PTCC Covid recovery funding

Our Club

Peterborough Town Cricket Club is an ECB Premier League Cricket Club playing in Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and East Anglia. We are a large, friendly, diverse and successful club, running 5 senior teams and a large number of junior teams. We are proud to be at the heart of our local community, and it is that community feel that makes our club so special to its members.

The cricket club is ECB Clubmark accredited, providing a sustainable, safe, family friendly welcoming club environment and is part of the Peterborough Town Sports Club, which includes Hockey, Squash, Bowls and Tennis.

Youth Development is the most important part of our club. We run age group coaching and teams from Under 9s through to Under 19s. Juniors can join from the age of 5 attending our Friday evening sessions both in the winter and summer. We are also an All Stars Cricket Centre, which is the ECB flagship programme for boys and girls up to age 8, and in 2021 will also run the new ECB Dynamo programme. In 2019 & 2020. every member of our league winning 1st team had been developed via our junior teams.

Impact of COVID

During 2020 our volunteer committee did a fantastic job to ensure that our club was COVID secure to all members and visitors. For lots of our members it felt like returning to cricket meant a return to near normality, and our players were able to socialise whilst remaining COVID safe.  Likewise, our supporters were able to come and enjoy both top-class competitive and social cricket whilst remaining socially distanced. We were very pleased in October to be asked to feature in a Sport England Club Matters video series highlighting how we returned to play and re-opened our club whilst providing a safe, compliant and enjoyable place for sport  during the much shortened summer season. 

Like all other sports clubs across the country, we have been badly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. In 2020 we played less than half of our usual games, meaning we could not reasonably expect members to pay full membership rates. We also have a number of members from ethnically diverse community groups particularly vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 understandably choosing not to play along with some members who were unable to play due to work priorities. Income from match fees was reduced by some 60%, whilst bar takings and some sponsors were also lost. We also had to cancel a number of excellent fundraisers, including our annual sports club beer festival, our end of season dinner and awards night and our highly popular Christmas Lunch. The recent move into Tier 3 and now Tier 4 means other winter indoor social events, in particular, those that build up to the spring and the new season are very unlikely to be able to go ahead. Indeed, we are concerned whether we will be able to start our 2021 season on time

How we will use the funding

The financial impact of COVID-19 has so far resulted in a loss of £15,000 to our club’s income. Therefore, the money raised on our crowdfunder will go towards offsetting those losses but will importantly allow us to continue to invest in and maintain our facilities and equipment to the standard required and which we would otherwise be unable to do. Our wicket covers and artificial practice facilities require upgrade, the growth in our juniors means we require an additional cricket cage for practice, our roller and other grounds equipment need servicing. We were due to purchase new gang mowers in the winter of 20/21 but we have had to put this on hold.

We welcome all donations, no matter how small or large. We also have a number of rewards for members and outside partners alike offering excellent value to all. So please donate, share our page and pass the message on. Your donations will make a huge difference to our club especially with 2021 looking so uncertain….. so let’s back our club and ensure we can remain on our feet and be viable in 2021 and future years