Doing it for the kids

While most cricket clubs are beginning to wind things up for the winter, Blunham Cricket Club are still planning for the most important match of their season.

Next Friday the Bedfordshire-based club are attempting to smash the world record for the longest continuous game of cricket. The current mark, set by a club in Queensland, stands at 50 hours and 18 minutes although Cornwall CC in Auckland are waiting to see if their 55 hour marathon will be ratified.

Blunham have set their sights on 59 hours, some 24 hours more than the UK best which was set by Oakwood Homes and Chestfield last year.

Unlike the Australian record holders, who no doubt enjoyed scorching heat, Blunham are bracing themselves for temperatures a little more English.

"If it gets to the point where you can't stand up we may struggle," Neil Wilden, who is in charge of organising the record attempt, told ecb.co.uk. "What do we do if there is thunder and lightning? We want it to be as competitive as possible though."

Rain or shine, 24 of Blunham's players - each side is allowed a substitute - will take to the field in an effort to break the world record. However, more important is their attempt to raise vital sponsorship money which will be used to improve the facilities at their club.

"We have so many kids at the club that they are outgrowing the facilities," explained Wilden.

"We want to do something with the pavilion, the changing rooms needs renovating and we don't have a scorebox. We need new nets too.

"There is no point 100 kids coming along if all they are going to do is fielding because the nets are not good enough. It's not improving their batting and bowling skills.

"We need to raise money and someone stumbled across the world record. We thought it would be a great idea. People thought it would be one of those things which gets talked about for a few days and then nothing gets done."

While the concept of playing a continuous game of cricket should be just an extension of what millions of people do every weekend, the logisitics involved in making it an official world record are endless.

Not only do the club need floodlights to ensure the game can take place at night, they need umpires, scorers, doctors, stewards, two witnesses, a stop clock and enough memory on a hard-drive to record the whole event on video camera.

There are also playing stipulations - no more than five minutes' break every hour, no interval between innings and no-one can leave the immediate vicinity of the playing area.

"We've been planning since the end of July," said Wilden. "It's been an onorous task. We need 100 volunteers and we have just blagged some floodlights.

"Having got started, it's not something we can backtrack on. We could have done with some more time to think about it, but we want to do the work next spring. If we didn't do it now we'd never do it."

So far the players have raised £10,000 in sponsorship although Wilden hopes to double that amount by the time the first ball is bowled.

"I'm trying to delegate some of the work as well as kicking a few backsides to make sure they raise sponsorship," said Wilden. "I'm spending three or four hours a day on it but more people are getting interested the closer we get to the event."