Surrey County Cricket Club unveiled a disability honours board on the annual Disability Day at the Kia Oval, becoming one of the first international cricket venues to install an honours board with names inscribed in the Braille writing system.
The honours board, which is situated in the Pavilion foyer next to various other honours boards, marks the achievement of Surrey players who earned international recognition with England. Alongside the name and year of debut, the board also specifies which England side the player featured for – Hearing Impairment, Visual Impairment, Learning Disability or Physical Disability.
So far, the board features 12 Surrey players who have donned England colours over the years, including the Club’s pan-disability captain Mike O’Mahoney, who debuted in 1994, as well as current England regulars such as Jonny Gale, Tayler Young, and Josh Price. Four more names are set to be added to the list soon.
Jonny Gale, who works as Community Cricket Coach at Surrey Cricket Foundation alongside representing England’s Learning Disability team, says: “It’s just an amazing thing to see, knowing how supportive Surrey as a club have been for disability cricket, especially during the time I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of the England pathway.
“We at Surrey take great pride in trying to recognise everybody’s cricketing achievements but also be the first to recognise certain things, like in this case, the fact that the disability honours board is the first of its kind, I think anywhere in the cricketing industry, just goes to show we’re leading the way in public awareness.
“Hopefully any young cricketer who walks around the Pavilion and sees the honours board will be inspired to go on and push to play for England,” adds Gale.
Phil and Mandy Downey, who have been inscribing signage at the Kia Oval for more than a decade, learnt about the code of Braille for this assignment. Sharing his experience, Phil says “It was a real privilege to work on the disability board! To proof the visual Braille, we researched the rules… it was lovely to touch the tactile letters when they were on the board and interesting to learn something about Braille.”
“I found it fascinating that the same characters that are used to represent letters A to J and numbers 1 to 0 in Braille,” adds Mandy, before explaining further: “Numbers are preceded with a number sign that tells people that we’re switching from letters and now it’s going to be numbers.”
