DMU Cricket is bowled over by sponsorship agreement

The De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) Cricket society had as much to celebrate as anyone today as Vice-Chancellor Dominic Shellard signed a renewal of the university’s partnership with Leicestershire, writes Jack Brooke-Battersby.



At the event held at the home of LCCC, Grace Road, Professor Shellard signed the new partnership agreement with the recently appointed CEO of the club, Wasim Khan MBE.

In attendance for the signing were members of Leicestershire’s 1st team playing and coaching staff as well as corporate members and guests from the DMU cricket society including Chairman, Jamie Chand, and 1st team captain, James Moy.

As well as the sponsorship agreements which help boost the university’s profile, there are many student benefits of the excellent relationship between the two organisations.

While the Leicestershire players are able to make use of the DMU leisure centre’s state of the art equipment, the cricket society in turn are permitted to use LCCC’s indoor facilities for their own training purposes and to play off-season indoor matches.

By far the greatest aspect of the partnership though is that when Varsity season comes around, the cricket society plays their games against fierce rivals Leicester University on the famous Grace Road pitch.

On the renewal of the agreement, James said: “The obvious benefit is the use of their facilities, it’s nice for us to be able to play on a professional ground instead of the usual club grounds, and it’s an all-round great experience for all of us.”

Jamie added: “Our Varsity game on the 22 May is just before Leicestershire’s Twenty20 game here against Derbyshire which will give us some really good publicity being able to play here.

“We always want to do as well as possible in the league games but it’s the Varsity match that we always want to win, that’s the big one.”

Given the time of the year, the cricket season is yet to get underway for the cricket society, but Chairman Jamie is confident of another good year.

He said: “The winter is our off-season where we don’t have outdoor games so we’ve been doing some indoor training and played some matches to get ready for when the season gets underway.

“We’re quite pleased with how the team is looking, the 1st team squad is looking good and there’s some decent players knocking on the door who will be hoping to come through.”

The DMU cricket society will be hoping to take full advantage of their fantastic arrangement with LCCC and hope that practicing with professional facilities will give them a cutting-edge by the time of the big Varsity game.