Communities see an Avenue for success with cricket bringing a city together again
John Fuller visits Bradford Park Avenue CC and finds a now thriving club rising above the wreckage of years lost to the game
Awaking to the horror of the bomb attack at Manchester Arena, it was a numbing walk up Little Horton Lane to Bradford Park Avenue cricket ground with the promise of something positive to cling to.
The official opening of the Bradford Park Avenue nets and changing pavilion was significant as the evolution of a cricket facility that will hugely benefit a city crying out for places to play the game.
This is a cricket stadium that used to host Yorkshire County Cricket Club games; where Don Bradman clattered down the pavilion steps and yet where it lay dormant, unloved and abandoned for years.
Right from the get-go, the mood was an uplifting celebration of cricket in a city that eats, sleeps and breathes it. On a morning where the mercury had soared, games featuring local schools fanned out as far as the eye could see across Park Avenue’s immaculate outfield.
Children from Lidget Green Primary School jumped up and down and cheered on their team mates who had momentarily forgotten to run; frozen to the spot admiring their efforts after scooping the ball into a gap in the field.
Out in the middle, pockets of invited guests milled about on the square inspecting the wicket. Groundsman Nasa Hussain, aided by colleagues from Yorkshire County Cricket Club, has got it looking the part and the plan is the ground will be fit for first-class cricket by 2019.
Dan Musson, National Participation Manager – Facilities Development for the England and Wales Cricket Board – was on hand to discuss how progress is shaping up at this iconic ground with the Al-Jamia Suffa-Tul-Islam Grand Mosque as its impressive backdrop.
He’s been involved with the project right from the outset as Bradford Council’s Playing Pitch Strategy reported ‘unmet demand from the South Asian Communities, especially from casual and non-affiliated cricketers.’
The result has been a £5.5m commitment over five phases in a partnership between the ECB, Bradford Council, Sport England and Yorkshire County Cricket Club with a vision to transform Bradford Park Avenue into somewhere those from all over Yorkshire will flock to.
Musson outlined the thinking: “We identified that Bradford has probably the starkest shortfall in supply versus demand of cricket facilities in the country so that led us to strategise as to how to address that.”
He continued: “These are the first two phases complete and we’ve now got probably the best non-turf net facilities in the entire country. It’s certainly state-of-theart and we’re projecting we could have 2,000 players a week in the long term from dawn until dusk.”
In the cricket nets were Carlton Bolling College girls team – theirs is a remarkable success story as the fledgling team became Yorkshire Champions in next to no time – alongside clubs such as Omars and White Rose from the Bradford Mutual Sunday School Cricket League and Quaid-E-Azam Sunday Cricket League respectively.
The message was clear – though Brad- ford Park Avenue will be developed into a first-class venue capable of hosting Yorkshire County Cricket Club, the site’s primary purpose is to act as a hub for communities and teams, including those in and around Bradford, to play cricket and to fire their imagination and love of the game.
The access to Yorkshire’s England quartet of Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Adil Rashid and David Willey meant hundreds of fans of all ages got the chance to meet their heroes and bag those signatures and photos.
“Excuse me, pal...who’s that?” a club
cricketer asked me and on being told it was Mark Arthur, Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s Chief Executive, his friends went over and had a selfie. It was that kind of day; the passion for the game in all its forms, and with diversity of which Yorkshire cricket is proud very much taking centre stage.
Beyond the sprinkling of England stardust, Bradfordian stories were everywhere. Ricky, a magician who dazzles audiences on stage when not in cricket whites, performed card tricks in the nets though he couldn’t promise to levitate my batting average.
Visually impaired cricketers Atif and Arif had a bat and a bowl; international VI cricket is expected to feature in Park Avenue’s future and for those unfamiliar with its rules and nuances, it was worthwhile observing what it takes to deliver a size three football with carbon balls inside accurately at a batsman.
For England’s Adil Rashid, born in the city and whose cricketing journey began as throwdowns with his dad in a Bradford park before club cricket at Manningham Mills and onto representing Yorkshire and his country, Park Avenue can be where dreams are made. “Kids can come here and express themselves and enjoy their cricket,” he added. “They’ve got somewhere they can go, have fun and hopefully even play cricket as a profession in the future. They’ve got the facilities now, they’ve got the coaching...one day they could become professional cricketers.”
To interview Jonny Bairstow was to run the gauntlet of a tide of delirious children clamouring for the wicketkeeperbatsman’s scrawl on their shirts.
When we grabbed a moment, he was full of admiration for the facilities but added a dose of reality as to a timetable for returning here in Yorkshire colours, perhaps gleaned from cooling his heels on the fringes of England’s one-day side:
“You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future...we’re very fortunate to have Scarborough as our outground at the moment...there’s no reason why we can’t come back and play here but at the same time, it’s got to meet the standard as well.”
If Bairstow knows all about biding his time (a fevered breakout topic throughout the day on the eve of Headingley’s OneDay International) then it is still tempting to forecast what effect professional cricket in Bradford could have on participation among the youthful population where a quarter are under sixteen.
The speeches by the dignitaries including Kersten England (Chief Executive of the City of Bradford Metropolitan Borough Council) and Lord Patel of Bradford (ECB Board Member) embodied the sense that this has been a long time coming and it was truly Bradford’s day in the sun.
Of course, this is an ambitious regeneration project with many more funding and construction miles still to tread before we can return to laud the community pavilion with its restaurant, refreshed East Stand and floodlights.
On the delicate subject of rummaging down the back of the sofa for the money, the ECB’s Dan Musson had this to offer on what next for Bradford:“Everything within the game at the moment is probably linked towards what happens with the next broadcast deal.We’ll be looking at timing and funding of the next phases this summer and planning how we get to delivering the whole stadium.”
He added:“It’s a big job but it’s a job half done at present.When we start the process of investing in a project like this, we don’t tend to leave it half finished.”
Walking through Bradford afterwards reflected the heightened security after the Manchester attack with armed policemen present around the circumference of City Park while kids splashed in the water fountains.
The Peace Museum on Piece Hall Yard was closed – the handsome wooden door revealing opening hours spanning the second half of the week – and that chimed with a broader sense of our own fragility.
Yet, being at Bradford Park Avenue had provided a timely reminder of what can be achieved in sport against the odds, and of the vibrant community of Bradford with all of its cultural and ethnic diversity who were there to celebrate together.