for your belief in the OSCAR team. CLICK ON OSCAR’s YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO LEARN MORE

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