As I often tend to highlight, our club drives on volunteers. And to a large extent these are volunteers who do their work behind the scenes. I would like to highlight some of these unsung heroes in the upcoming weeks. Probably not unknown, but what they all do may partly go unnoticed.

Part I: the grass team

You know of course that Kampong is one of the few clubs in the Netherlands with a real grass wicket. Less than a quarter of cricket clubs have this luxury. With that luxury comes a responsibility, and also: an unprecedented amount of work.

While you were playing cricket on the main field, you may have wondered what’s under your feet? A lot of history, hours, blood, sweat, tears, clay and grass., that is.

Since my chairmanship, 3.5 years ago, it has been Mark Twemlow and Marc Koch who have held sway on the pitch (and just before that, Peter Cantrell). This year, Sebastian Archbold and Nicholas Pearce also rolled up their sleeves, helping out.

With unremitting efforts, they ensure that we can enjoy one of the best – if not the best – pitches in the country.

The hours they put in sometimes embarrass me as chairman because we lean so much on their voluntary efforts. Before dawn, and until late at night.

As I write this, the team has been engaged into a large-scale and exciting project in the past few days; the major maintenance of the square, including raising and widening.

I have witnessed this operation in word and image. The top layer of our square has been excavated, mixed, levelled and sown in with the proper machinery. With the precision offered by current technology, the entire square has been levelled with the help of GPS. In collaboration with the company de Ridder, another top performance has been delivered!

I can try to explain it to you, but in this case I’ll let the images speak for themselves:

From the bottom of my heart, on behalf of the board, and on behalf of all members of the club: thank you grass team!

In the coming weeks, I want to bring more unsung heroes into the spotlight. If you think someone is an unsung Kampong Cricket hero, please message me via: voorzitter@kampongcc.nl

Best regards,

Ulrich Oron
Chairman SV Kampong Cricket

The unsung heroes of the KPL
The unsung heroes of youth cricket