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Club development plan

We write a club development plan every year as a valuable tool to guide the club through the coming year/s in a structured and effective way. Within this plan there are targets and visions covering 1-5 years in the future and the information below is a synopsis of the club’s latest plan for 2024 (updated Dec 2023).

5 Year Vision

  • Construct our new pavilion – a phased and modular build, smaller initially; expandable as additional funding becomes available
  • Refurbish our secondary changing room building – toilets & showers to be brought into working order; vandalised sinks to be replaced (at minimum)
  • Have the new children’s nursery running within club’s grounds, providing childcare to the community and additional income to invest in cricket provision
  • Secure high quality out-ground – better pitches with safer outfields needed for both junior and senior cricket to improve playing experience
  • Increased female membership, up from just under 30% to at least 40% – a girls’ squad for every school year and a third women’s squad
  • Increased numbers of juniors playing through into senior cricket – men’s and women’s
  • Increased outreach to under-represented demographics – to encourage all members of our local community to enjoy cricket
  • Start running walking cricket – to be run mid-week day times when we have pitch availability and subject gathering sufficient player interest
  • Cut down and replace the dying trees between lower pitch and car-park; potentially pile logs to create a habitat for our local endangered stag beetles
  • Dedicated disability cricket offering – when the pavilion facilities are improved, and/or sponsor disability cricket (eg Lord’s Taverners programmes)

Actions planned for 2024

Players

  • Continue to focus on creating an excellent environment for women cricketers/attracting more women players of all ages
  • Continue to run 370+ matches (445+ fixtures) per year
  • Continue to run almost year-round training for our 500+ playing members
  • Continue to run 8-10 weeks of holiday camps for ~50 juniors/day
  • Continue providing free pitches for an SCF girls’ schools festival and MCC Hub & ACE Programme match days
  • Continue to run ‘SMCC Supercasuals’ – indoor nets and evening matches aimed at parents and other members who want to play occasional, casual cricket
  • Continue running Trust League XI, coached by our Men’s 1s captain and Junior Club Captain
  • Continue Young Leaders programme
  • Continue welcoming increasing numbers of teens into men’s and women’s senior teams
  • Continue to use our “Ability to pay is not a barrier to play” as bursary fund to ensure players such as refugees, with no recourse to funds, are able to play and have cricket kit
  • Work with our local Platform hubs to cross-promote; Platform have a high proportion of low income, ethnically diverse and female juniors looking to join a club

Facilities

  • Secondary changing building refurbishment: we aim to raise approx £10k from ECB County Grants Fund and £15k from Sport England Small Grants Programme to repair the damage done by the vandal thrashing the building and bring it up to decent standard. This is a key development in our new pavilion plans
  • Pavilion: Complete architecture, surveying and planning phases by investing cash reserves into Pavilion Fund and internal fundraising; secure Community Ownership Fund grant (requires us to convert to a limited company) and ECB loan; carry out construction
  • Complete 2-year pitch expansion plan by adding 2 extra wickets to our lower pitch – this will help meet demand for very high volumes of usage throughout summer (370+ matches)
  • Continue to modernise our groundskeeping practices and ground treatments in order improve grass coverage and reduce hazardous cracking in summer (climate change adaptation), as well as enabling greater re-use of wickets throughout the season
  • Continue our search to secure higher quality pitches & changing facilities to use as outgrounds
  • Continue working with Southwark and Lambeth on development of artificial wickets and safer outfields in parks, primarily for junior cricket
  • Install secure storage for training equipment
  • Install bicycle parking rack at current pavilion
  • Purchase a bowling machine (50% already raised by a parent who ran London Marathon) to be available to coaches at outdoor training sessions

People

  • Continue succession planning for key roles, including developing one or more new volunteers as main administrators of junior section
  • Develop a larger group of people to share groundskeeping workload between them, e.g., older members, keeping them physically, mentally, and socially active and involved in the club
  • Develop a volunteer taskforce for pavilion project fundraising and to work on sponsorships
  • Encourage retirees, as well as more players and parents, to take up umpiring and scoring
  • Continue to work with our coaching partners to empower our young coaches to gain experience and lead sessions
  • Continue to work with our junior coaching providers to develop young players into support coaches and coaches (between us covering cost of coaching qualifications)
  • Continue to improve the club’s practices around equality, diversity & inclusion and actively contribute to local ED&I working group
  • Continue to promote LGBTQ+ inclusivity in line with the club’s ethos in a visible way such as by selling Rainbow Laces at bar and applying rainbow colouring to social media and Play Cricket logos during Pride month

