HOWZAT! How Bath Cricket Club is building itself a

Want to watch better quality cricket than at Bath? Then you’ll have to go and see a County side

Bath Cricket Club is unique, probably the second richest in the country after Wimbledon, and with a responsibility to grow all aspects of the game. And they know exactly how they’ll generate the income to keep doing so, too… I DON’T LIKE CRICKET (OH NO), I LOVE IT

hat does Bath Cricket Club mean to you? Perhaps not very much, just another slice of pretty Englishness that the city does so well, with a picture book location right next to the river and the Rec. Figures in white against a sea of green, something to look at while you wander about the summertime city.

But if you’ve ever played the game for a local school, you’ll know this place; they all use it, and particularly the indoor facilities here. If you’re a female cricketer in the South West too; the women’s game, in large part, wouldn’t exist in the region without Bath Cricket Club. And even if you play for one of Bath’s rivals – bitter or less so, with (just for instance) Lansdown Cricket Club having its own rich history – you’ll likely have fond memories; for teams in the West of England Premier League, the highest level you can go in recreational club cricket, visiting Bath is like playing at Anfield or Old Trafford, your Cup Final.

One other group knows this place well too, of course: commuters into Bath from the south of the river, who take advantage of the car park here – each space costing about the same as Charlotte Street – when it’s available, first come, first served, during the week. And although they may never watch or play the game, these guys are intrinsically involved with the success of Bath Cricket Club too. After all, they pay for the highly successful first team (runners up last year, winners the year before), and all the other activities here.

Not that anyone’s taking advantage of the car park right now: it’s shut, a building site, hard hats required, and you now need to enter North Parade Ground by foot through the little gate over by the bridge. So what’s going on? “Basically, we need to future-proof the place,” says Matt Hankins, local businessman and Bath Cricket Club chairman these past four years. “Our car park turns over in excess of £600,000 a year and delivers a profit of around £450,000, so we’re really wealthy for a cricket club – most others live a hand-to-mouth existence, self-financing through membership takings, but we can afford full time employees, a general manager, a finance director, a director of cricket, a senior cricket coach, a head of junior cricket, a community cricket coach… The work we’re doing with the car park is to make sure we can keep on financing all that.” W

Matt Hankins: chairman of Bath Cricket Club, and though never a player here, his two sons (now pros) both were

“Facilities are the most influential factor in keeping people engaged with sport”

Originally, the idea had been to double the size of the car park, adding another layer above the existing one, but the planners – unconvinced a low multi-storey was the most beautiful direction to take for such a picturesque spot – preferred buildings. Regular houses were out – flood plain and all that – which is how they arrived at the current solution: retaining the car park, all 136 existing spaces minus nine or ten, with student accommodation for (oddly enough) 136 on stilts above this. It seemed the right fit: the students would be away for much of the cricket season, the car park would be a more pleasant place (with a roof for one thing, so less chance of a stray cricket ball taking out your windscreen), and they’d immediately get £2m extra into the club, allowing them to improve things all ways around, with yet better facilities (world class, in fact) and an even wider community outreach programme.

“Time and time again, studies show that good facilities are the most influential factor in keeping people engaged with sport,” says new general manager Andy Owen, who used to play for the first team here and who Matt

recently brought in to help the club up its game. “And this is especially true with young people. That doesn’t just mean the grounds, but the showers, the changing rooms, the entertainment spaces. We’re unique as a cricket club in terms of how many community initiatives we run, and the only reason we can deliver cricket for people with learning disabilities, say, is if we have sufficient revenue streams. The student accommodation will boost our income, and will give us something else in case – for instance – environmental issues mean the car park has to come to an end. It’s the same with our clubhouse: at the moment it can comfortably seat around 90 for events, but it would be better if we could double that – so we’re looking to do so.”

They’ve got it all going on, basically, and the next 18 months or so are going to be a period of rapid change for the club.

“People sometimes accuse us of being greedy, but that’s not it at all,” Andy says. “We don’t pay our players, unlike most comparable cricket clubs, and we’re a registered charity, so none of us profit from the club. Take away all this income, and we would happily continue to exist – but we wouldn’t be able to give back to the community, and we wouldn’t be able to grow the game.”

