Estonians go Cricket Crazy.

Young Sports Leaders from Benfield School recently travelled to Tamsalu in Estonia to teach the children at Tamsalu Gumnaasium how to play cricket. Benfield School has originally arranged a school partnership with Tamsalu when the British Council arranged a trip for teachers from the North East to travel to Estonia to find a link school. The school then paid for some of its young leaders to attend a Cricket Leaders course to give them the knowledge and skills required to teach cricket to beginners. Many of the pupils also took part in fundraising activities to ensure that the final cost of the trip was affordable for all.

The week started with the coaches from Benfield introducing the game using small sided games of Kwik Cricket. This was used to familiarise the Estonian children with the concept of the game and some of the terminology used. The coaches then saw all of the Estonian children on a rotation as they delivered basic skills of batting, bowling and fielding throughout the week.

On the Friday the coaches split the Estonians into six teams and worked with them in the morning on more complex skills and introduced the rules to the children so that they were able to take part in a small team game of cricket. The week ended with a round robin competition and the finale of a Tamsalu vs Benfield game, which the visitors won by 1 run. Benfield School had taken 12 Inter-Cricket bags, containing bats, balls, wickets and cones over to Estonia and at the end of the festival presented these to Tamsalu, along with a number of cricket teaching resources for the Physical Education teachers.

The feedback from the Estonian children was superb with many claiming that they had even been playing the game in the evenings after school and some pupils were even making cricket bats in their woodwork lessons! The town of Tamsalu were extremely hospitable to the Benfield students, even the mayor had arranged to meet the English students and on the final night the headteacher of Tamsalu joined the students for a meal in which he made presentations to every coach.

Benfield School and Tamsalu Gumnaasium are now planning their next project which it is hoped will happen in the summer of 2007. It is intended that students from Tamsalu and a school from the Czech Republic will travel to Newcastle to be trained by Benfield students on how to become sports leaders and to then travel back to their schools and coach younger pupils at sport and then to be able to train other students to become young leaders.