Bishopthorpe Cricket Club, a club dating over 140 years, have been on quite the journey in the past few years.
From the risk of folding to promotion of their seniors in the local league (Yorkshire Premier League North), acquiring the ECB Clubmark accreditation in 2025 to winning the ‘Connecting Communities’ Yorkshire Cricket award. They certainly have been busy!
As the summer comes to an end, our Club and Community Development Manager Tom Bates spoke to Matt Coulson who covers a wide range of volunteer roles within the club.
Matt talks about the club's debut year running an ECB National Programme, All Stars Cricket now in its 9th year and how it has impacted the club on and off the pitch.
How did your debut year of National Programmes go at Bishopthorpe Cricket Club?
I think, in all honesty, it smashed all expectations. We were thinking we'd be quite successful if we got 10 or 12 All Stars signed up through the programme, and we ended up with 32! So, it was well received.
People in the village were so excited for it to start. The kids absolutely loved it - as you can see from the photos that I've provided. And it just was a really, really good atmosphere as well. It really produced a little bit of community spirit into the club.
How do you think people heard about the All Stars programme at Bishopthorpe?
We're lucky in some degree that my little boy's five, so it was playground chatter mainly. And we ran a lot of social media in the lead up to the new season because we were aware that we were competing with the likes of Copmanthorpe, Bolton Percy, Acomb, and all the other clubs around us.
We really wanted to get our name and our plans to do that out as early as possible. We produced just a simple Google Docs page with a link in. If you're interested, drop your information in. And then nearer the time, I sent the emails around.
On that Google document, which I think is a great idea, how did you promote that out and who to at Bishopthorpe?
I contacted the local infant school, and they were happy to run that with a QR link to the Google Doc.
We put posters up around the area, around the schools, around the local scouts group. We put paid ads as well on social media on Facebook. So, we took a run up at it and it generated a lot of interest.
We also use LinkedIn, which is rare for a cricket club. And we've had a lot of positive feedback about our LinkedIn account. Which, you know, we weren't sure how that would go. But we set up TikTok and everything!
We've really tried to embrace social media to promote to the younger generation as well.
So how did you hear about All Stars cricket and why did you choose to go down this route?
To be honest, when the club had its EGM, as we spoke about earlier last year, it was something that we'd said we wanted to build into our future.
It was an easy setup and to have and be able to provide things for the local community, not just, “come and watch a group of old men run about and make a fool of themselves.” We wanted to build a community around the cricket club.
And last season, Ovington got in touch with me and asked if they could use our outfield while the races were on. And I agreed, and it generated a little bit of interest as well because a lot of people commented on how nice it is to see youngsters playing on the outfield.
It’s really good for the village and obviously, through the regeneration of the club, I've worked closely with yourself and others who have been promoting All Stars. We just thought, you know what? We've got to start somewhere. Let's start from there. So, we agreed to set it up.
What was the process like of setting the programme up for you as a club administrator?
It was really quite simple. There's nothing hidden around the fact, if you're compliant with the safe hands, it is quite simple to set up. What I will say is that it's really important to pin those volunteers down as soon as possible and get the DBS checks in well before you start and then save yourself a little bit of headache.
Even the links to the online shops and everything else are really good, it's simple to use. And the free kit, I mean the only thing with us at Bishopthorpe was that we got two massive boxes of free kit, and we didn’t have anywhere to store it, so it had to live in my garage for a while! There's plenty of equipment in there to run the activities. The only thing that I think I had to buy more of was the ropes. Just purely because of the number of kids that we had!
I think when I was planning it, in my mind, I expected to have 10-15 kids, which would have been good, but to get more than double that, you know, it meant that we had to use the resources available to us a lot more to stretch a little bit further, splitting them into three groups, and also sometimes having to split the warm-up into two groups because it was just too big.
Would you do anything differently or additionally in 2026 with the programme?
Yes. We ended up with 32 boys and zero girls. I did give two girls a couple of taster sessions. They really enjoyed it and I’ve been in touch with the Village Rainbow Troop section.
We've run a couple of taster sessions there, and the plan is to run a taster session after Christmas in the New Year just to try and get a few more girls involved in the club. Because I know other clubs have had girls in that involved and they're really keen.
The only thing that I think that we missed really was having a more diverse group.
What's next for the club? All Stars again next year?
We're definitely doing All Stars again next year and I'm saying, definitely maybe doing Dynamos. And at the village community day, we've got a stall paired with the parish council. We are also looking at getting interest to see if there's any female interest in playing softball cricket, having a few training sessions next year or a semi-regular training regimen next year because it's something that we've talked about as a club.
It’s something that people have asked about in the village. You know, three or four ladies in the village have asked about, hence my message to you yesterday when I was doing the posters.
So that is hopefully going to be our next step. However, we need to find a coach for that. We need a volunteer to come forward and say, you know what, I'm going to own this a little bit because there is a limit to what the volunteers that we've got so far can do and we'd really, really like somebody associated with the club but without a committee role to put their hand up and say, do you know what? I’ll give it a go.
Inspired to give All Stars Cricket a go? Please contact t.bates@yorkshirecb.com to see how All Stars can help your club like it’s helped Bishopthorpe CC!
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