Cricket with Disabled Children

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bitsandpieces

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Cricket with Disabled Children

Hi there

I'm taking some members from my club down to play some cricket with children at a Disability Sports Club.

The children have a lot of different disabilities over a broad age group (five up to mid-teens. They range from able-bodied siblings to some children with downs syndrome to some who are disabled down one side of their body and a number of other disabilities.

We'll be using a kwik cricket set and I was wondering if anyone can recommend some fun activities for us to do with the children? We'll play a match at the end, but some basic cricket-related coaching and games that would be appropriate for their age and ability levels would be really handy!

Thanks, Rob.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

There a lot of things you can try.

For example have one team of 3/4 standing in a small circle trying to get to 10 catches, with another team 'scoring' runs. The team running keeps on doing this until the 10 catches have been made. Then swap over - most runs wins. Kids love the competive element, no matter how small it may seem.

To make it easier for kids with disabilities use half size pitches (11 yards not 22 or even smaller) to run on and you can use a football/beach ball for the catches etc.

As a warm up, have them moving around the hall and when you call a number they have to perform a cricket related action - so 1 could be 'Hit a six', 2 could 'bowl a ball' 3 is 'take a catch', 4 is 'appeal (shout howzat) 5 'throw a ball for a run out' and so on. It's a fun game for 5/10 minutes and helps to warm them up a little. I normally use a giant dice to decide the numbers, but calling them out works as well. It's best to introduce the numbers in small batches though, say 2 at a time.

There are some ECB lesson plans at this link - you should be able to adapt some of them, depending on the needs. I'd say that you just need to be imaginative and adapt things to meet their needs, so use a football/beachball if a tennis ball is too small, shorten the pitches, give them 6 wickets to aim at instead of 3, allow single handed or modified grips and use measure scores by distance hit etc.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Mas those are fantastic! Using a football is a great idea.

Thanks very much, I will definitely try those, and one or two of the drills from the link that I can adapt.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please feel free to post :)
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

The key thing is to remember their limits and adapt the game to them. Anything is possible with a little bit of thought.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

We have just done 11 days of teaching with a disabled student as part of our PE teaching course. The amount you can do with disabled students is amazing even with large impacting disabilities.

I had two wheelchair bound students that had pretty good co-ordination of their upper body. They posesed great strength in their arms and could lean over to the side of their chair and hold onto a cricket bat. By basicly bowling the ball, underarming it or rolling it they were able to hit it. Just by hitting it (handed usually like a baseball strike) the pleasure was there in such a simple way.

My advice would be to play games (like mas said) that you are able to play with children without disabilities and then adapt them to their abilitie. Simple games like just catching the ball, aiming at stumps, hitting the ball is all you need to do. As their Fundamental Motor Skills (catching, running, throwing, leaping kicking etc) are so poor and develop at different rates to each other you will find some kids are able to do some activities and others aren't. Just think on your toes and modify when required.

Good luck
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Thank DK! Good luck with your P.E. teaching.

Yeah I work with the kids at the Disability Sports Club and they're all awesome! And now I've definitely got some inventive and fun ways of bringing cricket to their saturday morning! Result!

Mas -re: the football replacement.. to be thrown under-arm?

By the by, I once saw a blind cricket match back in my home town of Reading.. amazing! Going largely by the sound of objects inside the ball, they have to have even more skill than your top-class cricketer!! Awesome.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

I would use underarm for the football. One of the cheap plastic ones you find on garage forecourts is ideal.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Having worked with disabled children [cricket and fundamentals of movement] and had the pleasure of being a guest at an adult disabled cricket match, I would agree with everything already said.

Like D.K's experience I have worked with children in wheelchairs, deaf, blind, loss of limbs [including running with one leg]... physical, emotional and mental disabilities.

I would say, though, that your main problem will be differentiating between such a wide range, age group rather than disabilities but as you already know their capabilities, you're almost there.

If you are going to use a football, I would suggest a sponge/foam ball; it is easier to hold for some players. I would also use overarm as well as underarm, if they are capable, it is a good movement to learn.

More importantly, during the match, ensure all the players are able to shine in their own way and try and encourage your able bodied players to resist assiting too much. If you have deaf players, encourage the club players to learn sign language, I found the hearing players enjoyed this very much.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Liz that's really helpful, thank you! :)

There's plenty of sponge balls at the club if we need them! I'll encourage over-arm throwing, particularly if we have 2 sets of stumps! The club has also said they'll buy a brand new kwik cricket set so we can play cricket with the kids on a more regular basis :)

Yes I was thinking for a match, what about using a slightly different scoring system, such as loss of a wicket is -5 runs rather than back to the pavilion, and every batsman bats in pairs for say 2 overs, like in beach cricket. More fun less disappointment! Particularly for those with less mobility. It's hard enough for us batsmen anyway! :p
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Pairs Cricket http://static.ecb.co.uk/files/kwik-cricket-ideas-for-playing-the-game-108.pdf is great. I would pair up an able bodied with a disabled player to give support when fielding but the able bodied must remember to give the disabled player time and experience, ie, all must take a turn at all positions.

When we play pairs, each team starts with 200 runs. We have no extra balls for a wide or no ball but they count as two runs. If you wish, you can dispense with this for the disable player but enforce it for the able bodies, as a sort of handicap. No LBW and if the batsman is out, five runs deducted. Each pair has four overs [depending on time] and then they rotate position with another pair.

This is slightly different from most tournaments but with smaller numbers, all on the field, everybody is involved all the time.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Liz those games are fantastic! Pairs cricket in particular, which we will now be playing on saturday! 200 runs is a tad generous ;) I'll go with 20 :p All the different variations of these kwik cricket games will keep us going for ages :)

The great things about pairs cricket is it will keep the competitive edge some (well, most!)of the kids have, but at the same time make sure everyone is involved.

I am a very happy bunny :)
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Come back and let us know how you all got on. I would be really interested to hear how your club players found the experience and how they adapted their games and their perceptions :) It would be great to know what you thought worked and similarly, what you thought didn't work.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

No worries, it's going ahead on Saturday so I'll post up something afterwards to say how it went.

Really looking forward to it actually, couldn't play cricket last week because I had a virus and now I'm better :)
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Hi there

The session went really well, thank you everyone for all the advice. A lot of the kids were playing cricket for the first time, but the pairs cricket was a big success. The drills all went well, although I may cut down the number of fielding games so they get more time to learn about bowling skills. I can confirm one thing: all kids love to bat! Most children showed improvement in at least one area, and one or two really shined!

Great fun.

Thanks again.

Rob
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Glad to hear that it went well!

Don't forget to keep challenging them, doesn't have to be big things but it will help to keep them interested.
 
Re: Cricket with Disabled Children

Remember, you can teach anything; there are no boundaries.

I went into a school a couple of months ago and was presented with young children who had never played any form or cricket before. They were all right hand dominant but I taught them to bowl left handed. Very quickly, they became very good at it and their technique was really good.

However, when I asked them to bowl with their other
arm, they all found this 'strange'. They mastered it eventually and now bowl left and right handed on command. They are great at catching with their left hand but have not quite masted the left arm through yet.

Try this with your new players; they may surprise you.

I am so pleased everybody gained so much from the experience :)​
 
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