To purchase a new roller to grow and maintain great playing facilities for the whole community and provide grass wickets for all juniors.
by Knowle Village Cricket Club in Solihull, West Midlands, United Kingdom
The initial £10000 target is the base minimum we need to get this project on the move if we can achieve this and be able to go for our stretch target this would mean we can purchase a fantastic new roller to really meet the needs of the club, all money goes to the is project.
We are a family friendly, volunteer run local cricket club located in the village of Knowle with a proud history going back over 140 years. We have a growing member base and currently have circa 170 members including over 80 junior members.
We have 6 adult teams playing league and friendly cricket, a thriving junior section providing cricket for 5-16 year olds which includes national coaching programmes allstars and dynamos as well as junior league cricket for over 11's.
We have recently introduced a Sunday development team which has a sole purpose of introducing juniors to senior cricket, 7-8 of the team will be 14-17 year olds who will be guided by senior players in the team to build their knowledge, skills and understanding of the game to develop into playing adult cricket.
We want to provide everyone playing cricket in the local community the opportunity to play cricket on well prepared and maintained grass wickets. Artificial wickets are great for coaching and developing but we really want to get all juniors and development teams playing on proper grass wickets.
To be able to provide great playing facilities for all we have set upon a project to extend the square and develop 3 grass wickets specifically focused at getting all juniors playing on grass and being able to run coaching sessions on grass facilities.
We have had a very trusty roller for the last 20 years however it is now at the end of its life and we need to replace with a new updated roller that will be able to manage the workload of maintaining and improving the current playing area as well as the extra work needed to develop the new junior playing square.
All money raised will be used to purchase the new roller required to develop the facilities to help us provide great playing conditions for all current and future members and users of the ground, this will help us in our longer term goal to grow and maintain our school, ladies softball and county cricket board links giving more children and adults of all abilities the opportunity to enjoy sport.
We have set ourselves a target of £10,000 to be able to get the project underway, on top of this we have set a stretch target of £15,000 which if achieved would be amazing and would cover the costs involved of purchasing the type of roller the club needs to meet league rule standards as well being the best roller for the job in developing the additional playing area for juniors and maintaining the hard work that goes into looking after a cricket square.
The roller really is the most important piece of equipment a cricket club has and it takes as a minimum around 500 hours a season of rolling work to prepare and maintain the playing area, which for us is all done by the volunteers around the club so having a safe, usable and reliable roller would really aid all those who support the club with giving time to do ground work.
We are a real community club and have a goal to grow our membership especially in the junior section and provide even more cricket for young players of all abilities.
We have a partnership with a local school where we provide playing and training facilities for their school teams as they have no facilities of their own, we also host a number of junior games for the local cricket board.
We are also big supporters of growing the ladies game and in partnership with our local cricket board have held a number of ladies soft ball events and tournaments, we have also hosted training sessions for a Ukraine ladies soft ball team.
We hold annual junior and parent events including hosting games where parents play games both with and against their children.
Our Wednesday night friendly team play 10-12 games a year against local businesses and school teachers providing cricket and bbq's.
Right at the heart of the community we are proud members of Visit Knowle, a society of local independent businesses and projects who come together to support each other and raise the profile of Knowle as a place to visit, shop, eat, drink and play sport. We owe a huge thanks to all those businesses who have donated some fantastic rewards for donators to be able to purchase, check them out in the rewards section but get in fast as they will be hugely popular, and once sold they are gone.
The club and ground is also the home of Knowle Dog club providing facilities for dog training, agility courses, tracker dog training and more , home to up to 250 dogs and owners every week.
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!
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!
This project offers rewards in return for your donation. Please select a reward below.