00:00Thank you so much for joining us. First of all, is there an uptick you've seen into getting people into
00:05cricket during the T20 World Cup and other international events? Is that something you've seen?
00:11Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, as England progressed through the tournament, there is a lot of interest in it and a lot
00:17of talk about the upcoming matches.
00:20Just the general sort of patterns we've seen in Kent in terms of the number of people playing cricket. I
00:27mean, in the Kent Cricket League at the moment, they're at capacity and they've got a waiting list for the
00:32amount of teams that are entering.
00:34I think we're at 300 teams across the county. So generally, there does seem to be an upsurge in the
00:40people playing, which is good.
00:43Absolutely. I think a lot of people struggle with the rules of cricket sometimes, and I'm definitely included in that.
00:49How have you found it easiest to kind of get people past that hurdle in your experience?
00:54Yeah, definitely. I think we work for the Kent Cricket Foundation, so we're very much at the entry level to
01:00the sport and we have to think about various different formats to get people interested.
01:06Everyone has a different view of cricket and which format they like best. So for us, it's just a good
01:11thing to offer lots of different formats.
01:14For example, we have a women's softball cricket offer. We have a street cricket offer. We have offers that we
01:22call All Stars and Dynamos, which is for our junior age group.
01:26So we find if we offer lots of different formats, then actually it just makes the sport a lot more
01:32accessible.
01:33I see, Inder, whether it's county or national, as you mentioned there, women's softball, the women's game is also going
01:39from strength to strength.
01:40Have you seen the women's game really grow in recent years?
01:46Yeah, absolutely. We've seen a sort of steady growth of more and more cricket clubs starting women's and girls' sections.
01:53So we're up to 40 women's sections across the county and 36 girls' sections.
01:58And the biggest growth we've seen actually is the number of teams entering our women's leagues.
02:03So we currently have three divisions of women's hardball and we're at 13 divisions of women's softball across two competitions.
02:11So that's seen a huge increase. I think it just has been that women's softball cricket offer has been a
02:18really good format for it and it's been really popular for lots of women who have busy lives but can
02:24still fit in a much shorter game of sort of pairs women's softball cricket.
02:29So, yeah, that's really grown.
02:31Absolutely. And what advice would you give to people who are hoping to sort of start playing cricket from scratch?
02:38From scratch, I think the advice I would give is obviously you see cricket on TV and you see test
02:44cricket.
02:45The advice would be that there's so many different formats of the game and there'll be one for you.
02:51And if they do want some advice, speak to the Kent Cricket Foundation because we could potentially link you up
02:57with an opportunity in your local area.
03:01Amazing. That's all the time we have. Thank you so much for joining us.
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