East Grinstead
scoring facilities and helped set up the Outreach Committee
to encourage local participation from the community and
increase our profile and of course membership.
SIP: What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of
your role?
GB: The most challenging aspects are ensuring the financial
aspects of the club are met year on year. We are part of a large
sports complex that gives the visitor a false idea of our financial
muscle, as apart from minimal ground support, we have to
be totally self-financing and critically without the benefit of
revenue from our own bar!
Seeing the club expand over my 28 years from three senior
and two junior teams to a seventeen team club, five senior sides
on a Saturday in the Sussex Leagues, two sides in the Surrey
Trust league on a Sunday a Woman’s and Girls sides in the
Sussex Leagues plus junior teams from U9 to U16 has been
very rewarding.
Having put a lot of effort into the pitches over the years and
especially last winter when we completely re-laid both of our
squares so we are now have the satisfaction receiving regular
high marks for the facility.
SIP: What are your plans for the rest of 2017?
GB: To ensure all the sides are stable whilst giving the
opportunity for top performers in a particular team to be
promoted higher to experience the requirements at that level.
We would not wish to promote a player to a lever he/she is
not comfortable at, hence our emphasis on coaching and youth
development. Every player no matter what age should have
the opportunity at East Grinstead Cricket Club of being the
best they can be.
SIP: How important is youth development to the club?
GB: This is a key priority in the club, because of the number
of teams we run it is imperative there is a conveyor belt of new
young players coming through to challenge at all levels. The
club provides regular planned age related coaching sessions
all supervised by ECB qualified coaches. Young players are
introduced to senior cricket in the 5th team which is nominally
a lads and dads side playing in a conference league against
similar teams from other local clubs that we find to be an ideal
introduction to senior cricket.
SIP: How’s the general mood down at the club at the moment?
GB: Generally very good but not without the usual crisis
when everyone seems to take their holidays at the same time,
however we have not defaulted on a fixture so far this season,
but are eagerly awaiting for the Universities to release some
more of our players.
It is important that the management of the club is as
efficient and organised as possible during a busy season so all
the ground work has to be completed out of season to leave
the players to worry about standard of performance during the
matches to enable them to fully participate and enjoy the great
game of Cricket.
SIP: How would you say the season has gone for the club so
far?
GB: Very well, the first XI are challenging for the
championship which at this stage of the season could go to
any one of four clubs who are within 9 points of one another.
The remainder of the teams are comfortable positioned in their
respective leagues and with a burst could well challenge for a
promotion position in the second half of the season.
SIP: Would you consider yours to be a community club?
GB: Very much so. We have a strap line on our newsletter
that states ‘Cricket in the Community’, anyone with an interest
in cricket can come along to a taster session to see if they enjoy
it, some fall away others go on to represent the club for many
years. The local secondary school uses the ground for their
inter school matches.
There is a cricket fun day run by the town sports
development officer when every junior school in the area
enjoys a day of soft ball cricket. The Sussex County 2nd XI, the
Sussex Women’s XI plus the district Academy XI have fixtures
at the ground giving the local community the opportunity to
see high-class cricket in the town. We recently hosted two T20
matches between Sussex and Kent Second XIs.
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