Not all clubs have 100 year plus histories, the Shaftesbury Road Cricket Club was founded in the summer of 2015, when a spontaneous game of cricket broke out between friends at 71, Shaftesbury Road in Milton, Weston-super-Mare.
The founder Jake Mawford who lived on the road with his mother Vanessa (Head of Teas), father Brian (big bad Bri) and brother Craig (Cindy) decided to invite all of his friends for a festival of garden cricket: House rules applied. This became an annual birthday celebration for the founder and former former chairman Jack Ford Williams, two best friends separated at birth by two days.
The festival grew in numbers which was noticeable in 2018 where the festival tripled in attendance due to social media coverage by Daniel Hancock.
The 2018 & 2019 festivals saw 30 full grown men playing cricket in a garden, attending in suits via a limousine which was sponsored by Cavillino Campers. The first of several sponsorships and one cannot underestimate the effect the first sponsor had by banging down the door and paving the way.
The humour of the club attracted an audience, a cult following and a core group was formed within the club. The Ladies of Shaftesbury was created by Jack Ford Williams to enable the men to leave home for long periods of time without consequence.
In 2019 Shaftesbury Road CC made the bold move of entering the midweek ‘proper job’ cricket league. For our inaugural season in ‘proper cricket’ we rented the playing field from Weston CC before moving onto Uphill in 2020.
The Shafts or Berries as they are commonly known experienced great success in the midweek league. In 2021 this spurred them onto organising a ridiculous amount of friendlies, mainly at picturesque venues around the southwest, including an unbeaten tour of Cornwall. The popularity and enjoyment of the club promoted us into an unique position; 30 members plus living and breathing cricket.
It was time to go one further again. NatWest Ben was firmly settled in the engine room fulfilling the role of treasurer. He joined by an admin team on a voluntary basis. Alongside this, various voluntary roles were appointed within the club. With monumental efforts in terms of fundraising SRCC entered the Somerset Saturday league becoming an actual affiliated club for the first time since the 2015 incarnation. Our inaugural season in club cricket saw us be surprisingly successful, winning division 7 by 2 points, plus winning division 1 of the ‘proper job’ league for a second time, this time unbeaten.
The passion for the game and our club in particular, has seen us spend a lot of time together. The byproduct being that we had all got better at cricket. We now look forward to 2023, climbing the ECB club cricket pyramid with a unique history and fun story to tell.
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