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, there’s little problem getting children to play team sports, it seems, but engagement falls off badly from about age fifteen – “there’s too much else competing for their time,” Matt says – and this is as true for football or rugby or netball as it is for cricket. It means, as an inevitable knock-on, that adult leagues nationwide are much weaker than they used to be too. “Bath used to run five or six Saturday football leagues and two or three on Sundays, and the playing fields at Lansdown would be packed every weekend,” Matt says. “Today, there’s not a senior league left, and you’ll only ever see kids playing football at Lansdown.”

To some extent Bath Cricket is bucking this trend, not least because it’s trying so hard to make the game more attractive: developing at all levels, and introducing new, shorter formats like T10, T15, T20. The club currently has a second ground up on the top of Lansdown, opposite Kingswood School’s playing field – it’s where the women’s first team plays many of its matches – and they’re looking to establish a third up by the football pitches, purpose-built for the kids’ game, too.

Perhaps the biggest improvement the student accommodation money will bring, though, is to the indoor training facility. Already the best locally, good enough to occasionally tempt the likes of the West Indies or Pakistan to train here, it will now be a state-of-the-art facility for the whole community, plus a new gym. “The University of Bath first team already uses the facility we have,” Matt says, “because it’s better than theirs, but the new one will rival those at Loughborough University, Millfield School, Lords – and everyone in Bath and around will have access to it.”

Bath Cricket is already in rude heath, with highly competitive games being played here every week during the season – because rivals always being their very best teams, it’s reliably the best quality cricket you’ll find locally – and a reputation for developing young players that’s pretty much unmatched, but the ambition is to be

58 I BATH LIFE I www.mediaclash.co.uk Bath is an important centre of the women’s game

“We need to work hard to build a more vibrant cricket scene across the entire area”

as well regarded for their off-the-field endeavours as for those on it.

“That’s to do with our community coaching, with going into schools, with developing women’s cricket, which would probably disappear without our sponsorship and support – basically, it’s about sustaining the entire game in Bath,” Matt says. “And if we manage to create a better business, everyone benefits. There’s no point just helping ourselves, getting bigger and richer as a club, if we can’t help expand cricket in a wider context too – because in the end we’d just end up playing ourselves, other clubs having fallen by the wayside. Instead, we need to work hard to build a more vibrant cricket scene across the entire area – and we have the responsibility to do that, because we’ve got an advantage that should be shared.” n For more, www.bathcricket.com

Foreign Languages Centre

Enrolling now!

Daytime, lunchtime and evening foreign language classes for members of the public.

Arabic French German Italian Japanese Mandarin Chinese Portuguese Spanish

We off er a wide range of foreign languages at beginner through to advanced level. To fi nd out more about the courses available, or to enrol, visit our website www.bath.ac.uk/fl c and apply online or call 01225 383991.

• Domestic and commercial roofi ng specialists • Covering Bath, Bristol and the South West • Trading since 1985

Tel: 01225 421499 Email: mail@youngsroofi ng.co.uk www.youngsroofi ngbath.co.uk Braysdown Lodge, Woodborough, Peasedown St John, Bath BA2 8LN

Consciously Life. Consciously Style. Consciously You!

A sustainable gifting and lifestyle boutique Organic Collections • Vegan Collections • Fair Trade

1 Kennington Rd (adjoining Chelsea Rd), Bath BA1 3EA @consciouslyyoubath consciously you Bath

EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

How DOWNSIDE SCHOOL is leading the way in empowering young people to become global citizens…

Learning how to live together sustainably is the most important issue facing the world’s population. It has never been more imperative that we learn to work together across the globe to meet the needs of the world today without compromising our beautiful planet and its resources for future generations. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a growing international programme enabling people of all ages and cultures to gain the right knowledge, skills and behaviours to help contribute to a more sustainable future.

UNESCO describes ESD as ‘empowering [young] people to be ‘global citizens’’, enabling them to ‘become proactive contributors to creating a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world.’ At Downside School, near Bath, we feel that ESD is particularly vital for younger generations and so, we’re heading up a collaborations project with ScienceScope, the school’s education technology business partner, to promote ESD at Downside and schools across Asia, Europe and Oceania. The project, which aims to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) and ‘big data’ into classroom, will lead best practice at Downside, bringing sustainable development matters into teaching and learning and empowering young people to be creative in dealing with real world issues and using big data to make better informed decisions. Elements of the project will cover climate change and sustainable consumption.

