As I look out of the conservatory window and the snow is coming down, it’s hard to believe we are just three weeks away from the league season kicking off but I don’t know about you, I can’t wait for it all to start as we see all the hard work that has gone in during the off season coming to fruition. As you’ll have seen, things have been busy on the cricketing front. Winter nets have been extremely well attended with about 30 players netting most Thursday and a not too dissimilar number attending the extra sessions on Tuesdays. It’s also been an extremely positive off-season in terms of player recruitment. In all fairness, we haven’t had to do much really as most of the players have approached us to join which must mean we are doing something right. You’ll have seen so far that we have announced eight players (Kevin Jackson, Dave Stewart, Faiz Ahmed, Pat & Declan Delaney, Johnny Whitley-Bayley, Sam Talbot & Ross Dixon) and I’m sure I speak on behalf of the entire membership when I wish them all an enjoyable and fruitful time being a member of this great club of ours. All of the players have something to add to the club in whatever team they play as we strengthen throughout the sides and it’s always encouraging to see an ‘old boy’ returning to where it all started. To compliment the new players, Chris McArthur lands at Manchester Airport on Thursday afternoon and it’ll be great to see him back, not least because I can free up some space in my loft having housed the majority of his belongings when he headed back to Australia.

Continuing on the cricketing side of things, it’s been great to follow the success of the girls and Ladies teams in the indoor softball tournaments they have been taking part in. It’s looked like they’ve had some great fun along the way and it’s very encouraging to see the Girls making it through to the county finals where they’ll play the winners from the East, North and South. A fantastic achievement and see’s our female section going from strength to strength ahead of the outdoor season starting.

Ensuring we can be as ready as possible, the Grounds team have been doing some sterling work on some very wet grounds Hopefully the weather will have an upturn and things will improve otherwise there’s going to be some very dirty whites in a few weeks! Over the weekend we unfortunately had to abort the annual NatWest Cricket Force ‘work party’ due to the weather, but it's testament to the team of volunteers that the impact is minimal as they are comfortably on top of the jobs that normally need doing. Whilst on ‘grounds’, we’ve investing in three significant projects over the last few weeks. Firstly, both outfields have been verti-drained – or put simply putting holes in the outfield to allow air to get into the subsoil, to break up the thatch to allow the greens to drain properly. Secondly, we’ve invested in a new, lighter weight sit on mower to enable the team to cut when the outfields are particularly wet as the machine won’t sink (like it did last year!). Finally, complemented by some grant funding (plus club funds) we’re getting an additional set of covers which means both the wickets on the front and back pitches can be covered. All three of these projects demonstrate our commitment to developing the club and trying to provide the best possible facilities to our members.

Another key area we have touched on in the last month is our community links where we recently opened the doors for a local residents meeting where the police and local councillor were present to discuss some recent troubles in the area. This was extremely well attended and it was great to be able to do this and strengthen our links with the local residents. Another very exciting initiative which is great for the club is a link up we have with four local schools where Matt Owen will be going in to providing specific cricket coaching. We did this a few years ago when Nat Sariman was with us, and this extends on that initiative and plays perfectly into Matt’s skill set. We are extremely grateful to the local schools, and of course Matt for enabling us to work together on this.

Last week I joined a ‘webinar’ with James Nickson (the ECB’s “Head of Marketing & Digital” at grassroots level) which was very enlightening as he shared some of the initiatives the ECB are working on to improve the game at grassroots level. There were some very interesting insights and one or two 'hot-off-the-press' revelations, not least on developing club capabilities, new products, working with commercial product developers, digital platforms supplementing terrestrial TV coverage, partnerships with Cricket Australia and Cricket New Zealand and the future introduction of a 'parkrun cricket' concept. It’ll certainly interesting to watch how all this unfolds over not just this year but the next couple of years as some of these things will take time.

Touching on the importance we play in the local community, I read an article published in Wisden titled “The Club Debate: Where have all the families gone?”. The article touched on how many clubs had witnessed a gradual disintegration of the family atmosphere that cricket was known for, the lack of support for senior matches, and the need to re-engage the local community. Read the article for yourself (available HERE), but I took encouragement that with all the stuff we are doing, we are bucking this trend.

I’ll end this now and let you get back to eating Easter eggs – enjoy the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend an d I look forward to seeing you all in the coming weeks.

Cheers
Jez Lamb
Chairman