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History
The History of Mulbarton Cricket Club
Mulbarton Village Cricket Club, as it is known today, started life playing at Dunston Hall. When this was sold for conversion to a Hotel, the cricket pitch was lost to make way for a golf course.
A lot of the players who were playing at the time lived in Mulbarton, some three miles away, and it was suggested that the club was moved back to Mulbarton, to play on The Common, where cricket was played between the two world wars. The Parish Council were approached about the proposed move, and duly accepted the proposal. Instrumental in this move was the then skipper (later to be Club President) George Henderson and Brian Tungate.
The club played its cricket on the common for the next three seasons. Not an ideal situation, as the venue was shared with Mulbarton Football Club, and the square was actually cut in the middle of the football pitch, which from time to time made for some very interesting wickets.
Although the setting for playing village cricket was ideal, sharing a playing area with a football club, and the constant incursion of the local rabbit population made the upkeep of the square a nightmare for the long suffering groundsman Neil Warner.
Fortunately these problems were not too long lived, as the Parish Council had purchased a piece of land adjacent to the Village Hall to be used as a recreation facility. Club Chairman & Parish Councillor Tom Carter pushed the Club’s cause, and a cricket square was laid down on the new facility, later to be known as Orchard Park.
Following much hard work, and many laborious hours of stone picking the move from Mulbarton common to Orchard Park was finally achieved when Mulbarton Village Cricket Club played East Harling in the inaugural match in June 1997.
Mulbarton Village Cricket Club has always been a socially community based Club, playing in the main friendly Sunday matches, although for two years the Club participated in the South Norfolk Burgess Shield. Lack of player availability for Saturday games made things difficult, and league cricket was dropped at least short term from the Club’s agenda. Cricket in Mulbarton has however never been in a healthier state.
Following the formation of Mulbarton Youth Cricket Club in 1999 by Joe Harris the youth Cricket Club has gone from strength to strength in its short history, culminating with a formal joining with the adult club at the end of the year 2000.
Mulbarton Youth Cricket Club
Started with just a handful of children in 1999, Mulbarton Youth Cricket Club (as it was then known), has grown to a large youth organisation that, last year, fielded five teams at age groups from U11 to U17.
In the early spring of 2005 the two clubs of Mulbarton Youth C.C. and Mulbarton Village C.C. amalgamated and are now known simply as Mulbarton Cricket Club. This merger benefited our administration and help us to deliver an improved youth development programme.
We are very much a community based club with most of our members coming from within Mulbarton and surrounding villages, and take great pride in catering for all abilities, girls as well as boys, from age 7 up to senior level.