Kajima Community’s Chris Smith and Vicky Turner welcomed, former Ashes winning England Captain and BBC pundit, Michael Vaughan to Caroline Chisholm School in Northampton.

He was there to oversee the Michael Vaughan Cricket Camp (http://www.kingscamps.org/cricket/) which was running at the school during the summer holidays. The Cricket Camps are a part of the summer holiday activities that are held at the school and managed by Kajima Community who operate the evening, weekend and holiday community programme.

More information on the activities can be seen by visiting http://www.ccs.schoolbookings.co.uk/.

When asked by Chris about the impact of these kinds of sports initiatives on the local community in light of the recent unrest in our cities, Michael replied ‘it is to do with getting kids outside and active and initiatives that involve team work, discipline and having fun can only have a positive impact on a young persons life’. He also remarked that it didn’t matter what sport that children get involved with, but did highlight cricket as being his own passion. 'Wearing whites, time keeping, the discipline of fielding for a long time and working for your team mates are all things that are particularly helpful in a child’s development'. He went on to say ‘we expect to see many more kids enrolled on courses such as these next year because of England’s new world ranking as the number one test team. The same thing happened after our Ashes victory in 2005.’

About the school itself Michael was very impressed and commented that there were facilities up and down the country that are not used to their full potential and that it is was a priority for them to be opened up and utilised like Caroline Chisholm. He looked forward to returning next year to the school to gauge the camp’s progress.