Street cricket project 'helps bowl out youth crime in 15 boroughs'

A project that encourages pupils in deprived parts of London to take up the game is said to have had a positive effect on the community.

The street cricket programme StreetChance has broken down barriers between children living on different estates, encouraged non-sporty children to take up exercise and improved relations between police and teenagers, research from Loughborough University found.

The project has been running in 15 London boroughs since 2008. Today's report shows that more than 13,000 children and 94 schools have got involved since it first started.

Pupils play a faster version of cricket using a tennis ball covered in electrical tape, similar to matches that children play on the streets in Pakistan.

Mike Feeley, a teacher at Hackney Bridge Academy, said cricket is a "leveller" because none of his students have played it before so everybody is at the same standard, unlike football where non-sporty students may be excluded.

Researchers from Loughborough's Institute of Youth Sport interviewed students and cricket coaches to analyse the impact of the project.

The report states: "It was felt that the sense of belonging to a team and having a responsibility towards their teammates might help to deter young people from associating with gangs.

"One coach appreciated the role of StreetChance in deterring young people from gang-related behaviour and he was proud of the role he had been able to play." The report said that cricket smoothed relations between religious groups. At one coaching session some Muslim boys were observing Ramadan, but non-Muslim boys wanted to eat beforehand. The report said they "deliberately avoided doing so in front of their Muslim teammates, something which the coach explained as an act of sensitivity."

Donovan Miller a StreetChance community coach in Hackney said: "In this area we have the Muslim kids, the Jewish kids, the West Indian kids, the English kids, and what I've got is them coming together playing a game. Now if the cricket wasn't there, who knows what they would be doing."

The project was set up by the Cricket Foundation's Chance to Shine campaign, and has been backed by Barclays and the Metropolitan Police.