An update from Chief Executive, Mark Curtin

Hello everyone,

Spring is finally here, the evenings are getting lighter and the cricket season is upon us. I hope everyone is thoroughly looking forward to two very exciting women’s and men’s ashes series this summer, amongst plenty of other games and events!

Plans for our programme activity with thousands of young people are really progressing for this summer. Our regional table cricket finals take place across the country from 18-27 April, culminating in the amazing Finals day at Lord’s on Friday 9 June, and our inspiring Super 1s Celebration Evening with our friends at the Berkeley Foundation will be hosted at The Oval on Thursday 13 July. These are two incredible events where our work with young people is showcased and celebrated at two iconic cricketing venues! Following that we have a host of residentials and other activities taking place across Wicketz and Super 1s all over the country in what promises to be a busy, exciting summer of cricket.

All of the above is possible thanks to the incredible generosity and commitment of our staff and our members. Specifically, our regional committee members across the country play such a pivotal role in helping to raise awareness of our work and much needed funds to ensure we can deliver all of our incredible and impactful programmes. This past month we held our annual regions conference at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham. It was a packed couple of days attended by chairs and other committee members from nearly 20 different regions. Myself, our Chairman Tim Luckhurst and a host of other Trustees and staff enjoyed the company of many regional members over the two days.

At the conference we discussed a whole host of matters all centred around how we can work better together, use technology, communicate more regularly and effectively, as well as try many new ways of working to make the regional volunteers roles easier. We discussed some exciting upcoming things including our plans for greater youth engagement and how we bring all of our community cricket programmes much closer to the attention, focus and work of the committees at our events and activities across the country. I wish to say a huge thanks and well done to all of the regional committee members who gave up two days of their time, contributed really positively and gave the staff team and Trustees plenty of insight and some challenges. The feedback we’ve had from those who attended was very positive and gives us a great platform for the regional support team to work really well with our friends and colleagues across the country to raise more funds and more awareness of our work.

Lastly from me this month, as spring is upon us and our fundraising activities and events such as golf days, Taverners XI cricket matches and, of course, the much-anticipated trip to Corfu take place, I’d like to say that I’m thoroughly looking forward to spending lots of time with our members, their friends and guests in the coming months. Some of this is already underway and I wish to say a huge thank you to proud Taverner Peter Higgins who organised a fantastic golf day for us at Denham Golf Club, with a dinner and cricket match still to follow in May. So, a big thanks to Peter and everyone at Steeple Aston CC for partnering with us and raising a great sum of money to help us reach more young people and deliver our inspiring impactful community cricket programmes.

Kind regards,
Mark