Dorking Cricket Club Facilities Fund

Aim

Dorking Cricket Club's Facilities Upgrade Fund has been set up to complete the transformation of the practice nets at Pixham cricket ground.

The Club

Dorking Cricket Club (DCC) sits in a beautiful location at the foot of Box Hill and provides organised cricket competition and coaching for 180 junior players and 75 senior players. It has 4 senior Saturday teams, 2 senior Sunday teams, a recently founded Women’s team, an all-girls team and mixed junior teams from U8 to U16 that play weekly from April 1st to August 31st every year. 

Run entirely by volunteers, DCC welcomes playing and social members from every part of the local community and during the recent pandemic, has been a lifeline for many residents, providing not only the positive focus of team sport (when restrictions have allowed) but, via its atmospheric pavilion and bar,  a vibrant community hub for over 450 households in the Pixham area. 

In addition to this, DCC organises four weeks of very popular summer cricket camps during the school holidays open to children of all ages from the surrounding area. 

Our Vision 

Since 2019, DCC's new leadership team has sought to improve the social aspects of the club, make it more inclusive for residents and ‘level-up’ the playing and training facilities for all members, so that junior members, our women and girls teams, 4th XI members and 1st XI members all have access to the same level of coaching and facilities. Over the past 2 years, this has included a full renovation of both pavilions (Pixham and Westhumble), essential outfield and square improvements, new permanent storage facilities at Pixham and a new and hugely productive relationship with the football and athletics clubs we share the ground with. Next we want to complete the net refurbishment before we move on to grander plans for a new pavilion! 

How Covid has affected us

Covid has put back our development plans by a couple of years, limited the amount of cricket our teams have been able to play and in particular, meant younger age groups have missed out on vital opportunities to develop their cricket skills. This has made the need to improve our facilities all the more urgent as we work to make up time in all these areas. Lost bar takings and reduced membership fees have also affected our finances.

Nets and facilities

Since returning to cricket and more social activity, we have been able to raise £22,000 to fund the first stage of upgrading our old nets. This work is now complete and the two shiny, new lanes are already being enjoyed by players at all levels of the club.

We would now like to lay two additional, artificial lanes in the middle section of the nets, extend the internal netting columns and replace the internal side-netting, at a cost of £30,000. This will allow us to provide better quality practice and coaching across both male and female aspects of the club. It will also make our club more appealing to new members of all ages and expand our appeal as a club to the wider community.

With other funding applications already in motion, we are aiming to raise at least £10,000 from our club network to make this work possible in time for next season. (When we reach £2,500, we hope to qualify for potential match funding from Sport England too!)

What you can do!

• Support our Crowdfunder campaign if you can and send it round to your friends and neighbours
• Do a sponsored event and link it to the campaign (Bake Off? Triathlon? Cycle ride?)
• Attend the various events we have in the diary during July, August and September:

Upcoming events:

• 9th August - 40 club fixture 
• 16th August – Dorking CC v Old Hamptonians 
• 28th August - President vs Chairman game 
• 10th September – END OF SEASON DINNER AT PIXHAM!

Tickets for the end of season dinner and raffle can be purchased through this site or at the club.

THANK YOU so much for any support you can give our campaign to make Dorking CC the best it can be!

This project successfully funded on 15th September 2022