To Southwark Park – not to queue for a Royal view, but for the London Cricket Trust Awards 2022.
The event was held four weeks later than intended; not deferred for the Royal mourning, but because 6 September, the original date for the event, was a rare “cats and dogs rainy day” in the 2022 London summer.
We now have 62 live cricket facilities in London parks, with 15 more on the schedule to be ready for the start of the 2023 season.
We had a planning meeting in the Southwark Park Pavilion before the public event.
Ed Griffiths and his team had produced a glorious carrot cake for the awards event, emblazoned with 62 flags to represent the 62 sites already implemented.
I spotted Arfan’s concerned look and realise that the cake was oriented 45 degrees askew from the direction in which the symbolic Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey flags were pointing.
I reoriented the cake, much to everyone’s relief.
We also discussed our plans for expanding the London Cricket Trust universe over the next couple of years, including a fairly major incursion into Crawley, Sussex (at Sussex and the ECB’s request I hasten to add).
Crawley is the 33rd London Borough – remember where you heard it first.
Then to the awards evening and some exhibition cricket on the Southwark Park pitch – a six-a-side match between Southwark Park Cricket Club and Southwark Park Cricket Club – the clever money was on Southwark Park to win.
Then Ed Griffiths initiated the awards ceremony, in some ways apologising for the lack of “Grosvenor Hotel / Dorchester Hotel” glitz and glamour, while at the same time celebrating our more down to earth style and purpose.
I am delighted to report that the emblematic carrot cake was properly oriented in the refreshments tent by this stage of the evening.
Then the awards.
Chris Whitaker, the Kent Trustee, presented an activation award to Richard O’Sullivan of Teach Cricket, in particular for his work with Bexley Grammar School.
Then Sophie Kent (our Surrey Trustee…just to avoid confusion) presented a Local Authority activation award to the Royal Borough of Kingston-Upon Thames for activating five sites in 2022:
Then Jawar Ali, our Essex Trustee, presented a site award to Grassroots Trust for their work at Seven Kings Park – a site that has gone from strength to strength since we had our first launch there, exactly four years ago:
Finally, it was down to me to award the Local Authority of the Year Award to Enfield, for the superb cluster of four sites implemented in the spring of 2022 in the Edmonton (south-eastern) corner of Enfield – Pymmes Park, Jubilee Park, Ponders End Park and Church Street Rec – neighbourhoods with many people but (until now) almost no public cricket facilities:
Given the 14th century origins of Pymmes Park, I did consider bursting into 14th century song, but at the vital moment I felt a wave of pre-minstrel tension, thus sparing the ears of the audience.
The evening was a great opportunity to meet up with those we see regularly as part of our cricket charity work along with some of the (usually) unsung heroes whose hard work actually makes the stuff we plan happen.
62 sites is great news, but we aim at least to double that figure, which will mean lots more work, as well as more enjoyable events like this one, over the next few years.