Organising͏͏ a͏͏ cricket͏͏ tournament͏͏ takes͏͏ a͏͏ bit͏͏ of͏͏ thoughtful͏͏ planning͏͏ and͏͏ coordination͏͏ of͏͏ multiple͏͏ factors.͏͏ With the amount of heads to account for and teams to put on your bracket, community cricket tournaments are almost always guaranteed to be a͏͏ big͏͏ undertaking͏͏ and͏͏ as such, is best a pursuit for those who pride themselves on their organisational͏͏ skill͏͏s. That, and͏͏ having a deep-seated passion͏͏ for the game itself doesn’t hurt either, of course!
Community͏͏ cricket͏͏ events͏͏ are͏͏ very͏͏ different͏͏ from͏͏ the pro cricket league matches though,͏͏ namely because they͏͏ are͏͏ for͏͏ fun͏͏ and͏͏ operate mainly with the aim to͏͏ bring͏͏ communities together.͏͏ Without the same resources as the professional leagues, however, community cricket has its own challenges. Today we’re going to show you how to organise your next community cricket event so that you will be hitting sixes in no time.
Preliminary Budgeting & Flyering
The best place to begin your planning is by outlining what you can feasibly attain with your resources. For those on a strict event budget, defining the scope of your community cricket tournament first can help your planning stay realistic.
For example, if you know you can accommodate approximately ~200 spectators, with approximately 8 teams on the bracket, you’ll know that each team can allocate 25 seats, so each player can have 2-3 guests in attendance. If you suspect you’ll need to sell more tickets than this, you can look into additional seating ahead of time.
Once you have a clear outline of estimated numbers, you can begin to calculate how much your tickets will need to cost to ensure you break even. And once these figures have all been worked out, you can finally start designing your event flyers.
Yes, you’ll need to factor in the costs of flyering for your event, but by using low-cost design methods, you can save on your flyer designs and only have to account for the costs of printing and paper. For example, you can use Adobe Express to edit images online, allowing you to make your promotional materials without spending extra time or money.
Create an Event Team
Once your event flyers are ready, it’s time to start flyering. And of course, this is best achieved with a dedicated team of event staff. Creating a support team with clear roles will help keep everyone on task, alongside ensuring that the head event organiser doesn’t have to oversee literally all the many aspects of organising your cricket tournament.
Once again, a cricket tournament is a huge and complex endeavour that cannot be achieved alone. Building a team of like-minded individuals will make the process a lot easier. So get everyone together for your first event meeting, and assign specific duties and tasks to everyone on the team. We also recommend keeping the team together with shared communication channels and regular meetings. Whether you’re hosting your event as a fundraiser local cricket clubs or even just as a fun excuse for your local community cricket fans to ge together, keeping all your event staff on message can help ensure your cricket tournament meets all the criteria that would qualify it as a certifiable success – by the standards of not just your team, but your wider community as well.
Prepare your Venue
It goes without saying that centrally located cricket pitches are the most ideal venue for any community cricket tournament. Selecting a nearby pitch will also make it a lot easier for your event team to transport any necessary additional seating or event supplies from your offices to the pitch on match day.
If you foresee that you’ll be carrying a lot of extra supplies, prepare a logistics timeline to ensure that you can at least maintain storage in pitch facilities in the lead-up to your cricket tournament. Be sure to check with your local cricket clubs to make sure you have a solid idea of what you’ll need equipment-wise too.
And finally, if you’re organising local vendors like food trucks or stands to provide catering for the event, you’ll want to schedule check-in and check-out times with all these partners well before the match day. With a well-orchestrated logistics timeline, your preparation pre-event should go by without a hitch.
Plan Match Day
So you’ve planned the pre-event logistics timeline – what about match day itself? As your tournament draws closer you will quickly realise how much goes into organising an event of this scale. Preparing for game day as much as possible will help you to prevent any unexpected problems from happening. Facilitating team and player registrations on the day, arranging equipment from match to match, organising attendees’ facilities and leading your team of volunteers are all responsibilities that you’ll basically need to juggle simultaneously on the day of.
This is where it really pays to delegate and orchestrate with your fellow event staff. Create a schedule that outlines the order of events for the day and set up smaller working teams to focus on specific aspects of the event – from parking to bins, restroom cleaning, emergency and first aid services, and all the other many elements of your match day that will need to be accounted for. And remember – you cannot plan for everything, so always plan with the intention of staying flexible.
Establish your Tournament Format and Rules
With the logistics out of the way, let’s go back to the fun stuff: the cricket! Deciding the format and rules is an important choice to make when organising a cricket tournament. In the modern era there are more formats to choose from than ever, T10, T20, one day or test. Each bringing their own unique style of cricket, work with your team and local community teams to see what format will work best and draw the largest crowd.
Once you have a format decided you will want to finalise the rules of the tournament. Using a recognised rule set for the game will keep it clear and simple for all the players. Any tournament rules specific to your event should be communicated clearly to all teams, players and event organisers.
Get the Ball Rolling on your Community Cricket Tournament
Organising a community cricket event is a monumental task for the unprepared. But by sticking with it and doing right by all your cricket teams, participants and attendees, you’ll find that all your hard work comes together on game day. And with the tips in this guide, your next community cricket tournament will undoubtedly be one to remember.