Otley Cricket Club, with your support is trying to raise £33,333 through Crowdfunder towards enhancing our existing facilities. 

Who are we?

Otley Cricket Club was founded  in 1820 and is a cornerstone of Otley community life. 

We have a long-established competitive men's section (with 3 teams) who have enjoyed regular success in recent years.

In 2022, we had over 100 Junior members registered at the club in an increasingly thriving Junior Section of U9/11/13/15s together with burgeoning All Stars and Dynamos. Our fastest growing area of our club is our ladies and girl's section. We have been blown away with the uptake in participation we have seen and are excited to see this area continue to thrive in the future. 

The club has grown significantly over the last few summers, representing a welcoming environment for anyone to visit, whether a cricket-lover or not.

Vision

The Club's training facilities are over 20 years old and no longer safe to use. 

Our vision is to be able to have year-round practise facilities available for all our members and to enable to club to expand and embrace more members of the community.

Otley's Prince Henry's Grammar School also uses the club for matches so they too will be able to net at the new facilities.

The Club is an integral part of the local Otley Community, running social events and offering an outlet for a diverse  range of residents. However, this is undermined if we don't have the best facilities to expand and enable our cricketers to have the best chance to develop in all aspects. Social life and welfare is embedded in the Club's ability to provide proper facilities

The new Nets will comprise a 2 lane facility of the highest standards to replace the existing unusable nets.  They will be at the north-east corner of the ground, replacing the existing nest at 90 degrees.

The cost of the new Nets alone will be in the region of £50,000 with a further £40,000 required to enable us to replace the groundsman's shed and scoreboard, which are demolished  in order accommodate the full length new nets.

As such our overall project costs will be £90,000 - £100,000.

It’s our goal, to initially raise £33,333 of the remaining funds through Crowdfunder to help us towards our overall project fund target.

We have a window of opportunity through the Sport England "United by Birmingham 2022" programme where they will consider matching up to 50% of our initial target, this could be worth £10,000 to us if we hit our target and our application is successful.

We initially sought to raise £50,000 via Crowdfunding, but initially revised our target to £20,000 as we felt this is more realistic, but have now upped this in the extension period to £33,333 as we see the chance to obtain match funding. We are seeking the balance of funds from the club's existing resources and and from local authority and regional grants.

Work needed

The old nets need demolishing and removing first

Above: Old nets at moment

Below: New Nets concept

Below: New Groundsman's shed approved plans

How will our Project be United by Birmingham 2022?

Birmingham 2022 will not only saw T20 Cricket make its Commonwealth Games debut, but marked a first appearance for the women’s game, too. With our growing membership and a good, regular turnout of junior girls to our practice sessions, we now have wider plans to develop women's cricket for 2023 and with cricket being a showcase sport in Birmingham this should provide a great platform to do this. This will then also benefit and boost all other areas of our club, and in turn the wider community

We are aiming to received matched funding from the Sport England - Places and Spaces campaign to help us create and maintain this legacy

 The overall aim of the Project is to create a legacy of improved health and wellbeing by enabling consistent year round training and access to cricket for the whole community of Otley. 

The lack of facilities impacts on the ability to increase membership and broaden access for more f the community. We also can't currently enable all our members Junior and Senior, to train, stay fit and, as part of this, socialise all year round. All of these aspects are increasingly important to physical and mental health.

This development will allow the Club to offer first class on-site practice and playing opportunities, enabling it to meet burgeoning local demand. With developing women's and girls teams too, we need to be able to meet this specific need as well. 

The immediate population is increasing with more wanting to be involved in this great sport, but the unfit practise facilities has been an increasingly perennial problem.

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!

4. Create a fundraiser of your own. Use the button on our page to get started. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!