Cricket Club Issue 42 | Page 44

radyr FOLLOW US ONLINE TWITTER.COM/CRICKETCLUBMAG Radyr CRICKET CLUB R adyr CC is a terrific example of a community cricket club and 2015 sees them celebrating their 125th anniversary. Their Chairman, Chris Hitchings, took the time to tell us more about the good work the club has been doing lately. Involvement He told us, “I’ve been involved with the club since 1965 so for a quite a while now! I’ve been Chairman of the club since 2004. It has been a challenging role but is always very interesting. We’ve grown exponentially over the last seven or eight years and it is now a different animal to what it was in 2004.” Atmosphere 2015 “I’d say that the mood at the club at the moment is very buoyant. It is our 125th anniversary and we held a cricket week at the end of July which went well. The season so far could have gone a little better; we always have a slow start. We’re situated in probably the most prosperous area of Cardiff and as a consequence many of our younger players are either away or doing exams so running four sides on a Saturday early in the campaign can be quite a struggle.” “We’re aiming to win as many games as we can over the remainder of the season across all of our sides. We’re looking forward to the final event of our celebration as well which is a dinner on the 25th of September which should be well attended and will be a great way to finish the season.” 44 Issue 42 Youth “Youth cricket is very important to the club. We’ve got just under 200 boys and girls involved with sides from U7 right the way through to U15. We’ve been very successfully in this regard with our youngsters developing very well. We run as many teams as possible in order to make sure that we can provide as many people as possible with a chance to play the game.” Challenges “As with all sports, I think cricket clubs are struggling to keep membership numbers up and that is one of the challe