Madam – Recent reports in the Advertiser showed the state of the cricket fields.
I thought that the reports would have a positive reaction from the municipality, particularly the department of parks and gardens. We had a meeting with Portia and Nokhutula who gave us their commitment to ensure that our needs were met.
Fixtures were sent to the department, yet both cricket fields were not prepared. On Saturday morning we had to hire grass cutters and players prepared the pitches themselves.
We never had this problem when Piet Crous was in the department. Pitches were always prepared, grass was always cut and boundaries were always marked. For a number of years all we had were promises but not many were kept. We were also given the assurance that goal posts will be removed and kept at the municipal depot during the cricket season. Yet on Sunday, there was a soccer match played at the Paradise Grounds with goal posts in place.
Why does soccer get precedence? At a meeting in November 2014, we were asked to return the Paradise Grounds to the department of parks and gardens at the end of January 2015. We were told they had budgeted to dig up the entire field and redo it.
Pictures were shown to us and we were impressed. We agreed to hand over on condition they have the Sutherland Street grounds ready for cricket. We handed over the grounds as promised and to date nothing was done to prepare the Sutherland Street grounds for cricket and worse still, not much was done at Paradise ground as promised.
We currently have eight teams in the Saturday league and we have only two fields. We approached Newcastle High School who kindly allowed us to use their field at a cost of R300 per game. It’s a matting wicket where spikes cannot be used.
We met with the mayor, the head of parks and gardens and even Cricket South Africa, but it seems like cricket is dying a slow death. A room at the Sutherland Street grounds was given to us for our personal use. But the place was vandalised, our furniture (chairs, tables, a microwave oven, etc) were stolen.
We reported this and as far as we know the insurance company paid the municipality a few years ago, but to date we have not received the money. Covers for the cricket pitches which are worth about R50 000 each were strangely stolen and nobody in the municipality knows what happened to the covers.
We have reached the end of our tether, and we, honestly don’t know what to do anymore.
Steve Francis
President Newcastle and Districts Cricket Union
Response from the Editor:
The above letter was sent to the relevant departments at the Newcastle Municipality for comment. To date, no response has been forthcoming.
