So You Want to Start a Cricket Club
Maybe the nearest club is full, or a school side has nowhere to graduate to, or a group of friends simply wants a proper team rather than a pub side. Whatever the spark, founding a cricket club in England is one of the most rewarding things a volunteer can do - and it comes with a genuine to-do list. None of it is hard, but it does need doing in roughly the right order, and one part of it - safeguarding - is not optional and not something to bolt on later.
This guide walks through that checklist start to finish: the people and paperwork, ECB affiliation through your County Cricket Board, getting onto Play-Cricket and into a league, the ground and the kit, money and insurance, and a proper section on safeguarding because it underpins everything else. Treat it as the running order for your first few months.
The Master Checklist
Here is the whole job in one place. The rest of the guide expands each line, but if you do nothing else, work through these in order. Some steps run in parallel - you can secure a ground while you sort the constitution - but the committee, the bank account and safeguarding come first because almost everything else depends on them.
How to Start a Cricket Club: The Checklist
- 1. Form a committee: recruit a few committed people and appoint at minimum a Chair, a Secretary and a Treasurer. You cannot run a club alone.
- 2. Adopt a constitution: a written set of rules covering the club's name, aims, membership, committee roles and how decisions and money are handled. Your County Board can supply a model template.
- 3. Open a club bank account: in the club's name, with at least two signatories. Never run club money through a personal account.
- 4. Appoint a Club Safeguarding Officer: before any junior activity. Put the ECB safeguarding policy and codes of conduct in place.
- 5. Affiliate to the ECB: through your County Cricket Board. This gives you official status, insurance access and a route into leagues.
- 6. Get set up on Play-Cricket: the ECB's official platform for fixtures, results, registration and league administration.
- 7. Arrange public liability insurance: usually available through the ECB-affiliated scheme. Do not play a ball without it.
- 8. Secure a ground, square and nets: own, lease, or share a council or school facility. Sort practice nets too.
- 9. Sort DBS checks: enhanced checks for everyone working with under-18s, arranged through the ECB.
- 10. Recruit players and volunteers: a coach or two, helpers, scorers, and of course a squad. Plan for juniors if you want a future.
- 11. Join a local league: apply to a league appropriate to your standard, often for the following season.
- 12. Work towards ECB Clubmark: the quality standard, once the basics are bedded in.
1. The People: Committee and Constitution
A club is its people before it is anything else. You need a committee - at a bare minimum a Chair to lead, a Secretary to handle correspondence and fixtures, and a Treasurer to look after the money. Most clubs add a Fixtures Secretary, a Club Safeguarding Officer (more on that shortly) and, once juniors arrive, a Colts or Junior Coordinator. Spread the load: clubs that lean on one heroic volunteer tend to fold when that person burns out.
With your people in place, adopt a constitution. This is simply a written rulebook: the club's name and aims, who can be a member, how the committee is elected, how an AGM works, and how money is handled and what happens to it if the club ever winds up. It sounds dry, but you will need it to open a bank account, to affiliate, and to apply for grants. Your County Cricket Board almost always has a model constitution you can adapt rather than write from scratch.
2. The Money: Bank Account and Subs
Open a dedicated club bank account in the club's name as soon as the constitution is adopted, with at least two signatories so no single person controls the funds. Running club money through someone's personal account is a recipe for confusion and mistrust, and it will block you from grants. Most high-street banks and several specialist providers offer free or low-cost community club accounts.
Then decide how you will fund the club. Membership subs and match fees are the backbone, topped up by grants, sponsorship and fundraising. Setting fair, predictable subs - and actually collecting them - is its own discipline; our guide to cricket subs and match fees covers how to price them and keep cashflow healthy in a new club's first season.
3. Affiliation: The ECB and Play-Cricket
To be a recognised cricket club in England and Wales you affiliate to the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), and you do that through your County Cricket Board - your county is your first point of contact for almost everything, from affiliation and insurance to grants and coach education. Affiliation gives your club official status, access to the affiliated insurance scheme, eligibility for leagues and funding, and a relationship with a county Club Support or Cricket Development Officer who can be genuinely helpful to a new club.
