20th May 2020
| Mallory Gray
Cricket Wales has been so impressed by the efforts of clubs to entertain, engage with
communities, raise funds and raise spirits in these difficult times.
We
would like to highlight some examples of these. This story is one of many we are grouping in a series to follow.
To find out more about the wider game's efforts in Wales click here
First
up this week, Buckley CC who share their story....
Buckley Cricket Club – Big Run Chase
COVID19 has impacted every single part of society and life as
we know it including the sport we love Cricket.
Cricket in Buckley is a big part of our
community we provide a facility for over 70 children and 4 senior teams. In
addition many people enjoy social membership at the club and enjoy our social events
or even just a nice pint in the sun.
The club like many is run by a dedicated group
of volunteers, they have been challenged with ensuring we can survive
financially through this pandemic. Our club survives through the money that is
made from our bar - any profit is used to run the club or reinvested to improve
the cricket facilities & training we provide. We are going to have to
rely heavily on fundraising to survive these coming weeks & months. We
still have many bills to pay and the building & ground to maintain even
whilst we are closed...
We knew our playing members were missing running
between the wickets so we came up with a running challenge that everyone could
take part in. We invited our members to donate £5 and then see how many runs
they could make on the artificial wicket in 30 minutes – we originally set
ourselves a target of £500 and 750 runs – these were surpassed within hours of
our campaign going live. We went on to set targets throughout the week of
famous cricketers run total the final one being Sir Don Bradman’s 28067 – we
actually ended up with over 33,000 runs by the end of the week !…
The campaign was managed carefully with social distancing
& lockdown rules in mind and we created a booking system for those that
wanted to run at the club. Those members shielding or that need to drive to get
to the club completed runs in their back garden - we even had one past player
completing runs in Dubai! Literally all of our member groups took part,
juniors, seniors, groundsmen and past players.
As the week went on it became less about the fundraising but
more about players and families reconnecting with their cricket club. At times
it became quite competitive – some members hoping that these are not their only
runs that are recorded this season!! We sincerely hope not but we simply do not
know at the moment when and if the season will start so even more important to
keep members engaged. We encourage other clubs to utilise this idea to do their
own fundraising or their own version it was a lot of fun.
We also wanted to give something back to the community - we
are aware that families are struggling so we will be sharing some of the funds
we have raised to support our local food bank.