Thousands of visually impaired Australians are often robbed of the opportunity to play sport. But a pair of blind cricketers are paving the way for others by hosting games in regional New South Wales.
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00:00Avid cricketer Scott Jones lost most of his sight at the age of 30.
00:08The tradie thought his playing days were over until he discovered blind cricket.
00:13So it took me eight years to sort of get together and actually say, you know, I want to do something for myself.
00:19And yeah, I joined the blind cricket team.
00:23Scott has gone on to captain the New South Wales blind cricket side, winning multiple national championships.
00:29You could sit at home and probably dwell on that.
00:32Or you could get out and meet some like minded people to give you that lift and to give you that, show you that there are things out there that you can do and achieve.
00:40He's sharing his passion with others, running a clinic encouraging the visually impaired to play blind cricket against other people in their town.
00:49They get a better understanding of the challenges that vision impaired people face.
00:53And within that understanding, it helps them to deliver help without seeming condescending and without feeling like they're imposing on somebody with a disability.
01:05Blind cricket players bowl a ball with a bell under arm to the batter.
01:09It's one of those things where you don't know what they're experiencing until you do it yourself and that was definitely one of those times.
01:16You see the ball come at you under arm and you think, oh, I've got this every day of the week.
01:20And then you swing the bat at it and miss it.
01:22So it makes it really tricky.
01:24According to Vision Australia, more than 450,000 people are living with blindness or have low vision, with many not participating in sport.
01:33The organisers are hoping to change that, running exhibitions in Bathurst for the second year in a row.
01:39Overall, only about 3% of the blind community play sport or do an organised pastime.
01:46So we'd like to see those numbers increase greatly.
01:48Breaking boundaries, one ball at a time.