Oundle Town Cricket is enjoying an important new development, with a new cricket wicket. After a lengthy process involving endless hard work and dedication from the Club committee, a generous sum was granted to them by the East Northants Council. The funding came as a result of an application to the Money4Youth scheme to which club member Mark Hodgson, 16, applied. The outcome of this generous donation is the recent installation of a full size artificial cricket wicket on the Oundle Middle School playing fields.

The new state-of-the-art wicket has opened up a range of opportunities for the Club, which was previously confined to playing only one match at a time. Now, along with the wickets available at their home ground on Milton Road, OTCC can play matches at their new location, allowing them to cope with the expansion of the rapidly growing club, which has one of the largest numbers of junior members in the area. These junior members will have priority over this new wicket which will become the main location for U11 and U13 weekday league fixtures in addition to the men’s team 3rd XI matches at weekends. The first match will be held at the start of May by the U11 team.

The new facilities were funded through a government incentives scheme, designed to encourage children to actively participate in sport. They will also prove an important addition to school sport at Oundle Middle School. The school is now able to host cup fixtures which previously had to be played at the Kingscliffe site.