Carmel & District Cricket Club
Encyclopedia
| Founded | 1965 |
|---|---|
| Website | www.carmelcc.co.uk |
| Address | Pen-y-Gelli Cricket Ground |
| Club captain | Danny Owens |
| Club established for | Cricket Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the... |
Carmel & District Cricket Club is a team based in Flintshire North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
who play competitive cricket in the North Wales Cricket League. They are also the only Welsh village team to defeat an international cricket team and have staged several matches between national teams at their Pen-y-Gelli ground.
Carmel was founded after a public meeting held at Carmel
Carmel, Flintshire
Carmel is a small village in Flintshire, Wales, just outside Holywell. Carmel has a primary school , a post office and a church and chapel. Carmel & District Cricket Club played their matches in the village until the 1990s when they moved to a new ground a short distance away....
Village Hall in September 1965, which was attended by local people interested in the formation of a cricket club. The main people behind the meeting were Norman Cross-Parry, Meirion Griffith and Bill Parker.
The club initially played their matches at the Golch ground, opposite the Halfway House pub on the old A55 road, now the A5026, in the village of Carmel
Carmel, Flintshire
Carmel is a small village in Flintshire, Wales, just outside Holywell. Carmel has a primary school , a post office and a church and chapel. Carmel & District Cricket Club played their matches in the village until the 1990s when they moved to a new ground a short distance away....
between Lloc and Holywell
Holywell
Holywell is the fifth largest town in Flintshire, North Wales, lying to the west of the estuary of the River Dee.-History:The market town of Holywell takes its name from the St Winefride's Well, a holy well surrounded by a chapel...
. With the Golch site up for sale the club successfully applied to the Sports Council and Delyn Borough Council for grant-aid to re-establish the club on another ground.
The one chosen for the new ground was a large 7.23 acres (29,258.8 m²) site with good quality soil for a cricket square located some two miles (3 km) away from the existing ground. Carmel proudly began their first season at their new Pen-y-Gelli ground in 1991 and Conwy CC provided the opponents in the inaugural match. Backed by ambitious club secretary Stan Taylor Carmel continued to develop their facilities at the ground and in July 1998 former England cricket international Tom Cartwright
Tom Cartwright
Thomas William Cartwright MBE was an English cricketer. He played in five Tests for England in 1964 and 1965. His withdrawal from the 1968-69 tour to South Africa, and replacement in the touring team by Basil D'Oliveira, precipitated the sporting isolation of South Africa until apartheid was...
and Mrs Dorothy Taylor opened the new pavilion.
Carmel have also made recent forays into international cricket which began with the 'Iron Curtain Cricket Tour' in 2007 under the captaincy of Timothy Abraham who had been inspired by the Harry Thompson
Harry Thompson
Harry William Thompson was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer....
book Penguins Stopped Play
Penguins Stopped Play
Penguins Stopped Play is a semi-autobiographical book by Harry Thompson that details his adventures with the "Captain Scott XI" amateur cricket side as they attempt to play cricket on every continent on the planet except Antarctica Penguins Stopped Play is a semi-autobiographical book by Harry...
. The touring side played Estonia
Estonia national cricket team
The Estonian Cricket Team is a fairly young team which represents the nation of Estonia in International Cricket competitions. . Granted Affiliate Status in June 2008. Estonian cricket relies upon the support of touring sides from Britain and other European nations to get matches to play...
in Tallinn and Latvia
Latvia national cricket team
The Latvia Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Latvia in International Cricket competitions. They are not officially endorsed by the International Cricket Council and are therefore not entitled to participate in ICC Official events, however they do have an application to...
in Riga. Carmel defeated Estonia in the final of the Helsinki Sixes tournament in Finland but lost twice in longer matches against the team.
But it was a match against Russia
Russia national cricket team
The Russian Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Russia in International Cricket competitions. They are not officially endorsed by the International Cricket Council and are therefore not entitled to participate in ICC Official events, however they do have an application...
in the Russian National Basbeball Stadium in Moscow which was the highlight of the tour where they became the first touring side to ever visit the city.