Alongside affiliation, get the club set up on Play-Cricket, the ECB's official online platform. Play-Cricket is where fixtures, results, scorecards, averages, player registration and a good deal of league administration live - it is the sport's system of record, and leagues will expect you to use it. Setting up your club site, adding your teams and registering your players on Play-Cricket is an early, essential job. While you are at it, identify the local league that suits your standard and apply to join; leagues usually take new clubs for the following season, so apply in good time.
4. Safeguarding: Non-Negotiable from Day One
If your club will ever involve under-18s - and most clubs want a colts section for their long-term future - safeguarding is not a box to tick later. It is a legal and moral duty, and the ECB takes it seriously through its Safe Hands safeguarding programme. Put it in place before your first junior session, not after. Here is the mini-checklist that matters most.
Cricket Club Safeguarding Checklist
- Appoint a Club Safeguarding Officer (CSO): a named, trained individual responsible for safeguarding, separate from the coaching staff. This is the single most important safeguarding step.
- Adopt the ECB safeguarding policy: use the ECB's Safe Hands policy and codes of conduct for players, coaches, parents and volunteers - do not write your own from scratch.
- DBS checks: arrange enhanced DBS checks (with the children's barred list check) through the ECB for everyone in a regulated role with under-18s. Keep a record of who is checked and when each is due for renewal.
- Safeguarding training: your CSO and coaches should complete the relevant ECB safeguarding workshops.
- Codes of conduct: have every coach, volunteer, player and parent sign up to the relevant code of conduct.
- Safe communication: agree how adults may and may not contact young players - no private one-to-one messaging with children, and parents kept in the loop.
- Reporting route: make sure everyone knows how to raise a concern and who to tell - your CSO, the County Safeguarding Officer and the ECB.
Get the named officer, the policy, the DBS checks and the communication rules right and you have the foundations. The rest builds on those.
5. Registration, Consent and Safe Communication
Closely tied to safeguarding is how you sign players up and how you talk to them. From the first registration you need each member's details, an emergency contact, medical notes where relevant, and - for juniors - parental consent, all captured and stored in line with GDPR. You also need a way to communicate that keeps children safe: notices that reach parents, no adults messaging children privately, and a clear record of who can contact whom.
You can absolutely run this on paper and a spreadsheet to begin with, and many clubs do. But it is exactly the kind of admin that a purpose-built club app handles more safely and with far less effort. Teamo - in the interests of full disclosure, it is made by the Sportplan team behind this site - is one such option: it handles online membership registration with emergency-contact details and consent captured properly under GDPR, offers child-safe communication with guardian visibility, and is mobile-first, which is how most parents will actually use it. Worth noting on the safeguarding front, Teamo was nominated best safeguarding app by England Athletics' Head of Safeguarding (that recognition was specifically for England Athletics). It is one tool among several - the point is simply that registration, consent and safe comms deserve a proper system rather than a group chat.
6. The Ground, Square and Nets
Cricket needs space, and securing it is often the hardest single part of starting a club. Your options are broadly: own or lease your own ground (rare and expensive for a new club), or - far more commonly - share a council recreation ground, a school field, or an existing club's facilities. A good square needs ongoing maintenance, which is a skill and a cost in itself, so a shared or council-maintained ground is a sensible start for most new clubs. Sort practice nets too, whether your own or hired sessions at a local facility, because you cannot develop players on match days alone.
Talk to your County Board early - they often know which grounds have capacity and can broker introductions. And factor ground access into your insurance and your budget from the outset.
7. Insurance and Equipment
Do not let a single ball be bowled without public liability insurance in place. Cricket carries obvious risks - a hard ball, spectators, third-party property - and affiliated clubs can usually access cover through the ECB-affiliated insurance scheme, which is one of the practical benefits of affiliating. Make sure your cover reflects how and where you play.
