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St Georges Cricket Ground
Historically, Warwickshire County Cricket Club (WCCC) played two home matches outside Edgbaston each year. Three core venues were used:
Griff & Coton, Nuneaton
Courtaulds, Coventry
Coventry and North Warwickshire Cricket Club (CNWC), Coventry
The Nuneaton Ground is unusable for lack of investment; Courtaulds has gone.
There is a significant opportunity here for an international cricket venue, perhaps leveraged on St George. The CNWC site would need relatively little investment in infrastructure to, at least, render it a viable proposition for WCCC matches.
This is a marketing issue. Underwriting would be required initially to provide the guaranteed income level required by the WCCC to move matches from Edgbaston. However, we have proved effective at marketing events such as Godiva in recent years, and it should be relatively easy to market such matches.
This could lead to celebrity cricket matches in Coventry. Celebrity is a sure fire, fast-track mechanism to deliver the kind of sparkle that Coventry needs to transform perceptions from within and without.
There were a significant number of proposals arguing that we should better leverage Coventrys links with St.George and the Dragon and some concern that we need to develop a strategy that addresses issues such as nationalism and the claims of other cities to the story.
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