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Guernsey to benefit from £1m new indoor facility
David Piesing
Guernsey cricket is to benefit from a purpose-built indoor cricket facility which is expected to be completed in the late summer of 2007. The facility is expected to cost in the region of £1 million and has been driven by former island cricketer, Jon Ravenscroft.
The new facility will be owned by a privately-owned company and will be run by Jason Shambrook, the island's local cricket development officer. It will form part of the Hougue du Pommier complex (owned by Guernsey Stadium Limited) which is already the home of indoor bowls and table tennis and which will be extended by developing the area adjacent to the existing building abd currently used as a car park.
The cricket centre will be open all day on a year-round basis and will satisfy the demands of local cricket, which is the island's fastest-growing youth sport. It can also be used for other sports such as netball and football when not in use for cricket.
Jason Shambrook said: "The training facilities will be second to none and will relieve the pressure on the island's other limited indoor net facilities. There is simply not enough sports hall time currently available to us to carry out the amount of coaching required. This will give us more than enough time and scope to coach." Shambrook is confident that the facility will take Guernsey cricket to another level.
David Piesing, Chairman of the Guernsey Cricket Board, said: "It's obviously a fantastic development for Guernsey cricket to have such a top-class, dedicated indoor centre available to enable us to progress the development of the local game and to build on the sold development platform already in place. Obviously it goes without saying that for suhc a facility to become available to us without us having to take any capital risk is a unique opportunity and we are extremely fortunate to have such a generous benefactor prepared to help Guernsey cricket in this way.
The PriceWaterhouse Coopers School of Excellence will relocate to the new centre and be revamped to incorporate a new PriceWaterhouse Coopers "national" academy which will lack nothing in terms of modern equipment.
The uniturf floor is the standard surface utilised in all indoor cricket centres in Australia, where indoor cricket is even more popular than the outdoor game. There will be space for six indoor nets allowing full run-ups and the main playing area will allow for four practice nets, each 5.5 metres wide, far wider than any other nets available locally or in most indoor facilities. While those four nets can easily be moved aside for indoor cricket, netball or football, the other two nets will be permanent fixtures unless the 120-seat facility is required ti service the main area. The permanent nets will each be 3.6m wide with remote-control bowling machines and cameras for video analysis in a separate video suite.
The Australian version of indoor cricket, which is played in a special caged net, will be introduced to Guernsey for the first time with winter leagues organised to capitalise on the scope for organising age group and business house leagues, exploiting the fact that around 6% of the entire population currently play cricket of some form. Every one of the island's 22 schools now participates in cricket thanks to the efforts of Shambrook and his cricket development team. With 45 adult mens' teams currently playing Evening League cricket each summer, including many business house teams, it is expected that the Australian version of the indoor game will be extremely popular.
© Guernsey Cricket Board
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