Charlie Puckett

28 October 2014

All over the country sports grounds are being lost: either the clubs which owned or ran them are going to the wall or the local authorities who lease or let them out are selling them off.  Once these have gone, they are gone forever and society is the poorer for their passing. 

In many cases the grounds are taken over for redevelopment into local facilities but all too many are merely sold off to developers with no thought to the future.  Currently an example of the former is to be found in the London Borough of Hounslow. 

The former Hounslow Cricket & Sports Club site fell vacant a few years ago when the cricket club, the last of the sports still there, folded and the ground went fallow with the exception of an indoor bowls facility which is still there.  After a while a local school began to use the ground for football and rugby but with no changing facilities and no dedicated groundsman it very definitely falls under the heading of “The Art of Coarse Sport”. 

A local cricket club, Indian Gymkhana, has offered to take the site on, produce a quality cricket field for their club at weekends and for local schools during the week, build a changing block, a groundsman’s house and to install a groundsman and all at the club’s expense!  What’s not to like? 

Well, everything apparently because Hounslow Council are simply not interested. 

The local residents are opposed to the site on the grounds of health & safety (yes, I don’t normally like that either but we are all hypocrites when it suits us!) because of the proximity of a main road and a humpbacked bridge and a near total lack of parking and turning facilities. 

Anyway, I merely cite Hounslow Cricket Club as an example – there are many, many others; Aigburth Cricket Club in Liverpool springs immediately to mind (Google them to see their story and to offer your support). 

The Club Cricket Conference is passionate in its support of club cricket everywhere and to that end has set up a petition to pressurise government into doing something.  To date the response has been disappointing but we hope that by this mailing we can reach a wider audience.  Please click on the link here and add your name – we only need another 99,000-odd signatures to force a debate on the floor of the House!

Remember, this is something which affects everybody and it may be your club in the future.