With Barrow’s Liam Livingstone currently taking part in the lucrative Indian Premier League, the search is on to see who could be the next cricket star to come from the Furness area.

For the last two weeks, Cumbria Cricket have been running training sessions at Furness College for Key Stage One pupils from local schools, as they look to introduce them to the sport.

Sixteen schools in total have taken part in the sessions, including children from Years 1 and 2 from St George’s and Cambridge Primary Schools and Parkside GGI Academy, who were all put through their paces on Tuesday afternoon.

The kids are rotated around different activities over the course an hour, which include batting, throwing and diving catches, the last of those proving to be extremely popular amongst them.

Cumbria Cricket development officer Jake Woods said: “Obviously, not many of them have played cricket before – some of them haven’t even heard of it before – so it’s just introductory stuff.

“Cricket has definitely got stronger around here in the last few years – we’ve got six players in Cumbria under-11s this year, which for our area is the first time we’ve ever that many in the county squad. It shows the good work that goes around in clubs, but in my opinion, it helps when they come in at this age and get them in young.”

With Woods’ supervision, the sessions are taken by students at Furness College, which means young people at either end of their education are benefitting from them.

“Another of the main reasons that we do them is that we want the students to develop good leadership skills and, looking around, most of them seem to be interacting very well with the young kids,” Woods said.

“It’s a big learning curve for them – they’re only 16 or 17 some of these students, so it’s good to get them involved.”