Gladstone Ramblers are a small country cricket club located in South Australia's Mid North. Gladstone competes in the Rocky River Cricket Association which consists of Laura, Crystal Brook, Redhill and Georgetown. Gladstone has 4 different grades of cricket, A grade, U16s,U13s and also Milo Cricketers. The Rocky River has been struggling for numbers in the A grade and U16s competitions and so has Gladstone. Although, we have 23 U13s and nearly 50 Milo Cricketers.

Indoor Cricket

To try and get more people interested in cricket, Chook Harslett has set up a mini indoor cricket competition that consists of 6 teams. The competition happens every 2 weeks during cricket season on a Thursday night. The 6 teams are not always the same but the captains remain the same. It is a fun but still competitive competition with player stats and trophies at the end of the season for the winning team and also the best batsmen and bowler. Each team is required to have at least one girl in their team of six, which we figured is a great way to get more girls involved in the great game of cricket.

The rules are pretty simple, we use plastic bats, balls and stumps and we play inside our stadium on the netball courts. Hitting the walls of the stadium on the full is out so it is a great way to teach people not to hit the ball in the air. There is a big black net behind the bowler and if you hit it on the full you get 15 runs, a good way to teach people to hit straight.

There are six players in a team and all players must bowl only 2 overs each, and every batsman gets 4 overs per batting pair. The order and the field positions are completely up to the captain with no restrictions on what needs to happen. There is only one umpire which is always Chook.

Stadium

At Ewart oval ( Gladstone main oval) we now have a big stadium with two netball courts and full facilities including football change rooms, other change rooms, toilets, kitchen, bar, function room and storage rooms. The cricket club has benefited majorly upon the completion of the stadium with an indoor net which is used if too wet or too hot to train outside. It is also awesome for indoor cricket and a lot of money is raised by the cricket club on sales over the bar on a Thursday night.

 Looking Forward

Looking forward the Gladstone cricket club would love to see cricket flourishing in not just Gladstone but in the Rocky River. We are also looking to upgrade our training facilities with a new net for outside and also some practice nets next to the oval so that we don't have to spend half of training fetching balls from out in the trees.