Adam Hopkins speaks to a West London coach bringing cricket to the South Asian community and beyond.
"I’m at the club seven days a week,” says Md Tanvir Ahamed, head coach of London Tigers Cricket Club, with a deserved touch of pride in his voice.
Based in Southall, Middlesex, London Tigers is so much more than just a cricket club. It is an organisation with a focus on community empowerment, youth engagement and cultural connection, bringing cricket to men, women and children across Middlesex’s South Asian and wider black and ethnic minority (BEM) community.
Ahamed is also so much more than just the club’s head coach, acting as secretary, a member of the ground staff and also an inspiration to other coaches coming through his coaching development programme that has encouraged numerous people across the county to give coaching a try and find another way to be involved in cricket other than just as a player.
“I’ve put in a lot of voluntary hours to develop this club,” Ahamed tells The Cricket Paper, “including taking all the coaching courses myself.” However, his work also extends across the wider community.
“Across Southall I went to primary schools, high schools, charity events and introduced them to cricket. A lot of All Stars and Dynamos cricket.” The presence of London Tigers has been a godsend for a lot of people in the local area who may otherwise not have had the opportunity to play any serious cricket.
“All the other clubs were far away. It’s a low-income area where parents will be working and cannot take their children to these clubs. Since I’ve started this journey they [the local community] know that there is a place where there is cricket.
“Whether they’re coming to watch, teach, or play, we don’t want to stop people [having access to the game].”
“They know now that in the Southall area there is a place where there’s cricket every day. Seven days a week cricket is happening, Monday to Sunday. Five days there’s junior competitions, Saturdays and Sundays there’s adults.”
Thanks to Ahamed, the cricket club has become a huge success in the local area, with weekend games often attracting in excess of 200 spectators and people invested in the success and progress of the local team.
“They’re spending quality time. They’re looking at the fixtures, taking photos, they’re very happy now. Children are playing cricket now in the schools, and I’m bringing them to the club too.”
London Tigers is a multi-sports club, also offering an extensive football programme, as well as giving young people the opportunity to try badminton, dodgeball, rugby, athletics and more.
“I do football coaching sometimes to help out. Basically, we [mainly] run cricket and football. Initially it was a football club, so it was very hard for me to add another set up within the club, but now we’ve got so many teams.”
London Tigers Cricket Club run age group teams from under-11s up to under-21s as well as senior sides playing in the Middlesex County League, the first eleven currently sitting top of Division Three.
The club also runs women’s/girls’ soft-ball sessions, with the more talented and committed female players also playing in the men’s and boys’ hard-ball sides. One of these young players is a girl called Seerat, who the club describe as “a young trailblazer who shattered stereotypes to pursue her cricketing dreams.” She is currently part of Middlesex’s under-13 girls’ squad.
A Level 3-qualified coach, Ahamed’s efforts have not gone unrecognised. He’s been a recipient of multiple honours and awards, including being named Middlesex’s Coach of the Year in the 2022 ECB Coaching Awards and being named as a Community Hero in the 2023 Pride of Cricket Awards.
More recently, he was chosen as Coach of the Year at the Ealing Sports Awards 2024, an awards night celebrating sports people, clubs, coaches and volunteers from across the borough, and was a finalist at this year’s London Sports Awards.
Ahamed is also involved with the National Asian Cricket Council, earlier this year coaching an invitational women’s XI to two T20 victories over the Royal Air Force.
An admirable quality about his coaching is that he makes every team feel as important as the first XI. From under-11s up, he wants his players to know that they are a big part of the club.
“I manage every single game with the other coaches, so the kids can see their head coach with them. They’ll always see me in the ground, home or away, I’m always there. Even if there’s two games, I’ll do half at one and half at the other. Seven days a week.”
While it seems like an enormous commitment, the satisfaction Ahamed gets from seeing his players enjoying the game is all the reward he needs.
“When I see the children are smiling when their parents come to pick them up and they say ‘I hit a four, I took two wickets’ and they’re happy, that’s the result of a lot of hard work.”
To find out more about the club, visit londontigers.org
