Blue stumps, bright orange windballs zipping about. Kwik Cricket sets, a piece of nostalgia for any Noughties child. The knockabout tournaments for school, the small boundaries at a club down the road.
Salesbury Primary, in a village just north of Blackburn, are competing in one of those and between games, a mum – Helen, a PE teacher, a local tennis champion – takes her youngest child onto the outfield. She chucks underarms at her toddler to keep him entertained.
‘He had this little bat and was just lobbing balls right off the square over to the boundary,’ says Stephen Bird, a teacher watching over while coaching Salesbury.