Project Description

Wanstead and Snaresbrook Cricket Club wanted to completely replace their existing 4-lane training facility with a new purpose built 4-lane all-weather ECB approved facility on the same footprint of the existing facility, which was no longer fit for purpose.

Why was it needed?

The photographs featured highlight the decrepit state the clubs existing training net facility were in. For example, the surface of the nets were very run down, too hard, uneven and overgrown with weeds, whilst the scaffolding was too low and the nets themselves needed pinning down with balls often flying loose making them potentially unsafe.

The existing state of the nets were restricting usage as the club couldn’t use adjacent lanes at the same time, which in turn restricted practice time, affecting the clubs ability to accommodate existing users and stopping them from retaining players and restricting usage by local community groups.

What difference would it make?

Wanstead is an area with an extremely wide spread of social-economic and ethnic groupings, with local insight suggesting high numbers of the population were inactive. The club is very representative of the local area and therefore many local people would benefit from the project.

The club work hard to increase their activity levels through a variety of cricket initiatives such as; All-Stars cricket, entering teams in the ethnic Sunday leagues, participating in the Vatican multi-faith cricket event and helping to run the ‘Street Chance’ project to encourage Asian women to play cricket, as well as our extensive outreach work in schools across inner East London. With the addition of the new net facility the aim was to continue this, attracting new people that are representative of the local community to the club to participate in cricket on a regular basis.

As one of only a few cricket clubs locally, regionally and nationally who have such a strong, active and thriving women and girls section with over 5+ teams, the new nets would allow the club to engage more women/girls, expanding these teams and other social women’s/girls cricket initiatives by working hard to make them feel welcome, generating fun atmosphere where they can participate regularly in sport.

In addition, the club has over 350 juniors who will regularly benefit from this project, as well as local schools, businesses, community groups and the University of East London, who will also use the facility.

How did they make it happen?

After speaking to us the club asked Funding 4 Sport we pulled together a list of possible funding sources. Due to the amount required it was evident that the nets could not be funded through one grant source alone, therefore the club ask Funding 4 Sport to write three grant applications to the London Marathon Charitable Trust, the National Lottery and Sport England. In applying to these funders, alongside the clubs own contribution, we were able to support them to install the 4-lane net facility (see featured photographs).

On completion of the project Mark Bentley, Club Treasurer, said “Richard’s efforts in supporting us through the detailed application processes were absolutely invaluable and contributed hugely to the success of the project. Richard is very well informed regarding appropriate funding sources, and his subsequent work is both detailed and accurate in making such applications successful. We have no hesitation in recommending him to other clubs, and very much look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.”

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