19th June 2019
| Mallory Gray
England have an eye on winning the 2019 Cricket World Cup this summer but one young fan from Vale Cricket Club is already a winner after receiving a “Golden Ticket” to the final.
6-year-old Eliza signed up for the ECB’s All Stars programme at her village club and became the envy of thousands of young cricketers after receiving two tickets to the final.
Eliza was presented with the Golden ticket by All Stars mascot Twinkle, who paid a surprise visit to the clubs World Cup cricket party.
Gareth Andrews (club chairman)
Our cricket world cup party last Friday was made extra special following the news that one of our All Stars, Eliza Thomas, had one a Golden Ticket. The fact that her Dad, Matthew, is our 2nd XI captain and U11 coach makes it even more memorable. The All Stars initiative has proved to be a very valuable initiative for our club and over the last three years we have had 70 All Stars sign up which is fantastic. In addition to this our senior membership is growing and for the first time in many years we are fielding a third XI. The club has also formed a Women’s and girls’ section and for the second year we will be hosting a women’s festival at the club. My thanks to club members, Cricket Wales and our sponsors Bridgend Ford and Fine Wines for making our CWC such a terrific evening.
Matthew Thomas - (Eliza’s Dad)
We are all absolutely thrilled to have won world cup final tickets. Unbelievably lucky to have won with thousands of all-star cricketers playing up and down the country. Eliza is in her second year of all-stars and now has even more zest and enthusiasm than before for cricket after this win. All-stars is a brilliant way to get young children in to cricket and Vale CC have really embraced initiative with great work from our coaches and support team.
Hopefully Eliza will choose her dad to take her to take her to the final.
The “Golden Ticket” winners were chosen at random with special winning codes put into the All Stars booklets of a handful of lucky children across the country. Cricket Wales 2019 is the third year of the ECB’s All Stars programme and it continues to go from strength-to-strength in Wales where 125 clubs are taking part this year, The number of kids signed up this year is 3900 Cricket Wales has exceeded 3500 who took part last year. only Yorkshire currently have more youngsters signed up this year
CW Area Manager (SEW) Mark White: “We thought it would be almost impossible to beat our figures from last year but it seems we have exceeded this already. Our staff have worked tirelessly to support clubs with All Stars, and it has been fantastic to see it having such a positive effect. A number of clubs have started youth sections as a result of All Stars and literally thousands of children will be playing cricket this summer who might not have been without its introduction.
With the World Cup and the Ashes this is a huge summer for cricket. We want to make sure we can use these events to capture children’s imagination and develop a lifelong love of the game. All Stars is a great starting point and we hope to build from there.”