Long Sutton have been boosted by the reaction from the community after a host of equipment was stolen from their ground.
The Paradise Lane club have had a brilliant start to the season and sit top of the South Lincs and Border League Championship.
But they were shocked last week to find that someone had broken into a shed and stolen the equipment they need to keep the ground in order, including mowers.
The club then set up a Go Fund Me page and were left stunned with already having recived donations of £4,343.
The page reads: “We found the garage door had the locks smashed and all our club’s mowers and tools stolen, leaving us with nothing to prepare the pitch.
“As a small local club this has left us in an extremely difficult position.
“It’s affected the whole club and community, who use the grounds for multiple uses as well as cricket.
“The funds will go towards new mowers and to repair the damage done to the garage.”
A spokesman for the club said of the response: “The cricket community really is a special place to be part of.”
The club 1st XI captain Jake Burton said: “We estimated that the lost equipment would cost us £5,000 to replace and the Go Fund Me is for £10,000 for repairing the garage and for security to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with the support we’ve had, particularly from local clubs and businesses.
“A lot of clubs have helped us out, with donations and offers of equipment I guess as if they were in our position they’d want to be helped themselves.
“Long Sutton Bowls Club have been brilliant providing us use of some of their mowers.
“We were lucky that it happened Thursday night and had already prepared for Saturday’s game.
“It would have been difficult to get the game on if we hadn’t have done it.
“Thanks to the help from the bowls club we can continue to get the games on.”
The club is becoming ever well known thank to Burton’s Runs For Research initiative.
For the last few years he’s encouraged cricketers to sign up and donate 1p for every run they score in a season and 5p for every wicket.
In the first two years he raised around £16,000 for Alzhimer’s Research UK in memory of his grandad Trevor Burton with 830 signed up for this year’s fundraising.
Long Sutton’s appeal took off after a charity club involved in Runs Research and then The Cricketer editor George Dobbell shared it on Twitter.
“We’ve around 830 people around the country signed up for Runs 4 Research,” Burton continued. “At the moment it’s raising about £1,000 every week.
“We still have to collect that at the end of the season, but it’s looking hopeful we’ll be reaching the £20,000 total.”
So far Long Sutton 1st XI have won eight out of nine from games completed and are top of the league.
“I said at the start of the season we were good enough to go up but it depends on the way things fall,” Burton added. “We’ve won eight of the nine games we’ve completed and only lost the other by one wicket.
“We were one good ball away from being unbeaten at the halfway stage.
“It’s still early in the season though and now just a case of keeping going and then seeing where we are in mid-September.”
The Go Fund Me page for Long Sutton Cricket Club is at www.gofundme.com/f/long-sutton-cricket-club
