Creating 3rd Net at Sandhurst CC to Support Growth

Who are we?

Sandhurst Cricket Club is a small club based in the heart of Sandhurst, Berkshire. Formed in 1985 to offer cricket to the local community an opportunity to play cricket we currently operate 4 adult teams and 2 junior teams and have ambitious plans for the future. 

Over the past few years the club has been on a difficult journey, but is now growing quickly and looking to expand our training facilities to ensure our members have a modern, fit for purpose club to call their own. Find out more about our journey below.

In 2018 the club was at crisis point with less than 30 senior members and no junior section. There was real concern over whether the club would exist in 2-3 years time on the trajectory it was following. The establishment of a working group enabled the club to create a short term plan to begin moving in the right direction.

In 2019 we began running the ECB's All Stars programme for 5-8 year olds and had a fantastic uptake with 30 kids on the fully sold out programme. The children had a fantastic experience learning the basics at our club during what was an extraordinary Summer as England won the World Cup. Adult recruitment also began to gain traction with a number of new members joining.

2020 - Pandemic Set Backs

Following the success of 2019 the pandemic struck the club hard. With Boris Johnson addressing the nation in March with the orders to Stay at Home the likelihood of any meaningful cricket looked a long way off in March. The impact of the pandemic led to:

• No competitive cricket until July and even once cricket returned there was no league structure and a number of Covid regulations that had to be adhered to
• Significant losses in revenue with no cricket in April, May or June
• The club was unable to start the U9 section, putting the club's plans back another year

Fortunately, not all of the momentum was lost with the club's All Stars programme being one of very few in the country that was able to take place in August thanks to the success of the previous year. The senior section benefitted from a renewed interest in the game as the restrictions were gradually eased.

2021 - The Growth Accelerates

Fast forward to 2021 and we had 33 All Stars and 24 U9s (playing in the Berkshire Youth League) alongside over 50 adult playing members playing Saturday, Sunday and midweek cricket. As part of our next stage of development we have also written an ambitious 5 year plan aimed at growing to over 175 playing members across the club. 

2022 - Developing the Practice Facilities to Support Our Growth

Growing the facilities to facilitate this growing membership is incredibly important. With the juniors training as a whole group on one evening each week it is important that we are able to give them the best possible practice facilities and the introduction of a 3rd net at the club will increase our capacity by 50% enabling us to support the growth we have seen. 

Similarly we often see 25+ members at senior training and with access to only 2 nets this starting to become a limiting factor at these sessions. The 3rd net will enable us to support more people at training as well as providing versatile practice facilities that can be used in a number of different ways (such as the use of a bowling machine in one net, whilst the other nets are used for both batting and bowling).

The Crowdfunding will be going towards the costs of creating our 3rd net at the club. We plan to put a full length non turf pitch in which will facilitate a range of different pitch lengths for the junior players and it will be supported by a netting system to create the new net (as seen with our two current nets above).

This project will really set the club up for the coming years as we continue to grow our junior and senior sections as well as starting to look at both girls and women's' cricket.

Thank you for visiting our page and for contributing towards this vital project at Sandhurst Cricket Club.