What is HotSHOTS?
Hotshots is Cricket East's approach to Under 10-Under 12 Boys and Girls Cricket, and our early engagement programme linked to our Talent Pathway, which follows on from age groups 13+.
The video below goes into detail about what our Hotshots Programme is and the reasons why we have changed our pathway in recent years to develop more young cricketers through this Junior County Academy.
Why have we done this?
In the past we have worked with limited numbers in County squads identified through a trials process at the end of each summer, deciding which players would progress.
This approach limits us to only being able to work with a handful (around 16-20) players. At such a young age of 10-12, the previous approach limited us to having to make snap judgements of players abilities at an age where they are all developing at very different rates.
This new approach, allows us to identify this talent across many months, developing all players along the way. This gives us the benefit of knowing more players and providing them all with more coaching opportunities and seeing them in competitive environments throughout the summer months.
Who are we looking for?
Hotshots is still the base layer of our performance pathway, so we do have some pre-requisites for those participating. We expect our Hotshots players to be confident and competent at playing hard ball cricket at the entry point, and we communicate this to clubs, schools, and urban initiatives we work alongside when asking for expressions of interest. We run supportive programmes to be able to prepare players for our winter hubs, which will be a mixture of hard and soft ball activities
How does it work?
Every Summer, we write to clubs, schools, and through other initiatives to identify players to be added to a database expressing interest in our Hotshots programme. We then write out to our database filled with parents/guardians of enthusiastic cricketers aged 10-12 and invite them to book on to our winter hubs which are split across different locations throughout Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, starting in January. For those that need additional support to prepare for our Hotshots Hubs, we offer transition to hard ball sessions during Autumn each year.
The winter programme consists of a ten-week programme, for boys and girls aged between 10 and 12 (school years 5, 6 and 7)
In the summer months, we get outdoors and arrange festivals across the summer - usually during the school holidays. These festivals are set up to provide a competitive element to the programme, with short format, fast paced, fun games that are designed to enthuse and instil a love of the game whilst challenging our players to develop through the support of the coaches present on the day.
Talent Identification
We are still using Hotshots to identify talented players within these age categories, and our task is to then find ways to continue to challenge these players. Cricket East runs Performance festivals for those players identified across the Winter and Summer months, inviting neighbouring Counties to attend and testing our players skills in a more structured festival format over a few days through the latter part of the summer.
We are also exploring, new for 2025 a Hotshots Emerging Player Programme, to give players identified at an early age with gifted potential, and opportunity for additional training in spring time.
For any further information on Hotshots, please contact Sam Rose via sam.rose@cricketeast.co.uk
