Plan of action

Dinting Cricket Club has outlined a number of exciting plans to push the club forward into the forthcoming season.

The club, which competes in the Derbyshire and Cheshire Cricket League, has put forward its intentions to enhance and promote the junior section, whilst off the pitch further investment will be pumped into making the facilities at the ground even better.

Chairman Martyn Knight issued the following statement: "After the uncertainty of 2020 all of us at the club are looking forward to 2021 as I am sure the whole of the world is with the main ambition of moving forward from the huge disruption caused by the pandemic. 

"Despite the pandemic, at Dinting Cricket Club, we have not stood still and have invested our time and funds into our continuous improvement projects with the aim of improving the facilities, experience, and infrastructure at the club to enable us to continue to provide the very best environment in local cricket.

"Aided by grants from HPBC, Sport England, and our own internal shrewd financial management, we have plans to expand our current net facilities from 2 practice lanes to 4 to enable us to provide more coaching for all ages and abilities. The junior section, expertly led by Matt Parker, have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that any juniors that come through our gates are given the very best environment to learn and improve their all-round cricket games in the safest and friendliest of environments. Our Friday night coaching has necessitated the net expansion and a recruitment drive for extra volunteers is well underway.

"This season we are looking to reintroduce the ECB ‘AllStars’ Cricket programme for ages 5-8 year old and as well as this we are looking to commence the new ECB funded programme called ‘Dynamos’ (ECB delayed launch due to Covid from 2020) that provides a stepping stone for children aged between 8-10 year old to give them a pathway to our junior teams. We are looking to have 1x u11’s 2 ux13’s and 2x u15’s teams this season which allows us the luxury of being able to ensure each child gets the opportunity to play a part.

"We will be looking to recruit for all ages through our social media network, as we feel that its important to get children off their various modern electronic devices and outside into a sports environment. One of the main plus points of last season was the gratitude shown by parents and children alike at our determination to run training sessions and games albeit in an ultra-safe environment.

"Last year, although hugely disrupted gave us the perfect opportunity to give some of our juniors the experience of senior cricket and they made immediate impressions both on and off the pitch. With a shortened 2nd XI season, we took the stance as a club that we were going to use this as a steppingstone into senior cricket for some of our older and more prominent juniors. This led to senior debuts for no less than 6 of our juniors and eventually culminated in 3 of these making their 1st XI debuts later in the season. Amongst the juniors who were involved were an array of performances of maturity and at no time did any of them look out of place. Alfie Joy, Taylor Yardley, and Ollie Maltby all made their first team bows whilst Greg Pugh, Charlie Clarke and Euan Lee all appeared for the 2nd XI and more than held their own when called upon.

"2021, whilst still in its infancy, promises to be a hugely exciting year for the whole of Dinting Cricket Club, investment off the pitch to make our already great facilities even better is well under way and the committee is energised and have a multitude of ideas we wish to drive through to continue to improve our fantastic club. New junior sponsors are onboard in the shape of ‘ITEC Power Services Ltd’ to provide new playing kit for all our junior sides. We have ‘Slush Puppy’ as a secondary sponsor and are looking at other avenues for sponsorship for training kits. We must also give a big thanks to Bill Coleman who has approached a number of local tradesmen and businesses for smaller contributions that help us to make Dinting CC the place to play cricket for all budding cricketers.

"‘Croft Lettings’ have extended their senior sponsorship for another 3 years which will enable us to subsidise the purchase of the playing shirts for the senior teams.

Lastly, we introduced a 3rd team last season that was expertly marshalled by Jon Matthews which again proved to be an invaluable pathway for junior players to mix with senior players in a slightly shorter format of the game".