New members: We have had an influx of new members at pre-season nets, which is absolutely great to see. First things first, though I have tried to say hello in person, welcome to the Club! If you are a new member and would like more info about the Club, please drop me a line on jeremypitblado@msn.com .

For all new members, we will need to register you to the leagues as soon as possible, so please can you contact our Club Secretary, Peter Wiseman, on wiseman334@btinternet.com, and he can let you know what information he will need to organise.

As the season draws nearer, we are still looking to bolster our ranks and would be delighted to see more new faces (and some old faces returning); as such if you know of anyone who might like to join for the coming season, please bring them along to nets or put them in touch with the Club.

Membership fees: The Committee has, under request from the General Committee, produced a proposal for the structure of the cricket section’s membership fees, which I will be providing to the General Committee in due course. As soon as the level of fees has been confirmed, we will be send this out to all members. As ever, we encourage prompt payment of fees as the wider Club will be implementing processes to ensure only paid-up members can access facilities.

The proposals include a slight change to the level of subs and match fees, but will offer more variety in payment plans, which we hope will be beneficial to cricket members.

At the moment, it is a case of watch this space!

Kit: The Committee took the decision to move from Cook and Matthews to Gray Nicholls as our Adult kit supplier for the 2019 season (we are sticking with C&M for our Juniors for one more year). The new Club shop is being created and will be available in the coming week(s). We hope that the offerings are more popular than last year’s and we encourage everyone to have a look and replenish their kit/stash for the new season. There are two playing tops to choose from, one is very reasonably priced at under £20 and the other slightly more expensive at c.£30. There should be more options for training kit and leisure wear too, plus bundle deals as well!

We get back 5% of what is spent in the Club shop to use to buy equipment/gear/kit at the end of the season, so the more we spend, the more we get for the section.

New Club App: We will (hopefully) be using an App to allow members to make payments (subs, match fees etc.) and allows the Committee to track non-paying members. Once we have this agreed, we will roll it out to all members and ask that it is downloaded and used. We will run “teach-ins” to help anyone who needs an extra helping hand.

Sponsorship: We are actively looking for sponsorship and have been approaching local businesses as well as the email that was sent to the Sports Club on 12/3/19. If you know of anyone who might be interested in sponsoring the Cricket Club, please let me or Olly Civil know.

Dates for your diary: We have booked the indoor nets facilities for Tuesday 2 and 9 April, after which we will move to outdoor nets. Given the additional costs for hiring the hall, we will ask for £5 per session from everyone attending. As our Ladies’ team will be kicking off its inaugural season early in May, they will be using one of the nets on those dates too.

It’s that time of the year again! We will be running Ground Force on 6 April, so please get that in your diary now. There is loads to get done and more information will be sent round, but we are hoping to be joined by the other sections at the Sports Club. This is a good chance to help Ray and his team sort one or two areas that he can’t do in his day job and are vital for making sure the club is ready for the season. This is also a good chance to get down and catch-up with team mates ahead of the season, so we are planning on running a social that day/evening following Ground Force!

Our first friendly will be a Wizards match at home on Sunday 14 April and availability emails will be starting in earnest the week before. Saturday friendlies kick off on Saturday 20th, with the 1st team at home. The league season starts shortly after that and will be upon us in no time, so these friendlies are a great chance to get some time in the middle/overs in your legs.

Cheers

Pitbull (Jeremy)