Kwik Cricket

The largest grass-roots sport scheme in the UK, the ASDA Kwik Cricket competition, kicked off again on Monday 16^th May at Cassiobury Junior School in Watford.

 

This year, to celebrate the launch of the 2011 summer ASDA Kwik Cricket season, young cricket players from the school received a visit from England and Middlesex fast bowler, Steven Finn. Steven came down to his local school which he used to attend as a boy to share his coaching tips with the aspiring cricketers and he was happy to stay longer than originally planned to chat to the young players and sign their T-shirts.

Steven Finn said: "It was good to come back to Cassiobury and meet the children who will be taking part in the ASDA Kwik Cricket competition this year. It’s fantastic to see so many boys and girls excited about playing cricket, I hope they are inspired and this is the start of a life-long involvement in cricket for them."



Danielle Wyatt, member of the England Women's Team said: "I remember playing kwik cricket at school; it’s great to see so many children are enjoying playing it too. The ASDA Kwik Cricket Competition is now bigger than ever and the fact that so many children can get involved and be introduced to the game is fantastic. I wish all the schools involved in the competition the best of luck, and hope many of the children continue to participate in cricket as they move up to secondary school."

Already incorporating over 130,000 young cricketers from 12,000 primary schools around the UK, the ASDA Kwik Cricket competition is still growing. Following the success of the England cricket team in the Ashes this year, the popularity of cricket is on a high and it is hoped that this will encourage youngsters to pick up the blue bat and orange ball and help get their school through to the next round of the competition. ASDA Kwik Cricket is the perfect format for primary school children to be introduced to the sport, as it uses a soft ball and everyone gets a go. What’s more, the competition takes place on a local, regional and national level, with teams that progress through the competition playing against the best teams from Scotland and Northern Ireland at the National Final in Derby on July 20^th.

ASDA work hard to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle to children. The ASDA Kwik Cricket festivals and England player appearances are used as an opportunity to discuss healthy eating issues with youngsters. ASDA utilise their huge store network across the UK to attend local Kwik Cricket festivals, where they hand out healthy snacks and drink to keep the young players refreshed and energised. They also sponsor appearances of the national team players, such as Steven Finn and Danielle Wyatt at the launch last Monday, in their effort to motivate children to take up cricket. Zoe, community colleague from the ASDA store in Watford was present at Cassiobury JS on Monday to provide refreshments.

 

April 11th was an exciting day for the Campbell College students in Belfast as they received a visit from Nigel Jones, the Ireland team’s all-rounder, who conducted an exclusive coaching session and gave youngsters his best tips on how to succeed in this sport.

 

Born in New Zealand, Nigel left his homeland for Ireland and played his first club match for Civic Service North in 2007.  He joined the senior Ireland team before the ICC World Twenty20 in 2009.

 

During his visit at the beautiful Campbell College last Monday he helped launch the 2011 Asda Kwik Cricket Competition in Northern Ireland. The event ran for over an hour and Nigel was happy to pose for photographs and answer any questions kids had for him afterwards.

 

Nigel said: ‘After the recent success of the Ireland cricket team at the World Cup it is great to see the increased general interest in cricket which will hopefully result in further development of this sport in schools in the long term. Thanks Asda for sponsoring this competition that introduces kids to cricket. Without their support it wouldn’t be possible to promote the sport at the level that we are able to with the support of Asda.’

 

Scotland, national and girls launches to follow!

Hi everyone,

it looks like some of you are experiencing problems when trying to approve other users to join your team - we apologize for this and are working hard to resolve the issue asap.. We know that some of you worked very hard to get people on the site so please don't worry, you won't miss out on your free kwik cricket sets once you get your 8 team members! 

Your Asda Kwik Cricket team

Hello Kwik Cricketers,

As you probably know, kwik cricket organizers work very closely with community colleagues from Asda stores across the UK to make sure they know where and when they have to go to hand out healthy food and drink to young players and help out with the events.

Asda stores across Durham and Northumberland are not wasting any time and met last week with their local kwik cricket managers to discuss this year's competition and decide on who's going to attend what events. Well done to Mavis from the South Shields store for organizing and coordinating this meeting and for helping those community colleagues who are new to the job and haven't worked on the Asda Kwik Cricket before. Thanks to Mavis we now have dates and venues for Durham and Northumberland kwik cricket festivals, which will be uploaded shortly in 'The Tournament' section for you to have a look at.

