Blunham CC youth and adult cricket restart.

Aim

To enable us to provide cricket games and coaching for all abilities and age groups, after a huge drop in income during Covid restrictions.

Who we are, and why we need your support to return to Cricket post Covid:

Blunham cricket club is at the heart of the local community taking players from over 10 villages in the area, providing cricket games and cricket coaching for players from 6 to 60.  We play in Blunham and at Roxton, putting out 6 adult teams at a weekend and games playing at under 9’s upwards. We need your help now.

Most of the 2020 season has devastated our finances with 2 grounds to maintain and vastly reduced income from memberships and sponsorship. Last year we had very little cricket with very limited income from membership or corporate sponsorship, but we still had expenses and bills to pay. Now we have to get back to cricket and we need your help to do this!

What you will be funding:

• maintaining grounds equipment 
• new playing equipment for the youth training that we do, restrictions of kit sharing are very restrictive
• we need to improve the nets which are in a poor state
• better training facilities such as catching equipment
• our second ground we have no training facilities and would benefit from a net cage in particular, as social distancing means we will not be able to train all our young players at our main ground. 
• we need a new sightscreen at our second ground after winter storm damage.

above: our current sightscreens in a sorry state (left) and right our ground staff hard at work

The Ground equipment

With two grounds this equipment is our biggest expense. Maintaining grounds to a good standard is important for a good playing experience and even player safety. Our financial shortfall threatens our ability to provide this.

• we are facing a bill of over £1200 to service and repairs our aging mowers, just to keep them in working order
• we need to repair our square at Roxton professionally after many years of heavy use which is likely to cost £800.
• we have to replace fencing which protects the square

Our Vision - our youth cricket is our future

Our vision is to continue as a club serving the whole community, providing a resource for all, regardless of gender, race and background. A safe and welcoming place to play cricket.

Our youth cricket is at the heart of the club. We have a team of qualified coaches and coach from 6 years upwards. Friday nights are youth training nights at the club with normally over 120 kids having fun. In normal years we run nets through the winter. We have a new girls section and in 2019 had our first womens and girls softball tournament, winners pictured below.

However, youth training requires a lot of equipment at the best of times (below), this year even more so with restrictions on sharing, so we have more money to spend with reduced income. We have to cover expenses such as extra balls, training nets and if we reach our target, cages for batting which would be an immense help.

The rewards

There are many different rewards for supporting us in this crowd funding appeal, small donations can access:

• vouchers from local businesses
• batting master classes
• club caps
• invitation to sponsors BBQ
• farm shop food boxes

While larger corporate packages including shirt sponsorships are available as well, to get your business recognition in the community in a positive and pro-active way

We are world-record holders

In 2019 in a pre-covid world we played a cricket game that lasted 168 hours non-stop. We had 300 volunteers support 22 players, with food, washing, scoring, umpiring and motivation. We played in a torrential downpour that washed away half of the ground, but got us publicity around the world, and in the end over a 1000 people watched the record being broken. A real community effort to raise fund funds for local charities and the club.

Above national press on quirky English cricket club playing in the rain and the crowd on a sunnier day

Below: This is the moment we broke the old record (apologies for video quality)

See ITV news for more footage: https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2019-08-30/nice-weather-for-ducks-rain-doesn-t-stop-bedfordshire-cricketers-world-record-attempt

The club is run entirely by volunteers who give up their time to coach, administer and fund the club. Your support will help up maintain and improve our offering.

This project successfully funded on 29th April 2021