Who are we?
Irby Cricket Club is a community based cricket club in the heart of the Wirral. Established in 1948, we celebrated our 75th anniversary in 2023.
We run four teams on a Saturday, a successful women's team and a flourishing junior section of approximately 200 boys and girls from AllStars upto u19.
Why are we crowdfunding?
Our club is going from strength to strength something we are very proud of. The club wants to improve its facilities and what it is able to offer to both its members and the community.
The cost of living crisis over the past twelve months or so has had a dramatic impact on the club. For example, our electricity costs have gone up by an ridiculous 200 % per month. This means that money that we would normally have ring fenced to reinvest in the club at this time of year is no longer available at the level we would like it to be.
We are looking to crowdfunding to get support from our members, local business, family, friends and supporters for a number of new items for the club for the coming season.
How we’ll spend the money raised
Our club has flourished recently. Since coming out of lockdown in summer 2020 our numbers have increased dramatically. We have re-established our 4th team after a number of years due to the number of people wanting to play competitive cricket on a Saturday.
Our Women's section has started up in recent years and won their league title last year, something we are very proud of!
Our junior section has expanded at an amazing rate and we now have approximately 200 juniors training at the club throughout the week in the summer.
Whilst we already have excellent net facilities, on our busiest nights we are struggling for space.
We would like to crowdfund for a new roll-on net that we can use on the back pitch to allow for more focused training to take place in a safe environment. The key beneficiaries will be our juniors who are playing hardball cricket, from u11s upwards, but also our senior and women's team will have more options for safe training too.
This will supplement the existing net lanes and the roll-on net on the front pitch.
If we are successful in getting the support we need for the roll on net, we have set ourselves a stretch target of another £1500 which will allow us to purchase streaming kit that will allow us to live stream our games on YouTube for members, families and supporters for watch us live! This will also help with coaching as we will have video clips of all our amazing techniques we can work on!
if we are lucky enough to raise more than this we will reinvest further into our Junior section
Community impact
The roll on batting cage, will allow all our players to practice on the back square, giving a more realistic feel but most importantly it raises the ability and capacity of numbers of young people who on our business training nights can train safely.
Over the past two years we had had at times to cap numbers at the club. We never like turning anyone way and an extra net will allow us to increase capacity again should the need arise. This will give us 10% extra capacity on those busy nights
This will support the quality training that we can offer our playing members and strengthen the participation in cricket across our community.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out on our website and social media
4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!