Good teamwork everyone!

Your Asda Kwik Cricket team

Hi everyone,

We've had lots of new members signing up to the website which is great - keep up the good work!

Just to remind everyone that in order to be eligible to receive free kwik cricket set for your school you need to complete all of the following steps. It looks complicated but it really is pretty SIMPLE!

 This is how you do it:

As you all know ASDA Kwik Cricket Competition will be kicking off again soon and as you haven’t heard from us for some time know, we thought we should update you on all the new and exciting things that will happen around the competition this year. 

First of all, we will be making some changes to the actual ASDA Kwik Cricket website you’ve got open right now, giving you more exciting content and opportunities to win truly amazing prizes for your school. Read on to find out more… Implementing these changes should not affect functionality of the website, so don’t worry, you’ll still have access to your tournament information and also to your online teams! If you haven’t got an online team yet make sure that you ask your teacher to set one up for you and have all your mates and mums and dads join in. All your teacher needs to do is click ‘Sign up’ and follow the instructions. Once all your mates are signed up to the website they can easily join your team by clicking ‘Join team’ next to the team’s profile.

Two important things to remember:

1.       Not having an online team = not getting a chance to win one of the 1,000 amazing prizes we have available for you guys this year!

2.       The more members your team has, the better chance of winning!

We have 43 online teams so far so if you think about it, you have a pretty good chance to win if you sign up soon before everyone else does!

This is what you could win:

-          Coaching session from England players – check out Your News section and look for the story about kwik cricketers from Scarning VC Primary in Norfolk who met Steve Finn and Jonathan Trott last year. Yes, these are the same guys you see on TV when watching England cricket team play!

 

-          Your school could play in front of the massive audience during the Test matches. This is what it feels like to be a professional cricketer!

 

-          Randomly selected schools will receive a free ASDA Kwik Cricket kit – so you can practise more and make it to the national finals this year! Kids playing in the national final last year got a chance to meet Graeme Swann and Caroline Atkins. Who knows who’s going to come this year …

Similarly to last year, we will be organizing ASDA Road to the Final again, where selected regional winners from all across the UK will have an ambassador visiting their school to conduct an exclusive coaching session to give them top tips before the big final. It could be your school this year!

 

The following is probably more relevant to your mums and dads, but if there is anyone at your school or local cricket club who you’d like to say big THANK YOU to for all their time they’ve volunteered for cricket, please let us know at asdakwikcricket@havas-se.com. We will then select the best ones who will become ‘ASDA Volunteers of the Month’. Award winners will receive a certificate and £100 worth of ASDA store vouchers and there will be one winner each month. If you let us know their story and what they have been doing to help develop cricket in your community to and deserve this recognition, we will feature their story on the ASDA Kwik Cricket website too.

 

That’s it for now, hope you’re all signed up to the ASDA Kwik Cricket Competition 2011 and best of luck to everyone! And make sure you keep on checking the website for any news…

Your ASDA Kwik Cricket team

Here is the story from our Online Team Competition winners.  They attracted over 160 mums, dads, school mates and friends to support their team and won themselves an amazing session with 2 England players:  Check out below!!

On the 4^th of August, the ASDA kwik cricket team from Dereham in Norfolk made the most of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet some very famous cricketers: Steve Finn, an English International known for his fast bowling, and Jonathan Trott, the Ashes-winning batsman, joined the team at King Edward’s VI Handsworth School indoor facilities in Birmingham on a rainy Wednesday to conduct an exclusive coaching session to the young players who came all the way from Norfolk.

Boys and girls from Scarning VC Primary School were able to enjoy and have fun with their cricketing heroes on one of the best days of their lives after taking part in the ASDA Kwik Cricket Competition which involved a massive 12,000 schools this year! The overjoyed school-children won this opportunity through this website. Every school that took part in the Kwik Cricket scheme was invited to set up their team online and the school that could attract the most supporters won this exclusive and fantastic prize. The mums, dads and the rest of the school all got behind Scarning VC's ASDA Kwik Cricket team to help them win this wonderful prize and managed to brush aside the challenge from the other 12,000 competing schools! 

