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Winsley “Our plans are to develop the youth into the 1sts and 2nd so that we can be promoted in the next couple of years. It looks like we will achieve this for the 2nds and possibly the 3rds but it is a long game. “ O u r biggest plan for this year is to launch ladies cricket, we start training soon after the juniors have finished culminating in a ladies competition on the 18th August. Ladies cricket is growing and exciting and we want to be a part of it. “Youth cricket is very, very important to us and without it we will fade away. We are now benefitting from twelve years of hard work for the junior section started by Paul Wickens and now led by David Baxter. They have done a tremendous job developing the youth so we now have 15 and 16 year olds playing in the 1st team on merit, we have a girls team and most of the 2nds are under 21. We cannot relax and we have to continue the hard work but ECB initiatives such as All Stars have helped tremendously. “We believe that exposing the youngsters to adult cricket early is the key to integrating them. The juniors enjoy despatching our bowling to all four corners of the ground and bowling us out cheaply. We have an active social team on a Sunday where many are blooded but we will have U15/ U13s in the 3rds as well as the 2nds and even the 1sts. The U15s also train with the seniors and we find that if we do this they will stay. “We are very much a community club who want to cater for all standards and all parts of the community. As I have said, we want to launch ladies cricket this year and we have resurrected our social cricket. We have also established an U19 side as we think there is a big gap between U15s and senior cricket, the lads want to play cricket with their mates. In the future we would look at other areas as we have a few SEN playing in the junior teams and this could be an area to develop. “Our biggest challenge is the exposure of cricket in society and the media. The ECB have recognised this and put a lot of effort into promoting youth cricket but we need it on the telly and in the public eye for the right reasons. That said we have 140+ juniors at the club and we hope we can renew our teams in the future and the World Cup will help this year. “We want our 1st team at least in WEPL but we need to get there on our own merit and not buy success. We also want to continue developing our youth and ladies. We also have three big projects; we must find a 2nd ground in Winsley, we play too far away and it costs us a fortune, we need to develop the pavilion so that it can cater for ladies cricket. This will mean building a 1st floor and finally we want to grow the club and enjoy our cricket.” www.sportip.biz 57