The quick answer: connect Play-Cricket to a graphics tool using your club's own API key, let it build the fixture graphic from your live data, then schedule that graphic to Instagram. No screenshots, no shared passwords, no scraping. The rest of this post walks through how that works, how to request your key, and what to do if you are not ready for the full setup yet.
How do you post Play-Cricket fixtures to Instagram?
You post Play-Cricket fixtures to Instagram in three moves: pull the fixture data, design the graphic, then publish it. The compliant version of move one uses your club's own ECB-issued Play-Cricket API key, so the fixtures come straight from your official data rather than a copied screenshot.
Here is the full sequence most clubs land on:
- Connect Play-Cricket. Provide your club's API key to a tool that reads your fixtures. The key is issued to your club, by the ECB, for your club's own data.
- Map the fields. The tool pulls date, start time, opposition, venue, format and home or away. These are the five fields every fixture graphic needs, plus the format.
- Drop them into a template. Your club colours, your crest, your sponsors. The fixtures populate the template automatically.
- Schedule to Instagram. Pick the time, usually Thursday or Friday for a Saturday game, and the graphic posts itself.
The difference between this and the Friday-night version every secretary knows is that you set it up once. After that, a new fixture in Play-Cricket becomes a draft graphic without anyone touching Canva at 10pm.
Why can't you post straight from Play-Cricket to Instagram?
Play-Cricket has no built-in button that sends a fixture to Instagram. It is a fixtures, results and scorecards platform, not a social media scheduler, so the two systems have to be joined by something in the middle. That middle tool is where your API key does its job.
This is also where clubs get into trouble without realising it. A few shortcuts look easy and are not compliant:
- Scraping the public page. Pulling fixtures off your Play-Cricket page with a bot breaches the platform terms, even when the page is public.
- Borrowing another club's key. Keys are issued per club. Using a key that belongs to a different club, or a vendor's shared "platform key", is not allowed.
- Handing over your Play-Cricket login. Your admin password is not an integration method. A tool that asks for it is asking for too much.
The clean route is the boring one: your club's own key, read-only, used by a tool that keeps it encrypted. That is the standard a county board or a safeguarding officer will be happy to see.
What does the club-authorised route actually involve?
The club-authorised route means every fixture that reaches Instagram came out of Play-Cricket through a key your club requested and controls. In practice it is a one-time setup followed by a season of automatic drafts.
A good integration does a handful of things and refuses to do the rest:
- Reads only your fixtures, results and scorecards, nothing it does not need
- Stores your key encrypted, in transit and at rest, never in client-side code or logs
- Refreshes after a reschedule, so a rained-off game that moves to Sunday updates the graphic
- Lets your secretary rotate the key without re-onboarding the whole club
Once that is in place, the weekly job shrinks to a glance. The graphic is already built from live data; you approve it or tweak a caption and it goes out. For a club running six or seven teams, that is the difference between an hour on a Friday and five minutes.
Worth knowing: the same fixture data also feeds your club website and your calendar feed. If you have already set up a fixtures export, you are most of the way there. See the sibling guide on exporting fixtures below.
How do you request your club's Play-Cricket API key?
You request a Play-Cricket API key by emailing ECB Play-Cricket Support from a club admin address and asking for your club's read-only API access. The key is granted to your club and tied to your club's data; in our experience, turnaround is usually a few working days.
Before you email, have these to hand:
- Your club's Play-Cricket site ID. It is in your admin URL, the part before
.play-cricket.com. - An admin email address. Requests from a club admin account get processed; requests from a random Gmail do not.
- A one-line reason. Something like "to display our fixtures on our own website and social channels" is enough.
One timing note. March and April are the busiest weeks of the cricket admin year, and key requests slow down accordingly. If you know you want this for the season, ask in February. Leaving it to the week before your opener is the most common reason clubs end up screenshotting fixtures for the first month.
What about Facebook, X and the rest?
The same fixture data covers every platform, because the data only has to come out of Play-Cricket once. After that, the graphic is resized and published wherever your members actually look, which for most grassroots clubs is Facebook first, Instagram close behind, then X for league and county reach.
A sensible order for a volunteer-run club:
- Facebook page. Still where the over-40s and the parents are. Your highest-reach channel at most village clubs.
- Instagram. Where the players and the younger membership engage. Stories work well for "who's playing" on the morning.
- X. Lower reach for a single club, but leagues and county accounts reshare fixture and result posts, which extends them.
You do not need to be everywhere at once. One fixture graphic, posted to Facebook and Instagram before Friday lunchtime, already puts most clubs ahead of the rivals four miles down the road.
Manual screenshot vs connected feed: which should you pick?
Pick the manual route if you post fixtures occasionally and do not mind redoing them after a reschedule. Pick the connected feed if you run several teams or want the weekend handled without thinking about it. Most clubs start manual and switch once the reschedules pile up.
| Factor | Manual screenshot | Connected feed (API key) |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | None | One key request, one setup |
| Weekly effort | Rebuild every graphic by hand | Approve a ready-made draft |
| Handles reschedules | No, the screenshot is stale | Yes, refreshes from live data |
| Multi-team clubs | Painful, one graphic per team | Scales cleanly across teams |
| Needs ECB API key | No | Yes, your club's own |
| Best for | The odd one-off post | A full season of weekends |
There is no wrong starting point. A single screenshot dropped into a branded template is perfectly compliant and gets a club its first decent fixture post. The connected feed is what you graduate to when doing it by hand stops being worth the Friday night.
How do you keep junior fixtures compliant?
Keep junior fixtures compliant by posting the fixture, not the children. A fixture graphic for an under-13s game shows the teams, the time and the venue, which is public, low-risk information. The care comes later, when results and photos involve named or pictured juniors, and that falls under ECB Safe Hands and UK GDPR.
For fixture posts specifically:
- Naming the opposition and the age group is fine; that information is already on Play-Cricket.
- Avoid putting a junior player's full name on a public "who's playing" graphic without parental consent.
- Keep the venue general where a meeting point might identify where children gather; "home" is usually enough.
A surprising number of clubs go quiet on junior content because they are unsure of the rules. According to [STAT NEEDS VERIFICATION: Boundary Social network survey, 2026], a large share of grassroots clubs post fewer junior graphics than senior ones for exactly this reason. Posting the fixture, while holding photos and full names to a consent process, lets you support the juniors without the worry.
Ready to stop screenshotting? Boundary Social builds your fixture, result and milestone graphics from your own Play-Cricket data and schedules them for you, every week. See the plans and pricing, or grab a free sample first.
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