The Costin Cup

Wandsworth Schools Cricket League taken over by Spencer Cricket Club and renamed “The Costin Cup”

5 years ago I was Head of PE at Sacred Heart School in Battersea and I felt that there was a worrying lack of sports fixtures played in state schools. Issues were specialist staff, facilities to host and timetable pressure. So my department decided to set up three terms worth of fixtures for every school in the borough of Wandsworth. One member of staff was put in charge of each sport/league. We created a netball league for the Autumn Term, a football league for the Spring Term and it was my job to set up the cricket league in the Summer Term.

The competition grew with help from Wandsworth School Games, Surrey Cricket and Chance to Shine. We moved to Spencer Cricket Club as a host venue. The idea there was to have great pitches, but also to break down any sort of intimidating barrier that kids and families felt towards a private cricket club. I hoped that by getting kids playing there every week that they might join the club and really take up the sport. This has happened in several cases which is the most rewarding part of the whole thing.

After the 2016 season I moved to Ibstock Place and was no longer able to attend WSCL fixtures as Ibstock had 1st XI games on the same days. My wife Katy Costin (Director of Sport at Broomwood Hall) stepped into the breach and took over the weekly administration of the league. The competition has run for 5 years now and grown in quality each year.

However, Katy and I are now moving out of London and are therefore unable to continue running the competition. Brilliantly, Spencer Cricket Club and their Cricket Director, Jamie Greig, have agreed to take over the competition and run it centrally from the club. This is great news and will only see the competition get better. To have such a massive club (biggest in terms of membership in the UK) taking over is incredibly flattering towards the merits of the league. The club have renamed the competition “The Costin Cup” for which Katy and I are very flattered. My hope is that it runs for many, many years and that when I am an old man I can come back and watch school fixtures that otherwise might not have happened, being played under our family name.

I must say special thank you’s to Jared Brading, Nick Miller, Stuart Cope, Chevy Green and Jonathan Speller. Without their support the league would never have gotten off the ground. It is your legacy too.

Thank you Spencer. Thank you Jamie. And good luck to all the schools, staff and pupils taking part.

To enter email SCC Cricket Director Jamie Greig on director@spencercricket.org or go to http://cricket.spencerclub.org/