Cricket community prepares for The Rainbow Run
Friday 15th May 2020
This Sunday (17th May) will see people all over the county take part in a virtual challenge called The Rainbow Run from 10am, to raise vital funds for local NHS hospital’s COVID-19 funds.
Last week, Kent Cricket, official supporter of the event, set a target to reach a collective distance of 1,870 kilometres to represent ‘1870’, the year two local clubs merged together to form the current Kent County Cricket Club. To help reach the target, Kent Cricket invited all affiliated clubs across the county to join the event with them. Since the announcement, the cricket community in Kent has rallied around, encouraging its members to take part in The Rainbow Run, resulting in a spike of registrations and donations. One of the cricket clubs who have pledged to participate is Town Malling CC.
Kent Cricket caught up with Anna Tunnicliff from Town Malling CC to find out why they will be participating this Sunday and why other clubs around the county should also get involved.
Anna, thank you for joining us. Town Malling CC will be taking part this Sunday in The Rainbow Run, why have you chosen, as a Club, to support this event?
“I think The Rainbow run is a fantastic event to raise money for local charities. Many of us within the cricketing community either know of people working in the NHS, or are working on the front line ourselves, so it’s great that we have an opportunity to do something to show our appreciation, whilst enjoying some fresh air!
“The charities are very personal to me, as my husband and I both work in the NHS. Malcolm, my husband, is a consultant at Kings College Hospital and also flies with the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance and I’m a sister in A&E at Maidstone Hospital. Not only that, but a number of my team mates are also currently working in hospitals. Along with myself, two others from my team work at Maidstone hospital, as a nurse and a respiratory physio; plus one other lady in my team works at Medway Hospital as a consultant anaesthetist, so we’re all very aware of the current challenges.
“The Rainbow Run gives us a great reason to enjoy some time outside with members from our households and have fun raising money!”
Why do you think other cricket clubs should get involved?
“The cricket community is amazing and this is a fun event that people can virtually join together, along with Kent Cricket, to fundraise for the NHS. The beauty of this event, is that everyone can get involved, whether you want to walk, run or cycle, every kilometre really makes the difference – so I would encourage everyone to get out and do what you can!”
Whilst you’re here, we would love to hear about your route into cricket. You won Coach of the Year at the NatWest OSCAs in 2018 and have helped to establish a pathway into cricket for young girls in Kent, running start-up sessions in primary schools at which cricket hadn’t previously been played. Can you tell us how you first got into cricket?
“Originally, it was because I wanted to prove to my daughter that she can do anything she wants to do. I had never actually played cricket until 2017, even though my stepson and my husband are very keen, and my son is completely cricket mad. My husband plays cricket and when we moved to West Malling about 15 years ago, he would go off every Saturday to play cricket and I didn’t really have any interest in it at all. My son then became a cricket lover, to the point where you would take him to the supermarket and see him shadow bowling down the aisles and aged 9, he got into the local district team.
“However, I realised there were no girls at the club, and therefore no female role models for my younger daughter. She felt cricket was a sport just for boys – which is of course not the case at all.
“A few years ago, there were just not enough people at the Club helping out – and no women at all. I thought, I can help, so I went and did the Coach Support Worker Course and started helping with junior coaching on Friday nights. I might have been happy to continue doing just this, if someone hadn’t made the mistake of asking me to make teas on the Saturday. This was like a red rag to a bull for me. I thought, I’ll show you and went onto complete my Level 2 Cricket Coaching Course! I then thought it would be good to get a women’s team together.
“We started with a ladies softball team, ‘The Swans and Pens’, which has now progressed to also having a women’s hardball team, ‘The Swans’. I’m really proud to say that we have 30 adult ladies playing at cricket at Town Malling CC and in the girl’s section we have around 20 girls playing for the ‘Cygnets’. I also feel that it’s very important as part of a general healthy lifestyle for women to participate in team sports regularly – and we’ve built a really nice team together here.”
How can you get involved with The Rainbow Run?
We want as many people in your club to unite through this opportunity, so remember:
- You can walk, run or cycle
- There is no minimum distance or donation
- Dress as colourfully as you feel comfortable
Click here to register your club as taking part
Whilst there is no minimum requirement for donations, we don’t want to miss the opportunity to raise some valuable funds for these five fantastic charities working across our county. The charities are listed below, each linking to their unique JustGiving page:
- East Kent Hospitals Charity
- Valley Hospital Charity
- The Medway Hospital Charity
- Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells Charity
- King’s College Hospital Charity (including PRUH)
Clubs (for those aged 13+)
Decide who is going to be the captain for your club’s effort and create a ‘Club’ on Strava. You can only create the club from a browser, not inside the App. Then get all of your members, players, parents and supporters on board to log their exercise on the 17th of May.
Take a screenshot of your final club distance and send it to james.moss.kent@ecb.co.uk by 11:00 on Monday the 18th of May.
The Club with the largest total combined distance covered will win a signed, framed, Kent Cricket 150th Anniversary County Championship shirt.
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Setting up your Club on Strava
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- Visit www.strava.com
• • Sign up
• • • Log in
• • • • Go to the ‘Explore’ menu and click on ‘Clubs’
• • • • • Click ‘Create Club’
You can make your club ‘Invite Only’ so that you can then approve members as they join.
Clubs (for those under 13)
To use the Strava App, you must be aged 13 or above, so for those younger members who want to be a part of this, we have created a Google Form . We are asking your Junior Co-ordinator to collate two things:
- How many juniors take part in The Rainbow Run
- How many kilometres they complete
You can then submit these two totals on a form, along with your club name. The club which gets the highest number of juniors taking part will receive a Kwik Cricket set to add to their coaching supplies once we’re back to normal.
Remember to encourage your members to share their colourful photos with us on Twitter and Instagram, tag us @kentcricket and @RainbowRun4
To help you fundraise, we have also created a unique image featuring a QR code for each charity which you can download and display on your website, emails or share on WhatsApp. Click on the name of the charity to download the correct image:
[East Kent Hospitals] [Valley Hospital] [Medway Hospital] [Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells] [Kings College Hospitals]
Remember to tune in with Rob Chave, Kent Cricket’s Lead Strength & Conditioning Coach will be doing a live warm up 10am, via The Rainbow Run’s Facebook page.
*Title picture courtesy of Take That Photo