Wigan Cricket Club Community Enhancement

Aim

To raise funds for Wigan Cricket Club to further improve the facilities for all our players and enable even greater community engagement.

Who are we?

Wigan Cricket Club has stood at Bull Hey, Parsons Walk, for 178 years. We are one of the oldest cricket clubs in England and, in 1864, one of the thirteen founder clubs of Lancashire County Cricket Club. In 1872 our own cricketers founded Wigan Football Club, to keep themselves active in the winter, a club now known worldwide as the mighty Wigan Warriors.

While we are proud of our history, we are equally as proud of what the Club is today: a welcoming, inclusive and genuinely community-rooted place to play. We hold ECB Clubmark accreditation, field four senior XIs in both the Liverpool and District Cricket Competition and West Lancashire League, a women's team, and junior sides from Under 9s through to Under 18s in the Wigan and District Junior Cricket League.

Why are we crowdfunding?

We are raising £30,000 to modernise the playing facilities and remove cost barriers to participation. The investment falls into four specific, costed elements:

1. Scoreboard upgrade - £7,000

Our existing scoreboard is operable only by a handful of trained volunteers and is in practice only used for 1st and 2nd XI men's fixtures. Upgrading to a user-friendly digital system means our Junior Academy coaches, women and girls team, and 3rd/4th XI Captains will all be able to operate it themselves. It turns a Saturday feature into an everyday part of cricket at every level. 

2. Two hybrid pitches on the square - £14,000

Hybrid pitches (natural grass with a low percentage of reinforcing fibres) play like natural turf but are far more durable. Laying two of them is transformational for a club of our size:

• Juniors get safer, more consistent surfaces so age-group matches and training can run back-to-back without wearing the square out.
• Our women and girls programme, which we are actively in the process of growing, can fixture more home games without competing for square space.
• Midweek community fixtures become viable, which directly opens up access for Wigan's growing South Asian community whose working hours make midweek daytime opportunities the practical window to play. These are games we currently struggle to host because the square will not stand the use.

3. New wraps for the square covers - £3,000

Our current cover wraps are past the end of their working life and no longer keep the square fully dry. Replacing them is now critical to protect the investment above and to ensure scheduled sessions, particularly junior games which are the first to be cancelled when a square is unplayable, actually go ahead.

4. Training equipment and a playing-kit bursary - £6,000

We will purchase shared training equipment, including bowling machines that will be used by senior and junior sides across the week. Alongside this, we are ring-fencing a proportion of the fund as a Club-administered bursary for full playing kit for existing and new members whose families are unable to meet the cost themselves. The bursary will be administered confidentially by our Club Welfare Officer in line with our detailed safeguarding policies, on a clear, needs-based criteria and no public register of recipients.

Community impact

This project is designed from the ground up around three priority audiences that align directly with Sport England's Movement Fund and Uniting the Movement strategy:

Juniors

Our Junior Academy covers under-9s through to under-18s and is our main engine for new participants. The scoreboard upgrade puts age-group cricket on a level playing field with the senior game, hybrid pitches give juniors safer surfaces on which to develop, and the kit bursary removes the single biggest drop-off reason we hear from parents: “We can't afford the kit”.

Women and girls

More pitch capacity and better surfaces mean we can fixture women's and girls home games without compromising other sections, and we can run dedicated girls' training blocks The scoreboard upgrade ensures women's and girls' fixtures get the same match-day experience as any men's game - something which is currently reserved for our 1XI and 2XI. 

Under-represented members of the local community

Wigan is a town with real pockets of deprivation and a growing South Asian community. Midweek hybrid-pitch fixtures open the door for community teams whose working patterns make playing weekends very difficult. In addition the kit bursary removes the financial barrier that quietly blocks people from joining or continuing to play cricket. 

How this meets Movement Fund priorities

The Movement Fund exists to get more people active, reduce inactivity and tackle the inequalities that keep some groups out of sport. We have mapped each element of the project to those priorities:

• Getting more people active: two hybrid pitches and replacement covers directly increase the number of usable playing slots each week, which translates into measurably more participation hours across juniors, women and girls, and community midweek cricket.
• Reducing inactivity: the kit bursary will allow us to make Cricket more accessible while our replacement covers, hybrid pitches and improved scoreboard facility will ensure we can deliver even greater opportunities with improved community engagement and participation. 
• Tackling inequalities: the project is explicitly designed around women and girls, under-18s, lower-income households and participation from the local South Asian community - four of Sport England's identified under-served groups. We are not asking the fund to help us serve people we already reach; we are asking it to help us be able to deliver more and in so doing reach people we currently cannot.

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. 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!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 8th August 2026 at 8:07pm