On equipment, you need match essentials - balls, stumps and bails, a scorebook or scoring app - plus shared club kit for juniors (helmets, pads, gloves, a few bats) so that no child is excluded by cost. New clubs keep this affordable by borrowing, buying second-hand, and applying for an equipment grant through the County Board or the ECB. You do not need everything on day one; you need enough to play and train safely.
8. Recruiting Players and Volunteers
A club is nothing without people on the pitch and helping off it. Recruit a squad through local contacts, social media, taster sessions and links with nearby schools - and recruit volunteers just as deliberately: a qualified coach or two, helpers, scorers and a junior coordinator. If you want a club that lasts, build a colts section early; juniors are your future first XI and, frankly, your future committee. Our guide to running a junior cricket team walks through setting up and running a colts side, and the Cricket drills library gives you ready-made practices to fill those first sessions.
9. The Quality Goal: ECB Clubmark
Once the basics are bedded in, set your sights on ECB Clubmark - the quality standard (now part of the ECB's club accreditation) that recognises clubs which are safe, well run and welcoming. It pulls together everything above: a sound constitution, strong safeguarding, good coaching, clear duty-of-care policies and a proper junior pathway. Clubmark is not a day-one requirement, but it is a brilliant target for your first couple of years because it signals to parents and funders that you meet the ECB's standards, and it often unlocks grant funding. Treat it as the destination this checklist is quietly walking you towards.
Keep the Admin From Eating the Cricket
Founding a club is a burst of admin followed by years of the same jobs every week - subs, availability, fixtures, communication. The clubs that thrive are the ones that systematise that admin early so volunteers can spend their evenings coaching rather than chasing. Our guide to cricket club communication covers how to keep players, parents and volunteers informed without drowning in WhatsApp, and the subs and match fees guide tackles the money. Get the foundations in this checklist right, lean on your County Board, and a new cricket club is well within reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start a cricket club?
Start by gathering a few committed people and forming a committee with a constitution, then open a club bank account in the club's name. Affiliate to the ECB through your County Cricket Board and set the club up on Play-Cricket, which is the ECB's official system for fixtures, results and registration. Secure a ground and practice nets, arrange public liability insurance, and put safeguarding in place from the very first session - a Club Safeguarding Officer, DBS checks for anyone working with under-18s, and the ECB's safeguarding policy and codes of conduct. Then recruit players and volunteers and apply to join a local league.
Do you need a DBS to coach cricket?
Yes - anyone coaching or supervising under-18s in a cricket club in a regulated role needs an enhanced DBS check (with the children's barred list check) arranged through the ECB. This is a core part of the ECB's Safe Hands safeguarding standards. The check is renewed periodically, and your Club Safeguarding Officer keeps a record of who has a current, valid DBS. Adults who only ever work with adult teams and never with juniors are treated differently, but in practice most clubs require checks for the committee and all junior volunteers.
What is ECB Clubmark?
ECB Clubmark (now part of the ECB's club accreditation, sometimes badged as Clubmark or Club status) is a quality standard that recognises clubs which are well run, safe and welcoming, with strong safeguarding, good coaching, a clear constitution and proper duty-of-care policies in place. Achieving it shows parents and funders that your club meets the ECB's standards, and it is often a requirement for grant funding. It is a goal to work towards once the basics are established rather than something you need on day one.
How much does it cost to set up a cricket club?
It varies enormously depending on whether you already have access to a ground. The unavoidable costs are affiliation fees to the ECB and your County Board, public liability insurance, basic equipment (balls, stumps, nets, a few bats) and DBS checks for volunteers. If you need to hire or maintain a square, that becomes the largest line by far. Many clubs keep first-year costs low by sharing a council or school ground and borrowing equipment, then build up as membership subs come in. Grants from your County Board, Sport England and the ECB can cover a meaningful share of start-up costs.
