MILDURA East Cricket Club will call the Mildura Sporting Precinct home from the beginning of the 2023/24 season, after edging out other clubs to be named the permanent tenant.
The long-awaited announcement was made by Mildura Rural City Council on Friday and ouncillor for recreation and events, Mark Eckel, listed the reasons as to why the club was selected.
“A major factor behind the recommendation based on these responses is the current participation trends at Mildura East Cricket Club,” he said.
“An example is Mildura East are delivering the Woolworths Cricket Blast program, which based on Cricket Australia data, shows participation rates in Victoria for players 5 to 12 has increased by 9 per cent while female participation has increased by 93 per cent.
“Mildura East Cricket Club also demonstrated through its responses that it has developed an inclusive culture which includes a high portion of participants from CALD communities.”
Club president Matthew Hunt said it was a huge win.
“We’re ecstatic following last night’s decision and look forward to the move to the Mildura Sporting Precinct,” Hunt said.
“We’re looking forward to having heaps of new faces at our club … we just want to help grow cricket basically, we have a good number of senior grades and we want to get our juniors to match and complement that.
“We’re looking forward to working with everyone else, the clubs that are out there, we hope to make relationships with them and move forward as a whole group out there.”
With the eight-lane cricket training nets not far off completion, Hunt hoped they could be utilised prior to the upcoming season.
“We have been told that they could be finished by the middle of next month … so hopefully we will be able to use them before round one,” he said.
In the mean time, the club will continue to train at Brian WeightmanOval, a venue that the council said would be used in the future, but to what degree is unknown at this stage.
