Sudbrook Cricket Club

The Sudbrook Cricket Club is a historic cricket club in the town of Sudbrook in Wales.

It is believed that the club was formed during the 1860s and although the early days are not chronicled it is a known fact that cricket was played at Blackrock in the 1870s. It was at this ground that the legendary W G Grace played against Sudbrook for a Bristol team.

As the twentieth century approached the club moved into the heart of the village of Sudbrook establishing its headquarters at the camp until the construction of the paper mill in the late 1950s forced the club to look for a new ground. Several sites were considered before eventually moving to the bottom of the village on the sea front, but further development of the paper mill meant the club moving again and the playing fields at Caldicot became the only alternative. This was followed by a move to the school grounds in the late 1960s where it remained until after years of fund raising, under the chairmanship of P.R. Watkins, the club amassed the £40,000 needed to build the clubhouse and lay a square and in 1983 moved to Mill Lane.

Although the club gained league status in the mid 1970s it was always held back by the fact it never owned its own ground with an adequate playing arena. With that situation resolved the club began to climb the cricket ladder in South Wales with first elevation to the Gwent premier league and then founder members of the Welsh Counties Cricket Alliance involving 12 teams picked from Monmouthshire and Glamorgan.

With a now-thriving youth section the club again looked at development and in 1997, with the help of lottery funding, a double storey pavilion, clubhouse extension and the laying of a second square was completed. To complement these facilities the club then had a four bay netting area installed.

The following season the club won the Alliance League and as a result was invited to be one of the ten clubs in a premier league in South East Wales. Sudbrook began 2002 as the Club chosen by the Cricket Board of Wales, in recognition of its commitment to youth cricket, to launch the Fair Play Scheme (Chwarae Teg) for Welsh Cricket. On the field, the First XI swept all before them as they won the South Wales Premier League Title, Coors Cup, Lord's Sunday Cup and the Macey Shield competitions with nine of the players involved having graduated from the youth system. Not to be outdone, the Third XI also won their league while the 2nd XI were very close runners-up in theirs.

References

* [http://www.sudbrookcc.com Sudbrook cricket club]