Plans to improve the community practice facilities available to cricketers in Harrogate are moving forward after receiving a four-figure boost from a regional developer.
Harrogate Cricket Club set up a fundraising campaign to bring in the money required to refurbish the community practice nets at its St George’s Road ground that are available for anyone to use free of charge all year round.
A £2,000 grant from the Banks Group has now taken the club past its fundraising target, with improvement work set to be carried out on the two net lanes in the coming weeks.
And with England’s Ashes series against Australia set to take place through the winter, the club is hoping to capitalise on the extra interest in the sport that this will create by providing better facilities for local people to give the game a try.
Harrogate Cricket Club is a centre of excellence for cricket in North Yorkshire, with its men’s first XI competing in the Yorkshire Premier League North and women’s first XI competing in the West Yorkshire Women and Girls cricket league division one.
Alongside its four senior men’s teams and two senior women’s teams, it also runs junior teams at every level from under sevens upwards and has a rapidly growing women’s and girls’ section.
A walking cricket group has recently been set up for people aged 55 and over, while the club is currently working towards offering playing opportunities for a local visually impaired group.
Susan Bates, volunteer fundraiser at Harrogate Cricket Club, said:
Our community nets are there for anyone that wants to use them whenever they want to, and they’re well used all year round by both our members and lots of other local residents.
They’ve offer people of all ages the chance to find out if they like playing cricket without having to pay a membership fee or venue hire costs, and have often provided the first introduction to the game for players who’ve gone on to join our club or other local sides.
We made improvements to the main practice nets that our members use a couple of years ago, but have since been conscious that the community nets needed work doing on them to keep them up to scratch.
Reaching our fundraising target means we’ll be able to get on with improving the all-weather playing surface and repairing the netting in the coming weeks, and we’re hoping to have everything done before the end of the current season.
We’ve had a great response to our fundraising campaign and are very grateful to the Banks Group for their generous contribution that’s taken us over the finishing line.
Kate Culverhouse, community relations manager at the Banks Group, adds:
Very few cricket clubs provide practice facilities that non-members can use, let alone all year round and for free.
Harrogate Cricket Club deserves a huge amount of credit for its commitment to providing the local community with such a great opportunity to stay active right through the year and we’re very pleased to be able to help them maintain it long into the future.
The Banks Group’s community funds are independently managed by Point North. Anyone from a community close to a Banks Group project who is interested in applying for funding from the Banks Community Fund should contact the company via its website enquiry form (www.banksgroup.co.uk/contact-us/) to find out if their group or project is eligible.
