BASINGSTOKE and North Hants CC have been honoured for their work as part of the CricketForce initiative.

The CricketForce award is part of the County and National Outstanding Services to Cricket Awards initiative, which recognises the efforts of grassroots volunteers.

The Club put forward a nomination to Hampshire for their CricketForce activities and ended up being shortlisted in the final three of over 2,000 clubs nationally.

They picked up a very creditable runners-up award at the ceremony held at Lord’s.

For 2014, the club’s CricketForce theme was ‘outside the boundary’ and included replacement of fencing along the boundary, removal of ivy that had overgrown boundary walls and co-ordinating the replacement of part of the flint wall decimated by winter storms.

Specialist local builders Bounty Brickwork were engaged to replace the wall and local landscape gardeners BFG were supported by a gang of club members to clear ivy that had taken over the boundary fences and walls on three sides of the ground.

This took four weekends to complete but resulted in seven new members for the club.

Another member volunteered to manage the fencing project as a separate piece of work stretching over three weekends, ending on April 5, CricketForce Day.

In total, 83 cricket balls were recovered during the work.

On CricketForce Day itself, coaching sessions were run for juniors, while potential and existing members were registered for the season ahead.