The Bath University Venturers Cricket Club is a social cricket club (we are not in any summer league) which provides cricket for the staff, postgraduate students, and other groups (like visiting researchers) who are connected with the University of Bath in an official capacity. New members of any ability are always welcome. We sometimes struggle to raise a side so we would be interested to hear from you even if you don't fit neatly into any of the above categories.
Most of the matches we play are against local clubs and villages, although we also play several matches against touring sides (if you are a touring side and are interested in a game, please do get in touch with our fixtures secretary, Gregory Sankaran [G.K.Sankaran@bath.ac.uk]). The standard of the cricket is somewhat unpredictable and whilst we always give it our best shot, we feel a friendly and inclusive spirit to the team is also important. We usually play afternoon matches on Sunday (some Saturdays) with a 2.30pm start, and some evening matches (20 overs per side), mostly on Wednesday. The majority of our fixtures are at the Sulis Sports Club, very near the University of Bath campus, and the rest are almost all close by. There is no membership fee but we normally charge a match fee (typically £4 for afternoon games, £2 for evening games) to cover teas, equipment and so on. For the winter of 2005/06 the club is experimenting by joining the Bath indoor cricket league which plays 6-a-side indoor cricket in the sports hall of Ralph Allen School (located close to the University of Bath Campus) on Sunday evenings. The club will charge a match fee of £1 for these indoor matches. The schedule for division 2 of the league can be found here (as a MS Excel file), with further details of the rules etc. being available here (as a MS Word file).
During the closed season we hold indoor nets in the University of Bath founders sports hall, in order to prepare ourselves for the coming season. For 2005/06 these are due to take place on Tuesdays from 11.15am until 1.15pm, with additional sessions to be organised for the occasional weekend. The indoor nets have been booked from 11th October 2005 until 25th July 2006, although they will be unavailable on 29th Nov, 17th and 24th Jan 2006, 7th and 14th March, 23rd and 30th May, and the 6th June. There is also only a half session (until 12.15pm) on 15th November.
Fixtures for the 2006 season are available here. Whilst we do like to win, the result of matches is not that significant to the team but for those interested, our fixtures, results and match reports for the previous few seasons can be found using the following links: 2005, 2004, 2003, or 2002.
As mentioned above, the team mainly consists of staff and postgraduate students from the University of Bath. For the 2005 the playing team captain is Duncan Lee, whilst the team manager is James Dutton (01225 385548 or ext 5548 internal), with the fixtures being arranged by Gregory Sankaran. Rob Branston is the club treasurer and webmaster. Many other people are involved in the running of the club but a list of random names won't mean much to you, and so we shall abstain from listing them!
Anyone interested in joing in the club is strongly encouraged to do so as we are always looking for new members. Feel free to contact any of the people mentioned above, or anyone else involved with the club if you have any specific questions, or join us at one of our practice nets (be warned that due to university commitments, these do not run on occasion).
The club runs an email list which is used to co-ordinate activities, and raise a team for the fixtures. Anyone interested in joining or participating in the club is strongly encouraged to add their name to this list (it can be removed at any time) by sending a blank email to venturers-subscribe@lists.bath.ac.uk from the email account they wish to add to list, and then reply to email asking for confirmation. Alternatively you can contact Rob Branston who mantains this website and the email list, and who would be happy to provide further information on the club.
The Club is run along the lines set down in its constitution which can be downloaded here .
As cricket players we support any effort to involve as many people as possible in cricket
like activities, and as such, we support the
The Primary Club
in their efforts to take cricket to the blind and partially sighted.