Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How cricket academies handle the summer camp rush
The camp is not the product, the June batch is. Decide who answers the phone in April, convert while the camp is still running, and have an answer ready for the monsoon.
The GullySales team · Updated 3 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
On this page
The summer camp is not the product. The batch that starts when school reopens is the product, and the camp is how you meet the families who will fill it. Academies that treat April and May as a revenue spike take the cash, hand back the children in June, and start the year with the same empty batches. Three things change that: deciding in February who answers the phone during the rush, having the enrolment conversation while the camp is still running, and having a straight answer about the monsoon before a parent asks.
The rush is an answering problem
In April the phone rings between nine in the morning and nine at night, and the coach is on the ground for most of it. Calls get picked up between throwdowns, names are half heard, numbers are not written down, and the missed calls are never returned.
Count what that costs. If a dozen enquiries a day come in during the peak fortnight and a third of them go unreturned, the academy has lost more children than its entire marketing budget could buy back.
| Who rings | When | What they want in the first minute |
|---|---|---|
| A mother of an eight-year-old | Mid-morning | The timing, the fee, and whether the child needs his own kit |
| A father | After nine at night | The coach's background and whether it is safe |
| A parent whose child already plays | Any time | The age group, the number of children per net, and the matting |
| A school sports teacher | Working hours | Whether you will run something on their ground |
| A family new to the area | Weekend | Where exactly the ground is, and the drinking water and shade |
None of those is a long conversation. All of them need somebody who is not holding a ball.
The practical answer is a second number for the camp season, answered by one person who is not the coach, with a written sheet of the five answers above in front of them. A relative, a senior player, a part-time helper. The cost is small and it is the highest-return money an academy spends all year.
Write every caller into a book with the child's age, the locality and the batch asked about. That book is what you will work from in June.
Convert during the camp, not after it
The commonest mistake is thanking the families on the last day and ringing them in the first week of June. By then the school timetable has been set, tuition has been fixed, and the slot you wanted is gone.
Have the conversation in the second half of the camp, while the child is enjoying himself and the parent is standing at the fence watching.
Keep it specific. Not "will you continue". Instead: your son is holding his shape well against the short ball, the under-twelve batch trains on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings at half past four, and there are four places. Hand over a printed slip with the batch, the timing, the fee and a line for the parent's number.
Ask the coach to speak to six parents a day in that fortnight rather than all of them on the last day. It is the same work spread out, and it happens.
Have an answer for the monsoon
Every academy in Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai and Kochi loses children in the rains and almost none of them plan for it.
A parent who has paid for a batch and watched three sessions cancelled by weather stops paying. A parent who was told in advance that wet weeks are used for indoor fitness, video sessions on technique, or a covered net nearby, and who got a message by three in the afternoon on each cancelled day, does not.
Decide what you will do when the ground is unusable, say it when the family enrols, and put it on the slip. It is not a marketing line. It is the difference between a batch that survives July and one that empties.
The things parents judge that have nothing to do with cricket
Shade for the parents waiting. Drinking water that is not from a tap. A toilet. Whether the coach shouts. Whether the youngest children are in a net with fifteen-year-olds. Whether somebody is watching when a boy is hit on the body.
Fix those before you spend anything on advertising, because they are what gets discussed in the parents' group, and that group decides more enrolments than Instagram does.
For example, an academy on a school ground
For example, take a cricket academy in Banashankari, Bengaluru, training on a school ground it hires in the evenings, with one head coach, two assistants and a matting wicket. The details are illustrative. The camp runs for six weeks in April and May and fills easily, and only a small number of camp children stay on into the regular batches.
The owner does four things. He takes a second SIM for the camp season and gives it to his wife's cousin, who sits with a printed sheet of answers, which costs a few hundred rupees. He opens bookings in the third week of February with a message to last year's camp families. He prints two hundred enrolment slips for the regular batches, maybe eight hundred rupees, and the coach hands them out during the fifth week of camp. And he writes a wet-weather plan on the slip.
What is not worth his money: pamphlets in the newspaper, a hoarding, and a stall at an apartment fair. Last year's camp register and the school sports teachers nearby will produce more children than all three, and both are free.
What to do next
Open last year's camp register and count how many of those children were in a batch in September. If the answer is under a fifth, enquiries are not your problem. The unused fortnight is. Have the conversation at the fence this year, not on the phone in June. If you would like us to trace how your camp enquiries are answered and what happens after the last day, book the free audit.
Industries