Public cricket wicket backed

The opening of the city’s first public cricket wicket will be used to encourage more disadvantaged youngsters and women to take part in the sport.

Worcester City Council plans to install the £9,000 synthetic wicket at the King George V Playing Fields off Brickfields Road and would be the city’s first free-to-use public cricket wicket to be built by the council.

Members of the council’s communities committee, which discussed the work at a meeting in the Guildhall on Wednesday (June 8), said they hoped the public facility would encourage as many people as possible to pick up a bat and ball and take part.

Cllr Matt Lamb said he hoped the council would be encouraging as many people as possible from all walks of life – particularly those from disadvantaged areas – to play cricket in the same way it had done with football.

“What is particularly good here is the emphasis in encouraging young people to get involved in this and supporting young people being active in sport,” he said.

Cllr Lucy Hodgson said she hoped the new pitch would allow more women to play the sport, which was echoed by committee chair Cllr Jabba Riaz who said it was a women’s team who had first contacted him about a new facility.

Cllr Riaz said cricket had traditionally been seen as an upper class, expensive and inaccessible sport– particularly with the cost of equipment and club fees – and he hoped the new public wicket at Brickfields, which was a “perfect location”, would start the ball rolling for more cricket facilities across the city and get more youngsters and women involved.

The council said demand in Worcester has also grown with more children attending the England Cricket Board’s (ECB) Inspiring Generations programme which includes All Stars Cricket for five-to-eight-year-olds and Dynamos Cricket which caters for eight-to-11-year-olds.

The work will take around two days to complete and should be installed at the end of the month in time for the second half of the cricket season, which runs until the end of September.