Three or four years ago the club was renting out its ground to local leagues teams on Sundays. This year, we decided to try and generate more activity ourselves on Sundays, creating more opportunities for members and using the assets of the club more effectively for the other half of the weekend. The fact that Sunday Smash games only take two and a half hours to play has made it popular with players, and has also meant we have been able to schedule it with other activities to keep the club busy all day on a Sunday.

On a typical Sunday we will have junior matches until 1pm, then the Sunday Smash from 2pm. Some days we also put on a softball tournament. On 13^th June Olton CC were kind enough to agree to delaying the start of our Sunday Smash match until 5pm so we could all watch England play Croatia in the Euros beforehand. Starting at 5pm, we were still done by 7.30pm and there was a great atmosphere all day at the club.

We set out to make the Sunday Smash different and exciting. We had new kit, a new logo, a new team name, a live DJ, a BBQ – top to bottom, it’s a proper do! The team is called TACH Thunder and we bought coloured kit for the first time. The demand for the kit was incredibly high. Thirty adults bought the kit either to play in or just to be involved on the day. Some people wanted to play in the Sunday Smash team just so they had an opportunity to wear the TACH Thunder kit! We also had another 15 boys and girls in the junior section buy the Sunday Smash shirts as enthusiasm for the competition had spread through the whole club. There was a sense this was something new and exciting, so people wanted to be involved.

With our club DJ John Preece in his blue tent on the boundary, it really feels like you are playing professional cricket when you walk out onto the pitch. John does a fantastic job to make the game feel like a proper occasion, with his perfectly researched tracks for every eventuality.

The Sunday Smash is a positive addition to our cricket offering at the club. We have one member, Paul Townsend, who is a policeman with a young family so Sunday Smash is the only form of cricket he is realistically able to play due to time commitments. It is also nice for his family to come down to the club and watch him play.

Sundays also suit some people better because of their work commitments on Saturdays. Our team-mate Conor Townsend works as a cameraman at sporting events most Saturdays, so the Sunday Smash provides the opportunity for him to play cricket at the weekend.

There is a huge demand to play in the Sunday Smash team; we used 17 players in our first two matches. Many of them are enjoying the freedom to play in a more laid-back environment than in their usual Saturday fixtures. Teams are a mix of first and second team players with some younger players getting opportunities too. In one of our Sunday Smash matches, the highest run scorers were Ted Clarke and Oscar Newell, who are both 15 years old. Our younger players really benefit from the chance to play alongside more experienced cricketers.

We still have a Sunday 40 over team which plays friendly matches at our ground when the Sunday Smash team have away fixtures. This means there is also an opportunity for younger players who want to play some longer format cricket, but in a more Sunday social environment. As a result, we have 22 members of the club playing on those Sundays, which is great for cricket at the club.

The Sunday Smash has invigorated the club on a Sunday. The club is busy all weekend and we have never had a better year behind the bar (despite Covid restrictions) due to the introduction of the Sunday Smash, and also All Stars on a Friday night. This can only be good news for cricket clubs, particularly as we come out of Covid and lots of clubs are trying to build back their income.

The Sunday Smash has definitely brought people together. We are in it to take part and if we do well that’s great, but it’s not our overriding aim. The combination of junior cricket, softball cricket and the Sunday Smash makes the club much more accessible to families on a Sunday.

Once The Hundred starts, I think lots more clubs will see how good 100 ball cricket is and want to get involved in the Sunday Smash. It offers something new to complement our other formats. We set the scoreboard to 100 and count down the balls so it is very different - but ‘good different’. If the Sunday Smash was just normal T20 format, I don’t think it would be as popular.

My advice for The Hundred players is that it’s a fast-paced exciting game and things can change really quickly. You’re never out of it, and you always feel involved. The fact that the first 25 balls are in powerplay, with only two fielders out, enables batters to play with freedom. There are also lots of new tactical considerations for the fielding side around balls being bowled in batches of 10 or 5.