Cricket Club Issue 49 | Page 25

Ayr Ayr Audi are proud sponsors of Ayr Cricket Club “I’ve been going down to Ayr Cricket Club for many years and Ayr Audi have sponsored them for twenty plus years and are looking forward to many years more and are delighted to keep being involved.” Ian Struthers Ayr Audi Tel: 01292 270950 Web: www.lookers.co.uk/audi/contact-us/ayr-audi 3 High Thornyflat Wynd, Ayr, KA8 0LS 2019 Community “2019 is a big year for the club as we celebrate our 160th anniversary. We are hosting a veteran’s weekend on the 3rd/4th August when we are inviting all former players, supporters, sponsors and opponents to come and celebrate our history. We play Dumfries on the Saturday at home and will also be hosting our award winning beer festival that weekend. As a regional hub ground for Cricket Scotland (and one of 4 ODI accredited grounds in the country) we will be hosting games in the Scottish Domestic 50 over competition as well as a Scotland Academy team playing fixtures against an Australian touring team and the Scotland v Ireland U15s fixtures.” “We definitely pride ourselves on being part of the local community and our overseas players along with our coaches attend local primary schools introducing them to cricket and spreading the word about the club and the game in general. Over the last few years we have also held ladies days at the club in conjunction with a number of charities raising £000’s for the charities and the club.” Youth “Junior development is a key part of our long term plan at Ayr, as being a regional team we don’t necessarily attract new senior players to the local area. We have been very fortunate to have had some high class professionals at the club who have done outstanding work with our junior set up. New Zealander Matthew Horne in the early 2000s brought on the entire current crop of senior players and more recently West Indian Kenroy Peters does a fantastic job with the current group of juniors.” Integration “We try to ease the young players into senior cricket through the Sunday and Midweek development sides allowing them to test their skills against senior opposition. This hopefully stands them in good stead for playing league cricket and we have a number of young players in the senior sides on merit which is great to see.” Challenges “The major challenges are always keeping people interested and young players at the club. So many head off to university and many are lost to the club which is not ideal. The opportunities are so great it is up to us to make children feel like cricket can be a great sport to stick with, especially at Ayr. We have a close-knit bunch of guys ranging from 18-60 who play and train together but also enjoy time off the park with each other and that team spirit is vital.” Ambitions “It is our ambition to continue to develop our youth programme to ensure more make the transition to senior cricket. Our aim is for the first team to also be promoted back to the Premier League and to continue to perform well in the T20 competitions, hopefully picking up some more silverware. We will also maintain and develop our ground and facilities to continue to be recognised as one of the major venues in Scotland.” www.sportip.biz 25