Oakmere CC - Practice Nets

Who are we?

Oakmere Cricket Club is a thriving, vibrant and inclusive place to enjoy cricket. It’s more than a club, it’s a community where we all want to be the best we can be and the best for each other.

Founded in 1954, we have played at our Overdale Lane ground in the heart of rural Cheshire ever since. We are bucking the trend of cricket clubs in our area and expanding in all areas. 2022 saw Oakmere field a Ladies' 2nd XI for the first ever time and 2023 has seen new land broken with the formation of our Men's 3rd XI. In addition to the 7 senior teams (including our Midweek and Softball Ladies teams), we have 7 junior teams with around 150 boys and girls playing their cricket within our junior section every week!

Despite our success, we work so hard to offer opportunities to people from all backgrounds and all abilities. Central to this is the belief of offering a very affordable membership package. We regularly benchmark against local clubs and are proud to offer a membership package that is amongst the lowest in Cheshire. To do this, we strive to look at all opportunities for external funding including sports grants, private sponsorship, and the generous donations of our patrons. This has been tested more and more in the last few years, firstly by the Covid pandemic and now more recently by the energy and cost of living crisis pushing up our bills. Even standing still gets harder, never mind investing in the spaces used by our members!

Why are we crowdfunding?

We want to ensure that Oakmere continues to develop and thrive to ensure that we continue to be that heart of the community and offer more young people the chance to play and experience cricket in an inclusive and competitive environment. 

Despite the best efforts of our volunteer army, our facilities are heavily used and our net facilities are now 15 years old and coming under stress from that usage and now don't accommodate the number of members we enjoy. 

We now have clashes on our ground on over half the days during the summer. If this continues we will lose members as we cannot offer the opportunities for them that we would like to in terms of developing their skills and offering a safe and nurturing space.

We have seen an explosion in numbers since the Covid pandemic with more and more children and adults seeking the physical and mental benefits that outdoor social and sporting activities can offer. We absolutely have a policy that we don't want to turn anyone away however we now need to build the facilities at the club to be able to offer the proper cricketing experience that all our members deserve!

How we’ll spend the money raised

We will spend the money on:

• New 2-lane enclosed net

• Situated either alongside existing net facilities or in the opposite corner of our ground.

This would allow for matches and practice to safely happen simultaneously making clashes less of an issue and it would allow for 2 sections to train on the same evening and/or juniors to train on a weekend.

We intend to make use of the best possible artificial facility to make sure that the weather makes less of an impact on our ability to hold sessions for all sections of the club but notably our junior sections.

Who will use the new facilities?

The artificial nets will be in constant use throughout the summer providing our flourishing junior section opportunities to practise properly and safely every night of the week. Given the ongoing cost of living crisis, being able to offer these facilities without increasing our membership for those that cannot afford it. 

Community impact

• All stakeholders enjoy cricket at Oakmere; this includes players and their families.
• All stakeholders know what Oakmere Cricket Club stands for.
• More junior players continue to play cricket as adults
• We have a wide variety of senior teams which are both inclusive and competitive.
• We are innovative in creating more playing and volunteering opportunities. 
• We retain our high performing players at senior level.
• We attract players because of the positive culture we are known for at Oakmere.
• We continue to develop our excellent facilities.

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! As much or as little as you can afford! The process of donating through this Crowdfunder page is simple to do and you can even claim one of our fantastic rewards! 

If for whatever reason you need to pledge using cash rather than an online card payment please contact us directly at [email protected] or pop down to the club and we will help you.

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!