Rotorua Cricket Association to celebrate 100 years

Rotorua Cricket Association chairman Steve Pittman and administrator Karen Kyle are busy planning for the association's centenary. Photo / Ben Fraser

The Rotorua Cricket Association will raise its bat for a well crafted century this year.

The association, which began in 1918, will celebrate its centenary with a dinner on June 2, but there are plans for events throughout the year to mark the occasion in style.

The first event of the year is a game between a Rotorua select team and the New Zealand Army on February 11 at Smallbone Park. There will be a centenary opening ceremony on the same day. A festival day and closing ceremony will be held in December and there are plenty of events being planned in between.

Association administrator Karen Kyle said the Rotorua Cricket Club officially became an association in 1918. The players used to roll out their own pitch at the Government Gardens before moving to Kuirau Park in the 1950s. In 1968, the Jubilee Pavilion was opened at Smallbone Park, which has been "the hub of Rotorua cricket" since.

"Most of our board members in the beginning were the prominent men of Rotorua and most of them played as well. The association ties into the history of Rotorua itself," Kyle said.

Association chairman Steve Pittman said as part of the celebrations, they would be supporting the New Zealand Blind Cricket Association. Proceeds from several of the events would be put towards the continued development of blind cricket in New Zealand.

There were also plans under way to have a game towards the end of the year during which members of the weekend could be blindfolded and have a go at blind cricket.

"It's a cricket thing and they struggle for funding, it's a worthwhile cause. They don't get a lot of funding so for them to have some support is huge," Pittman said.

He said the reason the association had made it to 100 years was "the people".

"It's the passion for cricket locally," he said.

Kyle said, like most sports, cricket numbers and quality had "ebbed and flowed" throughout the years.

"At the moment it's about reinventing, with things like our T10 competition. A lot of the older generation see test cricket as cricket, but my generation and younger see cricket as T20 and T10, they don't want to watch it for five days. It's always changing," she said.

Pittman said cricket needed to be more responsive about time.

"Everyone associates cricket with taking a lot of time, now that we have 20-over, 50-over and longer format cricket, there's cricket for everybody. It's the same with teenagers, we have a big drop off there, so we're looking at running Thursday night, short-format cricket for teenagers because a lot of them aren't available for long games in the weekend.

"One drive for this year is girls' cricket. We have quite a few girls playing primary school cricket, but there's a drop off at intermediate and secondary school. That's one of our initiatives this year, to really get girls staying in the game and enjoying it, which will roll into women's cricket as well," he said.

Other events being organised included a karaoke night, a quiz night and junior and senior prizegivings.