The cricket season is over for another year but work hasn’t stopped at the ground. Soon after our last home match the £20,000 wicket renovation and extension project started thanks to funding and support from the Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, Shepway Sports Trust and Kent Playing Fields Association. The top surface of the old square has been dug up, levelled and re-built with an extra five wickets built from scratch. We will have eight wickets ready for the start of the 2015 season and another five ready for 2016.
The improvements to the club’s facilities don’t stop there. The committee have already raised £4,000 of the £6,300 needed to buy a new roller engine and sightscreens and are hopeful to secure the remaining £2,300 in the next few months.
Thanks to funding from Sport England we will be running our first ‘Satellite Club’ at Brockhill School. The 13 week course will run on Tuesdays from April 2015 and help to build the profile of cricket and Saltwood CC. We’ll also be running coaching sessions at SCC for those that want to progress to playing for the senior teams.
In another first for the club, senior net practice will be run by an ECB L3 coach who can hopefully teach us all how to bat, bowl and field properly!
Despite raising over £27,000 in the last few months for improvement projects, we still need to raise funds to pay the day to day expenses involved in running the club. If you think the committee’s efforts to raise over £70,000 in the last few years is worthy your appreciation then please buy some tickets for the 50 Club. The 20 weeks of free coaching alone is worth at least one ticket from every playing member so please print the form and fill it in. Tickets are just £10 each and there are 13 prizes on offer in December.