Other

  • Invest in resolving planning permission for the new children’s nursery (outdoor, forest nursery) opening on the club’s grounds
  • Freeze summer membership and match fees (as we did in 2023) to help our members with the cost of living crisis, but ensure coaches, pavilion staff, and paid groundskeepers receive increases in line with the London Living Wage
  • Replace our single, traditional payment terminal with multiple “iZettle” style terminals to make payments at the bar and barbecue faster and to avoid the need for cash payments
  • Replace mowers as they have become unreliable
  • Expand the number of volunteers and members who complete the online ECB Safeguarding training to broaden the understanding of safeguarding practices
  • Cut down and replace the dying trees between our lower pitch and car-park, and potentially pile the logs to create a habitat for endangered stag beetles and other local wildlife
  • Continue to improve biodiversity, such as by sowing wildflower seeds around the ground
  • Obtain and install new defibrillator to replace the one destroyed by vandals in 2023
  • Continue to play junior and senior cricket in multiple local public parks, making cricket visible in the local community
  • Continue our strategic partnership with Pines & Needles – christmas tree outlet – in the off-season, as well as other parties to make use of our assets (within the limits set by our lease) to raise funds for cricket provision
  • Continue partnership with junior football providers who use our grounds in off-season

Successes in recent years

In 2022 we installed a new 3-lane practice net facility. £15k of this was funded by our members, but we also want to say a massive thank you to Sport England for investing £40k and Surrey Cricket Foundation / ECB for investing £10k.
  • Key goals completed in 2023:
    • Focussed on rebuilding our cash reserves
    • Purchased a small ride-on new tractor to allow our groundspeople to move equipment and materials around the grounds more efficiently and with improved personal health & safety
    • Installed 2 extra wickets to our top pitch
    • Bought metal containers for more secure storage of equipment
    • Improved our member communications (thank you James)
    • Appointed and trained an additional Safeguarding Officer (thank you Liz & Graham)
    • Continued to increase the number of junior alumni playing senior cricket (record numbers – 7 girls and 27 boys)
  • In 2022, thanks to grants from Sport England and the ECB / Surrey Cricket Foundation plus around £40k of funding from the club, we have invested in over £100k into:
    • repairs and refurbishments to the clubhouse
    • a new 3-lane practice net facility
  • Juniors (since 2016):
    • Numbers: junior membership up 340%; girls membership up 1800% (now 28% of juniors); indoor training attendance up 1200% to over 200 players/week for 20 weeks; number of matches up 380% to 230 matches, and from having no holiday camps we now run 7-8 weeks per year for around 40 players/day
    • Playing success: in 2022 our juniors won 55% of games (up from 30%); with most teams now in tier 2 rather than tier 3 divisions
    • Player development: We joined the Young Leaders programme with over 25 teenagers having taken part
    • Finance: Juniors now makes a substantial and fair contribution to club upkeep, enabling us to invest in our facilities
    • Producing performance players: 21 boys and 7 girls have played / are currently playing district or county-level cricket with Surrey, Kent or another representative teams
    • Record numbers of juniors are now playing in our men’s and women’s cricket each year
  • Women’s section has grown to 30+ players and in 2022 we ran two women’s squads. In 2019, our Women’s side won the inaugural Surrey Slam T20 tournament, while also going undefeated in the league to win promotion to Division 1 and in 2021, they finished 2nd in Div 1.
  • Men’s playing demand has grown to require seven league sides and most Saturdays, an additional eighth friendly side. We also formed a new regular midweek T20 team and increased the amount of friendly cricket available.
  • Raised £3k from the ECB in 2021 to partially fund new grounds machinery and a £7k grant for two Flicx Wickets.  We have also invested in two new batting cages to use with the Flicx Wickets. Previously raised grants of similar amounts for new covers and club furniture.
  • Over £2k donated by members to “Ability To Pay” fund to provide cricket free of charge to players with no means to pay.

This gives you a flavour of what your club has achieved and what it plans to achieve moving forward. If you would like any more information on the successes and plans above please contact us at enquiries.smcricketclub@gmail.com.


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