Long-serving Canterbury youth cricket identity Bill Duncan was last night awarded the Jack Newman Trophy for services to youth cricket.

The award is made annually by New Zealand Cricket and was presented to Duncan, 66, at the annual general meeting of Canterbury Cricket.

Duncan, of the East Shirley club said he was "a bit shocked" about receiving the award and didn't realise he was even in the running.

After many years of playing the game, Duncan said that after a few years of retirement he was "hoodwinked" into serving on a committee.

"Things were fairly basic back then as far as organisation went. But I had a teaching background and formalised things a bit and put a bit of structure in place.

"Now that is all on computer so the information is there for the future," he said.

The basis of his work with youth cricket at East Shirley has been to instil basic rituals and techniques into young players and to drill it into them.

"Now I just help where I need to but I will be demanding a bit more of a hands-on role with each team this season. I will also be trying to run some in-house coaching for our coaches, not only on the basics of the game but how we want our teams to play.

"There are a few nasties out in the cricket world, just like there are in other sports. But I want us to give our kids a common set of rules to play by," he said.

More recently, Duncan has been heavily involved in junior cricket at Canterbury Association level and says he has done most things there except secretary-treasurer and president, and he's quite happy with that.

One significant contributions he has made that he feels is important has been his introduction of an alternative ball, a softer ball, to make it easier for boys to stay involved and not be put off by the hard ball.

"There are a hell of a lot of kids out there between the ages of five-12 who are still gun shy and if we can keep them in the game for longer that is good," he said.

Schoolboys teams in the Canterbury Association will have the choice of playing with the harder ball or the alternative variety but because of the economics involved he thinks the softer ball will win through.

Despite playing rugby to Canterbury Colts level, and having a son who played soccer, Duncan only wanted to get involved with cricket at a coaching and organisational level.

"Probably it was because I got most pleasure out of cricket. The people you played with were pretty close to being gentlemen.

"And in cricket, you can be a loner and still perform," he said.

His approach to administration is summed up in his own words: "If someone gives me a challenge I'm quite happy to give it a lash.

"Winter sport is an interlude between cricket seasons. Cricket has a good culture and it does teach a lot of good things that are lacking in society today.

"I'll go that extra mile for cricket," he said.

© CricInfo