This Is Guernsey

By Aaron Scoones

Jon Ravenscroft, second left, joins the Guernsey cricket development team of (from left to right) Hannah Mechem, Jason Shambrook and Jonny Orme at the Hougue du Pommier site of the new indoor centre. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0590935)

THE £1m. Indoor Cricket Guernsey centre is taking shape.

With the steel frame now in place by the Guernsey table tennis and indoor bowls stadium at La Hougue du Pommier, it looks set to be open in January.

‘It’s nice to get a feel for it,’ said the centre’s financial backer, Jon Ravenscroft. ‘I’d be happy for it to open in January 2009. I’m very confident it’s going to be a success.’

The island’s cricket development manager, Jason Shambrook, will be the centre’s chief executive. ‘There’s still quite a lot of work to be done from now until it starts,’ he said.

‘We’ve got only five or six months to do it and hopefully we’ll be there and it will be something that Guernsey sport, and not just cricket, will be proud of.’

Ravenscroft says the centre has been approached by a number of sports, including five-a-side football, futsal and netball. The last could hold Super League matches there.

‘If the cricket isn’t as popular as we imagine it will be, we will speak to other sports,’ said Ravenscroft.

But the centre’s emphasis will be cricket and, specifically, the indoor game.

Devised in Australia, the sport involves two eight-a-side teams playing on a rectangular, artificial-grass-surfaced court enclosed by a tightly tensioned net.

The ICG has the facilities to play two games at once.

The umpires are perched above the wicketkeeper looking down on the game using microphones and electronic scoreboards.

Guernsey sent a team to the World Cup in Bristol in September.

The plan is to set up men’s, women’s, mixed, junior and business leagues.

The centre will also be home to the highly successful PricewaterhouseCoopers School of Excellence for budding young cricketers in the island and will provide training facilities for all the Guernsey age-group sides and the island’s clubs.

‘I think it will be the best regional cricket centre in the country,’ said Ravenscroft.

He announced that they had secured the services of Helen Mahoney from Beau Sejour to be the centre’s operations manager.

Ravenscroft also said that they looking into constructing a two-storey gym at the side of the building.

The ICG will have a shop and two multi-purpose rooms.

For more information, see www.icg.gg.