Foundation

Volunteers celebrated as Sussex's Grassroots Cricket Awards winners announced

20 Sep 2021

The Sussex Cricket Foundation welcomed over a hundred volunteers and their families to The 1st Central County Ground on Sunday for a celebratory lunch and presentation of the local Grassroots Cricket Award winners for 2021.

Rebranded this year by the ECB, the Grassroots Cricket Awards (formally the OSCAs) looks to recognise and celebrate those who give so much to the game of cricket, to see it thrive in their local area.

There are eight nationally recognised awards categories, the Sussex winners of which were announced on the day. Individuals and clubs are nominated for these awards and the SCF team select a winner for each category from the vast array of inspirational stories that they read.

Des O'Dell

Des o'Dell

Amongst the winners were Des O’Dell, chairman of Southwick CC and of the Adur Cricket Cluster Group. The Adur Cluster has bought together six clubs to work together on projects, share facilities and develop junior and women’s cricket and it is for this community spirit, that Des and the group have been recognised, not just in Sussex, but also nationally.

Oliver Sebire-Harris from Hurstpierpoint CC has also been recognised nationally in the ‘Rising Star’ category. Not only is Oliver a qualified Young Leader in Cricket helping with all junior coaching from U7 to U15, he also umpires and scores matches and is the vice captain of the club's Sussex Slam team. In addition to this, Oliver organised, promoted and delivered a charity match at the club, engaging local people and businesses, raising nearly £3000 in the process for the Ruth Strauss Foundation and Alzheimers UK.

Oliver Sebire Harris

Oliver Sebire-Harris is presented his award by the SCF's Matt Parsons

The Lifetime Achiever category really sums up the value of our volunteers, no more so valuable than this year’s winner, Dennis Goldsmith from Steyning CC, who sadly passed away in March of this year. The impact and legacy of people like Dennis in the game of cricket and in Sussex, will live on for many decades to come.

Carl Tupper, Territory Manager for SCF and organiser of the Grassroots Cricket Awards event, commented “We are indebted to the thousands of volunteers in Sussex for continually growing the game, even through the pandemic. The number of teams in Sussex is up, the number of women and girls playing and volunteering is growing and the number of juniors playing the game is up too – this is all thanks to the hard work of the volunteers who give their time to share their passion for the game. Our list of our winners is outstanding. It’s always a pleasure to see new names being nominated each year and we thank everyone for their contribution to cricket in Sussex.”

Full list of Sussex's 2021 Grassroots Cricket Award winners:

Connecting Communities

“A Club or community organisation which has gone above and beyond the call of cricket to support communities/groups coming back to the game we love.”

Des O’Dell & The Adur Cricket Cluster (National Winner)