Honourable Mention

rosebowlplc.com talks to Hampshire Disability Cricket Pioneer, Jeff Levick following his MBE Award

Among the names announced on the New Year Honours list last week was one which will be particularly recognisable to nearly anyone who has played, or been involved in, disability cricket in Hampshire.

Jeff Levick was awarded an MBE for more than 50 years’ service to grass-roots cricket in the county and, as Head of the ECB’s Regional Disability Cricket Development Forum for the South and West has been instrumental in developing disability cricket in the Hampshire region.

It was Jeff who, in 1997, set up the Disability Cricket Programme in Hampshire which still runs to this day. He sourced funding, recruited players, set up and ran coaching sessions and trained new coaches. He’s also responsible for establishing a Special Schools Coaching Programme providing opportunities for over 1,000 young people with disabilities every year.

Working tirelessly, he has also, in his time, established, coached and managed two Hampshire representative teams for people with learning and physical disabilities, managed the England Deaf Cricket Squad and instigated the creation of disability cricket programmes across the area.

To say that he has made an impact on countless thousands of peoples’ lives is an understatement of the highest order.

And yet, it is only in recent years that Jeff has been truly recognised for the work he does, starting with a BBC Community Champion award in 2007 and extending to a National Lottery award for “Best Sporting Project” last November (pictured below).

And so, last Saturday’s inclusion in the New Years Honours list still feels like a huge honour for the 74-year old from Winchester; “quite amazing… almost incredible” in his own words.

“It’s just not the sort of thing you expect to happen” he adds as rosebowlplc.com catches up with him following the announcement. “I’ve known about it for about eight weeks. You look at [the letter] and say, ‘is this really what they’re saying?’, ‘is this someone who’s got the letter heading and are taking the mickey?’… [But] some of the family have been involved since Easter time in providing information about what I’ve been involved in.”

Jeff’s love affair with cricket started as a 14 year old at Bexley Cricket Club in Kent and developed as he became an esteemed junior cricket coach (recreational and elite) as well as a qualified umpire who stood on the South Coast Panel and an Umpire Assessor.

But what was it that inspired him to focus his attention specifically on disability cricket?

“Inspire is maybe not quite the right word. Historically, way back in ‘97 when we first got the grant from Sport England to help build The Rose Bowl we needed to do something with disability and [Hampshire Cricket Academy Director] Tony Middleton, who was at that time, the Cricket Development Manager, asked me if I would do it. And I said, ‘yeah, alright’ a little bit reluctantly. But once you got your feet wet it starts to get very enjoyable. You can feel personal achievement, but also you can see what disabled people can achieve themselves.”

Although Jeff handed over much of the responsibility for running disability cricket in the county to Greig Stewart in 2007, he continues to be thoroughly involved in Disability Cricket in Hampshire and also recreational cricket as Chairman of Hampshire Cricket Board. So how does he see the current and future state of affairs with regards to community cricket?

“At the moment, Disability Cricket in the UK tends to be top-down driven. In other words, there are England teams, but underneath that the actual infrastructure is not very high. We’re one of the unusual counties in as much as we have, underneath what we produce in the way of County and England players, we coach over 1,000 disabled people every year and have done for the last eight to ten years.

“Out of that, we need to make sure we get more of those people involved in the social aspects of cricket clubs, because it’s not just playing; there’s umpiring, groundsmanship, scoring, being a supporter – just being a part of that social activity. That, I think, is much more important in [terms of] inclusion than necessarily being a star who scores a hundred every week or takes five wickets every time they play.”

In an interview with rosebowlplc.com, Jeff talked in greater depth about all of the above and much more. To hear the interview in full, please click on the audio file below.

To get involved with disability cricket in Hampshire, either as a player, a school or a club, please click on the links, or contact Greig Stewart.

Words: Simon Vincent and Greig Stewart

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