The Club Cricket Conference, with a centenary tour to the Caribbean planned for 2015, have received an appeal for assistance from Grenada, one of the destination islands.

Cricket equipment is very expensive in the West Indies and this has undoubtedly held the game back at grassroots, perhaps one of the reasons for a decline in international standards, but even cricket clothing is not easy to acquire at club level. Movingly Pearls Progressive CC asked urgently for coloured kit for the new Grenada Cricket Association T20 tournament to avoid ridicule before they were eliminated at the group stage.

Pearls, with a fine ground in St Andrew, have a reputation as a good community club, producing several Grenada youth players, including Anil Matthew, a Windward Islands Under-17 batsman of great promise, and Craig Phillip, a Windwards Under-19 seam-bowler. Their coach Alwyn Benjamin said the greatest challenge facing the club was securing equipment. And this included team kit. “At the moment we are competing in the national T20 competition and our  'uniform' is a subject of great ridicule,” he said. “We would be grateful if an individual or group could come to our aid.”
 
The CCC tour of Grenada and Barbados begins in November 2015, and one way of marking the visit would be to send cricket equipment and clothing to Grenada, especially to clubs such as Pearls in view of the coach's comments. If any UK club or county has some spare kit they could donate, please contact the CCC office. Equipment is desperately needed throughout the island, a vibrant contributor to Windward Island and West Indies cricket.

CCC office: 020 8973 1612

ccc@club-cricket.co.uk