Investing in community sport for our children

“The new artificial wicket has been a godsend to the junior players and other user groups who play at Newport Cricket Club.”

Newport Cricket Club provides young children and adults access to high quality cricket coaching programmes. They were awarded £2,000 to purchase an artificial cricket wicket to help meet the excessive demand on the cricket ground.

Newport Cricket Club currently runs eight Boys and three Girls Junior teams, with ages ranging from U9 to U17, providing cricket for 175 children throughout the summer. With so many matches on a weekly basis they decided to install an artificial cricket wicket to help cope with the demand and provide a facility for cricket to be played in all weather.

The grant enabled the club to purchase and install an artificial pitch, providing an all-weather surface resulting in less matches being cancelled and more cricket being played.

The new artificial cricket wicket has been used to develop relationships with three local Asian Cricket teams and these teams (Newport Asians, Maindee and Newport Tigers) now participate in the Newport & District Midweek Cricket League. It has also provided an opportunity to introduce children at local schools (St Andrews and Maindee Primary Schools) to the sport.

Newport Cricket Club was recently selected by Cricket Wales as a Disability Cricket Centre to cater for Disability Cricket so the artificial wicket has been vital in providing a safe place for disabled users to practice cricket.