Coffee with Cricket thriving in Milton Keynes

Nauman Javaid began his role as MK Cricket City Development Manager in May last year with an aim of making cricket more accessible to those living in the more deprived areas of the city. Upon assuming his role, he noticed one big thing: the disparity between the number of men playing cricket as opposed to women.

“I didn't see many women or girls playing cricket,” he said. “So, I came up with this project called Coffee with Cricket. All women are invited irrespective of their age or ethnicity. Everyone is welcome. All you have to do is have a passion for the game and want to get out of the house. That's how it came to me.”

Coffee with Cricket is a two-hour, free-to-access, social softball cricket session that involves beginner-friendly cricket for women and girls and incorporates a coffee break in the middle to give opportunities for socialising and conversation. Having started small, the sessions are now thriving, with more than 100 women of varying ages signed up to the programme.

“For the first two or three weeks when we started our attendance was sometimes just two or three,” Javaid said. “But now we have 110 women throughout Milton Keynes who are joining us on a weekly basis.”

Javaid started the sessions from scratch, handing out flyers in local shops, libraries, churches and mosques, as well as posting on social media, with several local business owners helping out in spreading the word and raising awareness. Fast forward to today and such is the popularity of Coffee with Cricket, it has grown to three sessions per week, all well-attended with different women attending each day.

"The three sessions are full and they're not the same people. We get new people, new faces, each time. And one thing that has now happened is that cricket clubs have started to join us, like Wolverton Cricket Club. They never had a women's cricket team. And now [partly thanks to Coffee with Cricket] they have a women's team who have participated in two local tournaments.”

Several of the women involved with Coffee with Cricket have joined local cricket clubs and some of them competed in the ECB National Tapeball Competition held earlier this year in Blackburn as part of the MK Braves team. As well as playing, participants from the sessions have also become qualified coaches and umpires. This has allowed Juvaid to take a step back, meaning that the Coffee with Cricket sessions are now entirely women-run.

“We have got eight qualified coaches, five of whom are working with Bucks county. When I started these sessions, I saw who had the passion and said: ‘Look, I don't want to run this session. The session is for you and by you.’”

One of these coaches is a lady named Attiyah, who has been incredibly proactive in growing Coffee with Cricket and helping it expand to multiple sessions. She started off taking on a small amount of responsibility at the sessions and now runs some of them entirely.

“She’s amazing. One week she was running a warm-up session, the next she was running an informal chat about healthy eating, the next she was focusing on cricket. She then did her Level Two [coaching qualification] and now she's been working for Bucks Cricket for the past year. She's one of the most famous coaches amongst the local community. People look up to her.”

The sessions bring together people from a range of backgrounds, with the bulk of attendees coming from Milton Keynes’ South Asian, White, and Somali communities, while they are also made up of people of varying ages, with most of the women attending falling between the ages of 25 and 65.

“One of our participants who will be training to be a coach this year when our coach education starts in October will be 62 when she qualifies as a coach!” Javaid said proudly.

For more information on Coffee with Cricket and to get involved, send an email to nauman.javaid@buckscricket.co.uk