2024 ANNUAL REPORT

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY CRICKET CLUB 2024 ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS 62 Our clubs had continued to be sup- ported financially, with £185,000 of investment provided over the past year through ECB County Grants and the Recreational Cricket Advisory Group helping to improve local club facilities and increase local playing opportunities. Over 80 new umpires had been trained in the past year, while 13 people attended scorer’s courses. Of the 93 people who attended coach- ing courses, 23 were provided with coaching bursaries. Women’s cricket remained a key focus for the game.We were inspiring more girls to pick up a bat and ball for the first time, and at an earlier age too. More girls’ teams than ever before were taking part in our county- wide leagues, with 15 new sides and five new sections forming in 2023. We were now seeing the fruits of this growth, with more girls than ever progressing into the County Age Group Pathway. There was much to celebrate in the women’s game too, with 26 new teams and six new sections forming over the past year. Nottinghamshire had also bucked the trend in seeing increased num- bers of women and girls taking up officiating.TheWomen & Girls’ Officer Amy Coyne had been inspirational, launching bespoke introductory courses and providing one-to-one mentoring to help break down long established stereotypes. This new programme introduced 31 girls and 46 women into officiating and had increased the number of women standing in open age league cricket from one to five.The year was topped off with the first ever County Age Group Festival to be run by an all-female officiating team, hosted at Collingham CC in August 2023.This event was held up as a significant milestone for the women’s game by the ECB. Elsewhere, our Chance to Shine schools programme allowed us to provide an introductory offer to children. In 2023 over 25,000 young people from 80 schools took part in the programme, and many went on to enjoy their first taste of competitive cricket through our schools festivals and competitions. Local clubs gave another 1600 five to eleven-year-olds the opportunity to experience cricket in summer 2023 through All Stars and Dynamos. A total of 11 bursaries given to clubs and community groups enabled another 600 young people from socio-economically deprived areas to access cricket, many for the first time.These bursaries had led to the creation of four new junior sections. Elsewhere, the Afro-Caribbean Engagement Programme (ACE, for short) had begun work to reverse the generational decline in black participation in cricket. Over 2,000 young people from a range of back- grounds – including over 700 girls – had engaged in cricket through the programme since its introduction last year. The programme also took centre- stage during Black History Month, with a bespoke series of Trent Bridge Classroom activities allowing local schoolchildren to learn of the long list of Nottinghamshire titans of Afro-Caribbean heritage – the likes of Sir Garfield Sobers and Franklyn Stephenson. All 16 Special Educational Needs Schools across the county were engaged with the Lord’s Taverners Table Cricket, Super 1s or Kwik Cricket sessions, providing over 1,000 disabled young people with a cricketing experience. Away from cricket, the Trent Bridge Community Trust had, as ever, continued its mission to improve the lives of individuals in our local communities and equip them with the tools to live healthy and pros- perous lives. The Trust’s health and wellbeing programmes, including Forget Me Notts, Notts In Mind and the Weight Management Project, had impacted hundreds of local people. A proud accomplishment had been securing the future of the Forget Me Notts dementia programme for another two years.The Donate4- Dementia campaign was launched in March 2023, with a Zipwire Challenge in July being its flagship event. Over 90 brave souls took on the 40-mile-per-hour thrill-ride above our iconic turf, and raised over £30,000 in the process. MsWright was tremendously thank- ful for the many generous donations received over the course of the year, and was delighted to reach a stun- ning 1,000 individual donations by late November 2023. Her heartfelt thanks went to everyone who so kindly donated to this worthwhile cause. The Trust had also continued to offer vital guidance and support to local schoolchildren, with nearly 500 young people engaged through our Positive Futures, Healthy Hearts or Virtual Schools Mentor- ing projects, which offered guidance on career pathways, promoted healthy lifestyle choices, provided vital face-to-face mentorship and assisted young individuals who had more complex educational needs. Our Holiday Activities and Food programme provided multi-sport school holiday activities and meals for over 4,000 young people, at a time when the cost-of-living crisis had left more and more families living in financial difficulty. Behind the scenes at Trent Bridge, staff and volunteers had worked tirelessly to steward and celebrate the long and rich heritage of Not- tinghamshire, welcoming a breadth of visitors to discover more about our historic home and fascinating story. Our heritage volunteers, meanwhile, had endeavoured to ensure that the Wynne-Thomas Library and its wealth of historic contents continued to stand the test of time. A small army of volunteers had taken on the mammoth task of repairing and conserving the library’s vast collection of books, while the library team had laboured away to create a comprehensive log of all historical materials found on display or behind the scenes at Trent Bridge.