Historic Black Country cricket club to undergo £17k revamp

Walsall Cricket Club has been awarded £12,700 from the SITA landfill trust towards improving its changing rooms.

The club is around 200 years old and has been based at its current home in Gorway Road, Walsall, near to the town's university campus, for more than a century. Prior to that, it was based in the Chuckery area of Walsall.

The land in Gorway Road was bought during 1907 and although a lot of work took place there, it was available for play at the beginning of the 1909 season.

The club has raised £5,000 towards the cost of the improvement project on top of the £12,700 which will see a new umpire's room, separate shower areas and changing rooms spruced up.

President Sam McFarlane said: "We are one of the oldest cricket clubs in the country. We are quite a significant cricket club in the area.

"We are hoping we are going to start the work in the next few weeks and we will be up and running before our first match of the season in April.

"We want to bring a better standard of cricket to the ground. We looked around to see if we could find any funds and we raised some money ourselves.

"We decided we would approach SITA to see if they could help us."

The club has three Saturday teams and two Sunday teams which compete in leagues in Birmingham and Staffordshire. There are also five junior side which range from under 10s to under 18s.

It is hoped the improved facilities will attract others to play and meet the demands of cricket at a higher level. It is more than 30 years since work has been done on the changing areas.

The club has been represented by a string of players who have gone on to make a name for themselves in the game including Graeme Archer of Nottinghamshire and Scott Boswell from Northamptonshire.