As part of their ESD programme, Downside represented the UK at the Asia-Europe Foundation Conference (ASEF) in November 2019. Held in Tokyo, 1,700 schools from across Asia, Europe and Oceania applied for a chance to present at the policy-making event, which focussed on ESD, as well as the use of Artifi cial Intelligence (AI), in the classroom.

The Conference involved round-table discussions with representatives from 51 countries including the Japanese government, non-governmental organisations,

charities, educators, businesses and experts in the fi eld of education. Delegates discussed how they and their organisations are currently implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) which were set down by the UN in 2015 – goals which include ‘No Poverty’, ‘Zero Hunger’, ‘Affordable and Clean Energy’, ‘Sustainable Cities’ and ‘Communities and Climate Action’.

Top: Downside, set in 500 acres of beautiful countryside, has a number of sustainability projects in place including temperature sensors around the school to monitor energy usage for heating.

Above: Downside deputy head Mike Randall and Alex Wright from ScienceScope present at the Tokyo Conference.

Above right: The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

During the Conference, Downside deputy head Mike Randall and Alex Wright from ScienceScope presented the collaborations project to delegates. One part of the project involves the use of weather stations across the globe, connected to the internet, which gather and share real-time big data to assess climate change. The use of such live data in the classroom, rather than a static text book, creates engaging, interactive and currently relevant learning experiences for pupils and teachers alike. The fi ndings of the collaborations project ed by Downside will be shared with governing bodies, councils and governments, helping to affect permanent policy change and shape a more sustainable future. ■

To  nd out more about Downside, you can attend their next Open Mornings on Saturday 7th March or Saturday 16th May, or arrange a private visit at a time to suit you. 01761 235103; admission@downside.co.uk; www.downside.co.uk. To  nd out more about ScienceScope, please visit www.sciencescope.uk

The George & Dragon …†‡ˆ †‰Š

223 London Road East, Batheaston, Bath BA1 7NB 01225 858007 | thegeorgedragon.com

FOOD & DRINK

SNAPSHOTS OF BATH’S FOOD SCENE

STAR OF KITCHEN AND STAGE Bath has yet another TV appearance on the cards. The brand-new comedy tour cookery show on Dave, Big Zuu’s Big Eats, is making a stop in our city. In the show, the grime artist will switch out music for cookery, taking his skills on the road to serve up dinner to comedians all around the country. Big Zuu and his boys, Tubsey and Hyder, will meet each comedian ahead of their show and cook them a made-to-order pre-show appetiser, followed by a three-course meal when they step off stage. The show is heading to Bath for an ep with Lou Sanders; it all starts on Dave this May. For more: www.dave.uktv.co.uk

Amber at the Great Sausage Roll Off

ROLLING ON UP Amber Southon, head chef at the Quarryman’s Arms near Bath, has emerged victorious at this year’s Great Sausage Roll Off .

There’s an art to the sausage roll, it seems, and top chefs from around the country have been coming together for the past eight years to celebrate it – and to fi nd out which of them is top sausage roller (yes, that is the technical term) at this industry event at Fuller’s Red Lion in Barnes. Amber’s a real pastry enthusiast who spends her free time researching Victorian recipes, drawing inspiration from pastries of the past to perfect her modern-day recipes. Her winning roll included Gloucester Old Spot pork with a plum, apple and pear chutney, made with fruits harvested from her mum’s garden. For more: www.fullers.co.uk

FRUITS OF THE FOREST

Living off the land

Or fruits of Freshford, more like. Over the next couple months, Wild Food UK will be hosting a series of foraging courses in and around the pretty village near Bath. Each course will begin with a short introductory talk at The Inn at Freshford followed by two and a half hours-ish ramble around the River Frome, where you’ll learn how to identify the edible – and not so edible – plants, fl owers, fruits and mushrooms you fi nd. Then, at the end of the walk, you’ll head back to the Inn for a wild food lunch, made from your forage.

Courses run 24 April and 11 and 14 May. For more: www.wildfooduk.com