Cricket Boards of Namibia, Argentina, Nepal, Vanuatu, and Italy have been announced as the regional winners in the Development Initiative of the Year category, showcasing how cricket is becoming accessible to more people than ever before in the ICC regions of Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe and East Asia-Pacific.
The awards were announced on International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. All the regional winners will be nominees for the ICC Global awards, which will be declared on 20th April on ICC social media profiles and website.
The Cricket Boards conducted specific development and learning initiatives, that garnered much praise from the communities and global diaspora, as they celebrated the growth of the sport and it’s impact. Here are the winners and their initiatives as documented in the official ICC press release.
- During lockdown Cricket Namibia created professional development opportunities for its workforce, players, and coaches to foster excellence. Seven admin staff completed 27 academic courses, including in project management, marketing, risk management and leadership. Coach education programmes were also a high priority, with 281 coaches completing courses at various levels.
- Cricket Argentina designed 17 free courses in Spanish to develop 257 more coaches, umpires, and scorers in 2020. Coaches who were a part of the programme went on to establish three new clubs. The course material was made available to the rest of the region, and seven other Spanish-speaking countries benefitted from the initiative to help engage people in their local language.
- With COVID-19 restrictions lifted and cricket returning to Nepal, around 2000 women and 1900 men featured in local tournaments in the country, providing the opportunity to engage new sponsors and broadcasters during the national events.
- Vanuatu Cricket live-streamed the Women’s T20 Grand Finals for the first time ever-amassing 350,000 views. The exposure led the national team to visit COVID-19 impacted development programmes to engage and attract more women to participate with the set-up of four brand new teams.
- The Cricketmania campaign delivered by Cricket Italy to promote the sport has become a game-changer for the sport in the country, bringing cricket to a much wider range of 11-18-year-olds through schools, clubs, and sport body networks than before. The recognition created by the campaign resulted in cricket being included in the National School Games list, enabling Cricket Italy to reach 8797 secondary schools and 8868 high schools.
