CRICKET CLUB OPEN DAY
CHECKLIST.

A cricket club open day checklist works best when it fits on a single sheet of A4, pinned next to the kettle in the clubhouse, with one volunteer's name against every line. The plan below is the one Burnham Cricket Club used in spring 2025 to bring 27 new sign-ups (18 juniors, 9 seniors) into the club in a single morning. We've stripped the names of the volunteers but kept everything else.

What is a cricket club open day and why bother with a checklist?

An open day is a free, low-pressure Saturday morning at the ground where prospective members (mostly families and lapsed players) can have a net, meet a coach, see the clubhouse, and sign up. The cricket club open day checklist matters because open days fall apart in the small stuff: nobody printed sign-up forms, the urn wasn't filled, the All Stars coach wasn't booked, the post on Facebook went up the night before. A written list, with owners, fixes all of that.

According to ECB participation data, recreational cricket added around 50,000 new All Stars and Dynamos participants in the 2024 season [STAT NEEDS VERIFICATION, source: ECB annual review]. Every one of those starts at a club's open day or first session. A good checklist is the difference between converting the families who turn up and watching them drift away.

When is the right weekend to run it?

Time the open day to the format you're recruiting for. Seniors first weekend in April, juniors second or third weekend in April. That puts you a fortnight before the first league fixture and inside the window when ECB All Stars and Dynamos are still taking registrations.

• Last weekend of March: senior open day. Pre-season nets are running, the bar can be open.
• Second weekend of April: junior open day. Schools are back, evenings are lighter, parents are searching.
• Avoid bank holidays. Families travel. Footfall halves.
• Avoid mid-season (June or July). Existing fixtures eat the ground, and there's no season left to sell.

What does the four-week plan look like, week by week?

The cricket club open day checklist breaks into four weekly blocks. Each block has one Sunday evening committee touchpoint (15 minutes, WhatsApp is fine) to confirm the previous week shipped.

Week 1 (four weeks out): lock the date and the people

1. Pick the date and confirm ground availability. Cross-check the Play-Cricket fixtures calendar and any junior festival dates. Owner: secretary.
2. Recruit six volunteers and put their names against the six on-the-day roles (welcome desk, two coaches, tea hatch, roving helper, photographer). Owner: vice-chair.
3. Book the All Stars or Dynamos coach if you're running junior sessions, or confirm two club coaches are free. Owner: junior chair.
4. Order or borrow soft balls, stumps, and bibs. The kit needed for an open day is different from a normal practice. Owner: kit manager.
5. Confirm the bar and tea hatch are open and someone is behind each. Owner: social secretary.

Week 2 (three weeks out): start the noise

1. Design the headline graphic in club colours. Date, time, ground name with postcode, "all welcome, no kit needed", and a QR code to a simple sign-up form. Owner: social media lead.
2. Post on Facebook and Instagram with a paid boost of £20 to £30 targeting parents within five miles of the ground. Owner: social media lead.
3. Email every lapsed member from the last three seasons. One paragraph, friendly, "bring a mate". Owner: secretary.
4. Ask each first-team player to share the post, with a direct WhatsApp ask. Generic team-group asks get ignored, personal ones don't.
5. Drop printed A5 flyers at the two nearest primary schools, the local Co-op noticeboard, and the parish hall. Owner: junior chair.

Week 3 (two weeks out): paper and ops

1. Print sign-up forms. Name, age group, parent contact, allergies, photo consent. Sixty copies. Owner: secretary.
2. Print the welcome-desk script. Five sentences, what to say, where to point. Removes the "I don't know what to do" panic from the volunteer who got roped in on Friday night.
3. Set the WhatsApp broadcast list for the morning so the on-the-day team can coordinate without 14 separate group chats.
4. Order a small batch of club-branded stickers or wristbands for kids. Cheap, memorable, free advertising on a school bag for a year.
5. Run a second social post, this time with a short video clip from last season. Owner: social media lead.

Week 4 (open day week): final mile

1. Monday: reminder post on socials, "this Saturday, 10am".
2. Wednesday: story or reel of the ground being mown and the nets going up. Behind-the-scenes content converts cold viewers.
3. Thursday: shop for bacon, rolls, squash, biscuits, milk, tea. Confirm the urn works.
4. Friday evening: set up the welcome desk, fill the urn, lay out kit, print one more batch of forms in case.
5. Saturday 09:00: volunteers on site for the 10:00 start. Final walk-through. Music on if the clubhouse has speakers.

What runs on the morning itself?

Keep the format simple and the energy high. The whole event runs three hours, 10:00 to 13:00. Anything longer drags, anything shorter feels like a token gesture.

How do you capture sign-ups without losing them?

The welcome desk is the single most important station of the day. Every visitor goes through it once for a name badge, once again to fill a form. Two clipboards: one for parents of juniors, one for adults. Both lists go into a spreadsheet by Saturday evening. Nothing waits until Monday.

Keep the form short. Six fields maximum. Anything longer and parents trail off. The fields that matter are the parent's mobile, the child's date of birth, and photo consent under ECB Safe Hands guidance. Everything else can be collected at the first proper session.

What does the 48-hour follow-up look like?

By Monday lunchtime, every name on the sign-up sheet gets an email or a WhatsApp message. Not a generic "thanks for coming". A specific message with the date and time of the next session, a named contact, where to park, and what to bring. Burnham's conversion from open-day visitor to paid member was 71% (27 of 38 attendees) the year they sent the follow-up within 48 hours. The previous year, with a one-week delay, it was 34%.

The follow-up sequence in full:

• Within 48 hours: personalised message with next session details.
• One week later: reminder of the first session, with a photo from the open day if the family is in it.
• Two weeks later: if no response, one final friendly message, then close the loop.

How should we promote the open day on Instagram and Facebook?

Three posts is the floor. One announcement four weeks out, one reminder one week out, one "behind the scenes" the Wednesday before. The announcement carries the date, ground postcode, and "no kit needed". The reminder carries social proof, a photo or quote from last year. The behind-the-scenes builds urgency.

If the club uses Play-Cricket for fixtures and you want the open day pinned alongside upcoming matches on Instagram, the simplest compliant route is a club-authorised Play-Cricket sync that pulls fixtures into your social tool using your own ECB-issued API key. We've covered the wider integration in the Play-Cricket integration pillar guide.

What does the day actually cost?

A well-run cricket club open day comes in under £200 of out-of-pocket cost. Most clubs recoup it on bacon rolls and a single new annual junior subscription.

Related:

• Cricket club marketing on a budget, the pillar guide
• Posting Play-Cricket fixtures to Instagram, using your club's API key
• Boundary Social pricing, from £89.99/month done-for-you matchday content