Cricket improves behaviour and cuts truancy

A report by Loughborough University has found that cricket has a beneficial effect on children's behaviour, and could even have influenced truancy rates for the better.

The Chance to Shine campaign aims to bring cricket to one third of all state schools across the UK in ten years. And although its intention is to publicise the sport among those who may not have previously had the opportunity to play it, researchers say that cricket has had an impact inside the classroom as well.

"With cricket there is very much a code of conduct and code of behaviour such as clapping if somebody gets a six even with the other side," a teacher involved in the scheme told The Independent.

"It brings in very positive conduct and way of behaving compared to other sports that are usually quite negative - such as football where they [the pupils] get easily upset or argue over decisions. With cricket, it is very much gentlemanly conduct."

Another teacher said that the scheme had helped integrate ethnic minority groups, whose primary language isn't English.

"A lot of our Bengali children may have English as an additional language but if you get them on a cricket pitch they are up there with their peers or even ahead ... It gives them a sense of self worth that they are good at something which raises their self-esteem."