In June 2008 the Carmel Touring XI again went overseas for the 'Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
Tour' where they defeated Romania
Romania national cricket team
The Romanian Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Romania in International Cricket competitions. Cricket was played in Romania between 1893 and 1930, after which it declined and the sport in Romania died out. In recent years the game has begun to grow again, particularly...
in Bucharest and the Bulgaria
Bulgaria national cricket team
The Bulgarian Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Bulgaria in International Cricket competitions.The game is well supported by ex-pats from the United Kingdom, and is becoming more popular with the locals...
in Sofia. Carmel also represented 'Wales' in the Vienna World Cup Sixes competition where they were beaten in the semi-finals by an Austrian-Pakistan team.
July 2008 saw Carmel stage their biggest project yet with the establishing of an eight-team European Twenty20 Championship
European Twenty20 Championship
The European Twenty20 Championship is a cricket tournament played for the first time in July 2007 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was be the first international Twenty20 tournament ahead of the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship later in the same year....
tournament which featured Estonia and Russia following the club's trip to the two countries the previous summer. Also involved were the national teams of Slovakia
Slovakia national cricket team
The Slovak Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Slovakia in International Cricket competitions. They are not officially endorsed by the International Cricket Council and are therefore not entitled to participate in ICC Official events, however they do have an application...
, Croatia, Czech Republic and a Poland as well as a Cricket Board of Wales representative side.
The tournament, which was supported by the International Cricket Council
International Cricket Council
The International Cricket Council is the international governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989.The...
, was won by Estonia who beat Czech Republic in a dramatic last-over victory. Carmel staged the European Twenty20 tournament again in July 2009 and the national cricket teams of Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia as well as the Island of Alderney were among those to take part.
The tournament was won by a team which represented the Flanders region after they defeated hosts Carmel in a lowscoring final. Croatia won the 'plate' competition after they defeated English club side New Victoria who had replaced Estonia after they pulled out of the event. In the week preceding the EuroTwenty20 Carmel faced prestigious touring side Crusaders Australia
Crusaders Australia
Crusaders Australia is a wandering cricket team founded by Robert 'Swan' Richards, David Richards and Ray Steele in 1977 who undertake annual tours around to help facilitate the development of promising Australian cricketers....
led by Swan Richards.
Carmel's Touring XI undertook their most ambitious tour in May and June 2009 where they played in six countries in 11 days. After victory at the Lille Twenty20 tournament in France the team recorded victories over Slovakia
Slovakia national cricket team
The Slovak Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Slovakia in International Cricket competitions. They are not officially endorsed by the International Cricket Council and are therefore not entitled to participate in ICC Official events, however they do have an application...
in Hajske
Hájske
Hájske is a village and municipality in Šaľa District, in the Nitra Region of southwest Slovakia.-Geography:The village lies at an altitude of 130 metres and covers an area of 14.066 km². It has a population of about 1365 people.-Facilities:...
and over the Hungary
Hungary national cricket team
The Hungary Cricket Team is a fledgling team which represents the nation of Hungary in International Cricket competitions. They are not officially endorsed by the International Cricket Council and are therefore not entitled to participate in ICC Official events, however they do have an application...
in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
.
One of the biggest honours to date for the club's touring side came later in the trip when they played the first ever international cricket match in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
where they ran out winners in a 40-over contest against a Belgrade Cricket Association XI. Carmel subsequently played the first international match in Macedonia when they took on a Macedonian XI in Skopje
Skopje
Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...
. The first of two Twenty20 clashes between the two sides was broadcast live in its entirety on national television station Sky Net
Sky Net
Sky Net is a Direct to Home and Multiplay Service system provided nationwide in Myanmar by Shwe Than Lwin Media Co.,Ltd. It was launched in November 2010. It and MRTV-4 offer 3 channels, CCTV-News, CCTV-4 and CCTV-9, of CCTV to viewers in Myanmar since October 2011...
.
On the October 8th, 2009 the club lost one of its greatest servants when Peter Ferguson died after a battle with cancer. Ferguson made 1,169 appearances and scored 12,000 runs and took 1,443 wickets.
In January 2010 the club staged an international 'Snow cricket' match at the club's Pen-y-Gelli between the club's English and Welsh players. The match ended in a tie. The club are also the first team in the North Wales Cricket League to embrace both the use of social networking sites Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
Carmel's First XI captain for 2010 is Danny Oliver and the Second XI skipper is Barry McGauty.