Always on
This project successfully funded on 11th June 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
New Bola Cricket Bowling Machine
Dundee, Dundee City Council, United Kingdom
Aim: We aim to purchase a new Bola Professional Cricket Bowling Machine to support our growing junior and senior cricket teams.
Who are we?
Dundee High Cricket Club, established in 1901, is an open, independent and progressive cricket club and registered Scottish Charity (SC053242) located in Central Dundee, Scotland. Dundee High Cricket Club hosts players of all ages and abilities from all over the world, allowing us to run 3 senior teams, 3 junior teams and a dedicated female section.
Our junior section is the clubs primary focus and typically 60 children attend weekly training sessions throughout the year due to the high-quality coaching providing by Head Player Coach Steve Knox. Several juniors in our academy currently represent Caledonian Region and even Scotland, which is a testament to the quality of coaching and work ethic at our club.
The club prioritises community engagement and works closely with a wide range of diverse community stakeholders including Active Schools Dundee, Caird Park Community Sports Hub, Maryfield Community Regeneration Forum, Dundee City Council Social Work, and several Primary and Secondary Schools in the Maryfield and Coldside Wards.
Why are we crowdfunding?
A critical piece of our coaching equipment is our bowling machine, which allows coaches to project a high volume of balls accurately at batters, allowing technical batting drills and development of new shots. This is especially relevant for our junior section where repetition of technique is essential to develop muscle memory to ensure shot selection becomes automatic in matches.
As juniors are also learning to bowl, the number of accurate balls bowled at batters are few, often stunting batting development as simply not enough balls have been hit. This is why the bowling machine becomes an essential piece of equipment to provide volume, accuracy and repetition.
Unfortunately, our bowling machine was accidentally dropped recently during disassembly, due to the extremely heave weight of it, luckily nobody was injured. In hindsight, our bowling machine was far past it’s best after 35 years of usage. Erection required at least 3 adults, accuracy had become hit and miss, and usage was borderline unsafe as it had to be operated whilst perched on top of a ladder whilst regularly taking evasive action to avoid being hit by any return balls.
At this moment, we do not have adequate unreserved club funds to purchase a new bowling machine which impacts our ability to deliver high quality junior and senior programs. We hope that our current and former players, friends and families, club sponsors, charities and funding bodies can please lend your support to help us raise enough funds to purchase a new bowling machine.
How we’ll spend the money raised
The optimal solution is a Bola Professional Bowling Machine:
https://www.bola.co.uk/new-professional.html
This bowling machine is a high quality product that provides many features and functionality that far surpasses our previous equipment. A digital display and control system allows a high level of precision to replicate pace, swing and spin bowling. Importantly, an automatic feeder allows 28 balls to be loaded and delivered with an adjustable delay timer and remote control. This allows coaches to be located close to the batter and pause the machine to provide advice, instead of shouting instructions from the top of a ladder 20 metres away.
A three wheeled column stand with handle facilitates safe machine storage and simple one person wheeling into position. Finally, a 230v power supply and battery allow the equipment to be used in training nets or wheeled out to the cricket square to simulate match conditions. This excellent feature set would allow one player to safely set up, have a training session and then pack away, fantastic!
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target of £4000 to purchase a new Bola Bowling machine, 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!
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!
Wrap up
Thank you very much for engaging with our campaign and we deeply appreciate any support you can offer. If you can pledge any funds to support this project, please ensure you fill in the gift aid declaration to ensure your donation goes a bit further.