Cricket club set for return to action
East Kilbride Cricket Club captain Stewart Kampman hopes his side will soon take to the crease for the first time this season.
The Covid-19 crisis has wiped out any chance of a competitive cricket season – which normally runs from April to September – but with restrictions on outdoors sports lifting, the club returned to training last week.
Now, they hope to play friendly matches next month if the country moves into phase four of the Scottish Government’s routemap out of lockdown.
Kampman said: “It’s the Scottish Government who provide the guidelines for when we start back and we haven’t heard anything on that yet, but we have had confirmation we can play inter-club games, which is a good start.
“Training has started, it’s been positive and it’s been really good to be back.
“At the sports club we have had risk assessments done, we’ve got hand sanitiser, there’s posters up on social distancing and there’s limits on how many people and how many households we can have in at one time, so we are doing all we can.
“Clubs have come together to get as much cricket played as we can when we get the green light. There’s no dates yet, but in the next couple of weeks we hope to have potential games lined up.
“They won’t be competitive games. Hopefully it will be friendlies with a competitive feel about them.”
EK were set to feature in the Western District First Division after last season’s relegation from the Premier, but Kampman, who took on the honour of club captain for this season, knows it will now be 2021 before they can start plotting a return to the top flight.
The 33-year-old, from Ballerup Village, said: “For competitive cricket, leagues and cups, it will be next year now for that kind of stuff.
“I know some clubs are doing interclub competitions, with two squads set up to play across eight games to make it as competitive as they can, but for us it will be about getting back out there to enjoy cricket. The virus has kicked everyone in the teeth, but we are starting to feel positive again.”
On claiming the captaincy, the allrounder added: “I’ve been at the club for the last 15 years and I know the club inside out, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.”