MP Sports Academy Newsletter – Annual Roundup 2025

Good afternoon, 

I hope you are well and have had a great summer. 

 

This year has been an exciting and eventful year for the MP Sports Development Trust and MP Sports Academy with many great events taking place at the Ground and the Academy teams making great progress.

Below is a roundup of all that has been going on throughout the year. Our principle aim is for children and young people to learn and enjoy playing cricket, use great facilities, and thereby develop a life long passion for the game. 

 

The year began with a focus on Winter Indoor nets taking place at Lord Williams Lower School Sports Hall. These sessions provide players with a great opportunity to reintroduce themselves to cricket and work on their skills before the Outdoor season begins. Starting this year, we took the decision to offer Winter Nets for Under 9s totally free of charge. We felt that in an atmosphere of rising living costs, this would allow all children – no matter what their financial circumstances or background – to play cricket and experience the benefits this brings. This trial run was extremely successful and it was wonderful to see parents and children alike (many of whom had never played cricket before) so inspired and enthralled by Manoj’s coaching, technical expertise, and stories from his years playing professionally in India. 

 

Over the winter period, the Development Trust also ran events to engage local children in sport. The annual Badminton Tournament took place at Thame Leisure centre for children in Years 6 – 8 and was hotly contested by the players involved. As we do every year, the Trust also ran the Diving Catches Event which is always extremely fun for the children taking part as well as being a great way to practice the art of fielding. The primary purpose of these free events is clearly for children to have fun with their friends; however we do hope that when the participants reflect back on the events, they see the importance of trying as many different sports as possible and understand the common skills that link these all major sports. The Development Trust aims to continue to make sport as accessible as possible to children and young people in Thame and the surrounding area. Sport is such a wonderful gift to give a child and we believe it is important to give everyone the chance to get the opportunity to play.

In the Spring, we had the honour of welcoming the local MP to the Ground, Freddie Van Mierlo, alongside local councillor Pieter-Paul Barker and his wife, Liz Barker, to plant willow trees at the ground. We now have over 150 English Willow trees planted at our ground, some of the parents, and local people are helping to water these young trees to give them nourishment and help them to grow, similar to how we try to help children improve and grow over the years.  We are really proud of how the Ground has developed over the season.

 

After Easter, the outdoor season was born and we were blessed with some lovely weather for playing cricket throughout the summer. Building on the success of the Winter Nets trial, we  offered totally free membership of the Academy to U9s which is a wonderful chance for them to get coached for free by an ex professional. Manoj also continued Primary School coaching for the local schools. This was offered for free to all the local Primary schools and we were very pleased to return to John Hampden once again to help with their PE sessions.

 

We entered three teams – U9, U11, U13 – into the league and it was good to see so many promising results. Our U9 team were very new to cricket when the season began however the improvement they showed throughout the season was fantastic: ‘winning is temporary but improvement is for life’. This was really evident in the games we played against Thame: at the beginning of the season, Thame beat the MP side however in the last week of the season, our U9s put in the complete performance to win. This really showed how much the team grew in confidence and cohesion – a testament to Manoj’s coaching and the enthusiasm of the players. 

The U11s were the standout team this year, only losing one game all season and finishing joint top of their league. This is a wonderful achievement and we are very proud of the players’ success. The team’s batting performances were particularly destructive and they played with great confidence and charisma.  The U13s trained valiantly throughout the year and although, opportunities for fixtures were limited, the team’s commitment was excellent. We will work over the winter to make sure the season is bigger and better next year for the U13s. 

 

The Summer season was rounded off by two wonderful tournaments held in late June and early July run by the Development Trust. We are one of the only grounds in the area that can run two games simultaneously with full-sized outfields. Therefore, we wanted to take advantage of this and run an U9 and U11 tournament for local clubs to give even more opportunity for children to play and experience the sense of achievement that accompanies winning. Over the two tournaments, we hosted teams from Slough CC, Bledlow Ridge, Long Marston. Outside the field of play, each tournament was capped off with a wonderful BBQ and Award’s Ceremony to recognise the achievements of all players. 

 

Over the Summer Holidays, we hosted another successful set of Summer Holiday Courses, as you know these have been running for over 30 years now. We loved seeing so many new faces coming from near and far to practice and improve their cricket. All the children who attended had lots of fun!

This year there has been a great sense of community at the Academy and Academy members have had great fun using the ground and building friendships. 

 

We are planning our winter cricket nets, which are now open for bookings, as previously we are keeping the U9s nets as free. We hope to maintain everyone’s cricketing abilities over the winter, as when we did this this last year, our u11s who all attended seriously improved their skills. Therefore this winter we aim to hone their skills further with multiple net sessions and even a trip to Lords later this winter. We have decided to do our Lords trip later this year, because then more kids will have the opportunity to go and this will help keep them interested in Cricket even during the winter. 

You can book your children onto our winter nets using the following link: https://mpsportscricketacademy.co.uk/courses/

 

Thanks for reading through this news roundup and for your interest in MP Sports Academy. We are very grateful for all your support! Do get in touch with us via phone, if you want to talk further about anything raised in this newsletter and if you have any ideas for us for the coming year!