An historic cricket club will continue to battle to ensure the survival of its cricket pavilion, its secretary vowed.
The freehold to Mitcham Cricket Club’s pavilion was bought by Phoenix Group Investments in 2008 as part of the Burn Bullock pub freehold.
Phoenix Group Investments hope to redevelop the site, and have been locked in a battle over the future of the cricket pavilion with the club for the past 10 years.
Julia Gault, secretary of Mitcham Cricket Club said: I think we’ve just got to keep the pressure up and not give up we’ve been battling for 10 years and I think that all that has happened in the last week or so has given us more energy to carry on that fight.’
“We are going to win this we are going to make sure that cricket continues here.”
A public consultation into the future of the Burn Bullock and Mitcham’s pavilion site was organised by Phoenix Group Investments for the second time.
The cricket club put out a statement on Twitter calling for supporters to attend the consultation that was retweeted over 1000 times and received support from several prominent figures in the cricketing world.
Ms Gault said: “I think the club has to continue campaigning.
“It’s quite clear that the statement we put out on twitter last week has triggered a lot of interest.
“We have gotten a lot of support from the cricketing world we’ve been retweeted by England cricketers and commentators.
“We’ve got to keep the pressure up and not give up.”
Mitcham Cricket Club is believed to be one of the oldest in the world.
Ms Gault said: “Our club records used to be stored in one of the other pubs around the green which was hit by a bomb in WW2 and so a lot of the very old records of the club went up in smoke.”
The cricket club’s junior teams are largely made up of state school pupils whose schools do not offer cricket.
She added: We’ve got a really fantastically multi-ethnic junior section, virtually every cricket playing nation you can think of we’ve got someone in our junior section representing that.
“We’ve got people from Irish backgrounds; Sri Lankan, Indian, Afghani, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, all playing together having fun, making important friendships, all part of the club.”
