Richard Edwards
27 January 2022
The humble cricket committee is often the club game’s
unseen hand, guiding some of the country’s oldest sporting institutions through
good times and bad. At big clubs, the odd person stepping down can often go
unnoticed, with more people involved in a club it therefore stands to reason
that the pool of those willing to step in is far greater.
At clubs like Bury, currently in the second tier of
the Greater Manchester League, though, the loss of committee members
represents a huge challenge, with the kind of experience and knowledge lost
when someone leaves their role, almost Coping lower down impossible
to replace.
And
after a period when some have reluctantly withdrawn from the sport due to
concerns over Covid, it’s an issue which is likely to hitting smaller clubs
hard up and down the country.
“It
has definitely been a challenging few years on the committee side of things,”
says James Weston, a Bury player who doubles up as the club’s head of
communications. “We had our AGM this week and we’ve lost three members of the
committee, we’re now down from ten to seven. We’re all confident that the club
will still be here in the future, but you need to find those volunteers who are
willing to chip in and help out.
“I’ve
been on the committee for three years but it’s only really me and one other
player who are on that committee. It’s about finding those people who want to
get stuck in, which is becoming more difficult. I don’t think the pandemic has
helped that either. People don’t want to put their name forward and we’ve had a
real problem with that.
“Once
people leave a club it’s very unusual for them to return. If you’re a younger
person on the committee – as I am – then there are naturally going to be
certain things you don’t know about. If you get a few players who volunteer,
are they going to be able to go and find the club a main sponsor? You need
those experienced people to hang around a bit longer but it’s not always that
easy, particularly at the current time.”
That
problem is clearly exacerbated if you don’t have a large number of volunteers
in the original instance. And the problems in the committee room are mirrored
with potential issues on the field if players walk away from the game as well.
“The
pandemic has definitely impacted the way that different clubs can bounce back
from it,” says Weston. “You can’t fault the support from the ECB and Sport
England and the size of the club didn’t make too much difference in that
respect.
“I
guess if you’ve got a smaller squad in the first place, then keeping those
players involved is far more difficult for the smaller clubs. I think the
bigger clubs are naturally going to be better placed moving forward.”
“I
don’t see the amount of money we spend massively increasing in the coming
years, where at other clubs it probably will.
“Whether
that means we go backwards in terms of divisions on the field, then so be it.”
It’s
a pragmatic approach and one which illustrates that clubs such as Bury are
about far more than the XI who take to the field on any given Saturday. Like
hundreds of other clubs from Lancashire to Cornwall and Cumbria to Suffolk,
they’re there to serve their community and future generations of cricketers.
“Particularly
over the last year, we’ve had to rethink a number of things,” he says. “We’re
trying to get younger players through the club but, probably most importantly,
we’re trying to be there for the community.
“In
the 2020 season, it wasn’t about trying to win games. Everyone was going
through a terrible time, there were several members – it was probably a 50/50 split
– who weren’t too keen on going down to the club and getting involved because
that was really at the height of it all.
“There
was so much uncertainty around. I led it because I wasn’t really too
comfortable about us not opening up our facilities. Everyone was going through
such an awful time that I thought it was really our duty to our members to do
everything we could to open everything up. I didn’t mind going down and getting
stuck in, although a lot of it was pretty tedious – I remember we had to wipe
down the stumps after two people had had a net. Some of it was bonkers.
“That
year did hit us, more in the junior set-up that anything else. Once the season
ends, the juniors will have a month off and then train the whole way through
the winter, which helps to retain the kind of numbers we’ve traditionally had.
“We
couldn’t do that during the pandemic – we only got a month and a half of junior
training in and in the winter, it didn’t happen at all. Last season we didn’t
have an under-9s team, which is the first time I can remember that happening.
We just didn’t have the numbers. We hadn’t been able to get the kids in and
then keep them. In terms of the seniors, we haven’t had too much of a drop-off.
“We’ve
just a new junior head coach, whose job is working in schools coaching cricket
anyway. So, we’re hoping that will help bring some more juniors in and we’re
constantly advertising to try and get new people in. It’s not always that easy.
Where we are in Bury, there are probably 13 or 14 clubs around us. There’s a
huge amount of competition here.
Now, more than ever, club cricket is about the
survival of the fittest, and some are clearly in better shape than others. For
a town that lost its football club not too long ago, they need no reminding of
just how brutal sport can be. The clubs small army of volunteers has never
been so crucial.