 
All the children from Scarning VC Primary School were full of excitement and had a great experience learning new skills whilst also receiving exclusive tips from Steve Finn and Jonathan Trott. Both cricketers shared and taught their newest skills which we will hopefully see in their next set of matches before the children get to show their friends! Who knows, maybe we will see some Scarning VC pupils in a future Ashes series? Not only did the England players give the children fresh advice, they were also happy to pose for photographs with the children and sign their kwik cricket equipment as well as their t-shirts. Even the adults were jealous!

 

 

Asda Kwik Cricket creates thousands of memories and experiences through a summer.  Here is one recollection from this year from our colleague Bharat Parmar at the ASDA store in Blackburn!

Kwik Cricket Venue Clitheroe Cricket Club 9th June 2010

It was a cloudy day with slight drizzle, we packed the car with the utensils, tables and refreshment and headed for the Clitheroe Cricket Club, situated in the heart of Ribble Valley .This was our first project of Kwik Cricket attendance for Asda and this was a regional final. Waheed said “Lancashire here we come”

Waheed had never seen Clitheroe in all the time that he lived in Lancashire.” Do not worry the scenery is breathtaking”, I said. Entering Clitheroe we could see the old stone cottages and buildings that withstood time. Eventually I said “Look there is Clitheroe Castle” "Castle?” “Yes you will see this from the ground up in the hills”

Upon arrival we set up our stall under a large tree giving us all the protection from all elements.

The refreshments we laid out knowing that we would get the girls coming over when they heard that we had arrived.

We could see that there were several groups of girls ready to battle and win as the regional champions. There were a few of the girls practising near the edge of the boundary, where we situated. The pitch was so beautiful, lush with blades of green grass.

 “Bharat, do you know if Dickie Bird was umpiring, and legends like Colin Cowdrey, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Don Bradman, Brian Lara, Alan Knott, they’d be proud to be here and play today.

All of a sudden from the right side the cry would be heard” Come on we can get a four” Blimey no sooner a cry would come from the left 2 runs and so forth right would shout” run out” whilst we served refreshments to the very thirsty and hungry young ladies as we never stopped. Every time we served, the girls no matter from what school they were representing “Thank you Asda for supporting us”. Waheed looked at me as I did to him, still serving. We got a moment and we both said in unison to each other “Did you hear what I did?” I said “Yes they said please, thank you Asda” Wow gosh another wicket falls.

We could not believe the one’s, two’s, four’s that were been struck by the girls bats. The catches were just as immaculate. We wondered what could they do against the boys? Probably they’d out class them. Watch out Freddie Flintoff, come down to see how these girls do it and England may do better in the future.

Whilst serving the refreshments, we managed to find a moment to advise the parents and teachers, to encourage the children to set up their own team page by logging on the Asda Kwik Cricket website, at the same time raising the awareness of this great sport. With their entries, we advised them that they could win various prizes for example coaching session with 2 current England Internationals. 

Finally it has to come to an end and the winners were the hosting town Pendle Primary School.

They were so over the moon they’d hugged each other and the faces glowing with smiles.

Each of the losing teams came over and just like from the start “Thank you Asda”. This amazed us and we thanked them on behalf of Blackburn for the invitation and their manners. We would like to if invited attend the following year.      

Congratulations to Scarning VC primary school from Dereham in Norfolk, who have won the opportunity of a lifetime to have a coaching session with two of England's top international cricketers.

They have won the opportunity to do so because they managed to get a staggering 161 friends and family on board by the closing date which was on the 15th July, it's an amazing effort from the friends and family of the children of Scarning VC.

East Ardsley primary school from Wakefield came in second with a fantastic 107 members but unfortunately it wasn't enough to take the prize but well done for all getting involved!

The lucky prize winners will get the chance to meet the England stars on the 4th August, somewhere in the Birmingham area.

The 2010 Year 6 mixed Champions are Bispham Drive from Beeston.



Graeme Swann was there to support the day!  Was great with the young players!



Oakley C E Junior School from Basingstoke were this year's girls champions.   Caroline Atkins from the England Women's Cricket Team, was there to support the day and joined in with all the fun!



The standard on both days was absolutely brilliant.  There were some great players on show who have a big future ahead of them!    And most importantly everyone had fun!

Well done everyone involved!