Cricket club in Corby to celebrate 150th anniversary with legends match this weekend

A cricket club in Corby is celebrating its 150th anniversary with a legends match this weekend.

Great Oakley Cricket Club was founded in 1873 and started playing in the summer of 1874.

Their legends match will feature star England players from the past as well as some of Great Oakley’s very own local legends.

Ash York, chair of Great Oakley Cricket Club, said: “When it dawned on me a couple of years ago that we were approaching our 150th year in 2023, I thought we needed to do something special to mark the occasion.

“I was speaking to a friend from Brentwood Cricket Club in Essex and he told me about a regular fixture they have against an England legends team. It occurred to me that would be a great way to mark the occasion of the club reaching 150 years.

“So having done nothing more with that thought until late last year, we put the wheels in motion to put the game on, and so here we are.”

Throughout the past 150 years, the club has done well to preserve a lot of its long history.

Ash’s mother, Vilma, kept scrapbooks throughout her life, accumulating four or five large ring binders of newspaper clippings about the club. The club has had photos of the clippings made into a wallpaper that’s displayed on their back wall.

Vilma sadly passed away a few years ago. The club’s honours board was named the Vilma York Honours Board in her honour.

In the book ‘Great Oakley Cricket’, written by long term servants of the club Harold and Edward Bagshaw, there is a reference to players of the late 1800s walking to games from the Spread Eagle pub, a place the club would use nearly 100 years later as a base when their pavilion suffered at the hands of arsonists.

The club still play against many of their opponents from those first few seasons today, including Kettering, Desborough, Geddington, Brigstock, Gretton and Rothwell.

When the club began all those years ago, it was based in a ‘wooden hut’, which they were finally able to move out of into a new pavilion where they play from today.

The club moved in 1983, and unfortunately in 1985 it was burned down by arsonists.

Ash said: “My dad was involved at Corby Town Football Club at the time, he was on the board there, and the night it happened we were up there at a game and he got the phone call.

“We had a number of members that were police and firemen and they got wind and called the supporters club at Corby and we all jumped in the car and got down here but it was virtually all gone.”

The club was rebuilt in 1986 and has seen its ups and downs since.

They had some great sides in the late 80s and early 90s but struggled throughout the 2000s, slipping down the divisions.

The club managed to navigate through the tough years due to a dedicated few, including Ash’s parents Mick and Vilma, who kept the place running.

Covid could have seen the end of the club but they strived and, according to Ash, they are now in one of the strongest positions they’ve been in since the 90s with around 300 members.

He said: “We’re doing very well now off the back of a really strong and supportive committee and a lot of just social members that are stepping up and helping out cover shifts on the bar, and later on today there’ll be another seven or eight of them down here just doing whatever they can.

“Going into Covid we were really on the cusp of whether we’d be able to continue as a club, and we just took the opportunity whilst things were shut down to try and spruce the club up, make it look more appealing, and it’s worked, we’ve gained a lot of members and we’re pretty healthy now.”

The 150th anniversary celebrations are taking place this Sunday (August 27) at the club in Great Oakley. To find out more information about the club visit their Facebook page.