Exams, your time is up!

Saturday was one of the strangest cricket matches in which I have played. It very much felt like watching a highlights package through the first 15 overs, as a flurry of boundaries was followed by a burst of wickets. In the end, we actually got our bowling together and were able to limit Clifton to just over 150 on a good wicket. We then got home relatively safely, with just a little wobble, and picked up a very important twenty points.

Sunday was completely different. From the start to the finish we were superb in every department, and it was fantastic to keep our cup run going into the last 16 by winning the regional final. We now have an appetising match away at Kidderminster Victoria to look forward to in the middle of July, and with another win in the Ockbrook invitational T20 this Wednesday we are now still competing on five fronts going into the end of June.

With only a few weeks to go now until the start of the Ashes, the anticipation has really been building in the cricketing public. English hopes have certainly been lifted by the improved performance of the ODI side in the last few weeks, and it will be interesting to see if they can carry that momentum into the Test side which has a number of different players.

As part of the build up, I was reading this morning that Mike Gatting has been touring schools to promote the game. He has also made some very interesting and pertinent comments regarding the demise of summer sports in school due to examinations.

Working in a school myself, I know that Mike is definitely onto something. Schools are under increasing pressure to meet examination targets, and inevitably things that do not fit in with this objective can too easily be moved to one side. This is not a problem that is solely that of state schools. Independent schools too have been finding increasing challenges balancing the needs of sport and examinations. With the movement of all exams to a completely linear system where they are all sat at the end of the year, this will only add further to this problem.

The difficulty is that there is no easy solution or remedy. One option might be to move examinations to another time in the year, but that would probably mean changing the school calendar completely, something that would be difficult and controversial. In all reality, summer sports, forever the poorer relation, will just have to find a way to continue to thrive in the difficult environment. Let’s hope they can.