Baildon Cricket Club on a one-club ethos and paying players

The premise for this look at Baildon Cricket Club was their promotion to the Premier Division of the Bradford Premier League.

In the world of professional football, promotion to the Premier League comes with a chance to win millions and the need to strengthen your squad accordingly.

At the top level of club cricket in Yorkshire, there is expectation that you’ll pay your players in some way, shape or form but without the massive payday; the importance of local bragging rights notwithstanding.

So, how does a club like Baildon balance their finances and ambitions? I caught up with Baildon Cricket Club Chairman Ashley Free for a refreshingly frank Zoom call.

We kick with a bit of a dip into their recent history in terms of players Baildon sought to bring in to gradually add quality and depth in their promotion bid.

After lingering in mid-table of Division 1 of the Bradford Premier League, 2024 was a break-out year. It coincided with two spin signings who had proven experience at the top.

Twin spin with Seif and Sharp

Seif Hussain was a former second-teamer who went to Bankfoot and returned to Jenny Lane (Baildon’s home ground) for last season. His 57 wickets at an average of 12 proved instrumental, as did Cameron Sharp 50 wickets (the left-arm spinner came from Methley’s first team).

Retention is half the battle and Baildon also have captain Kev McDermott at the top of the batting order again after his 926 runs last year.

McDermott’s opening partner in 2025 will be Hector Bowerman, signed from the Aire-Wharfe League’s Follifoot where he scored 800+ runs. As part of Baildon’s winter recruitment, Will Smith from Settle CC joins to add his left-arm rockets and batting firepower down the order.

Speaking of which, Callum Rainger (below) is Baildon’s overseas player from Waratah Mayfield. An unbeaten knock of 109 off 50 balls in the Australian summer showed how explosive he can be, allied with what Waratah described on Instagram as ‘cheeky leggies’.

The first-team bowling at Baildon will be spearheaded by Abdullah Ijaz who arrives from Bowling Old Lane where he bagged over 40 wickets in Division One.

It speaks to a mood of confidence that the newly-promoted side firstly have what it takes to stay in the Premier Division and then take it from there.

While squad depth is more nuanced than just who signs on the dotted line from elsewhere (such as developing juniors), the bottom line is the, er, bottom line.

Those with deeper pockets can use that to attract the top talent. Baildon’s Ashley Free told me:

“We’re not a big paying club. We have never have been, even when we won the Premier Division in 2009, 2008 and 2009. We weren’t paying a lot of money then, and we certainly don’t pay a lot of money now.”

He added: “I would say that the money we bring in as a club, before any expenditure, will be less than what clubs will pay players. That’s the difference and that’s what we’re up against in the Premier Division.”

We discuss sustainability and a few cautionary tales from the league (club names won’t be mentioned here) where there is a mass influx of players, sometimes repeatedly, to engineer fast-tracked success.

The problem with that is that short-term gain doesn’t lend itself to loyalty, building a club identity that everyone backs and can often cause friction and you end up losing the stalwarts who are the real heart and soul of a place.

For many clubs, if they don’t have a wealthy backer, the income arrives from sponsors, along with bar income and events but Baildon’s bar takings are shared with the rugby section, invested into the ground and are not a golden goose.

So, what’s the ambition for 2025? I’m always interested to see how clubs set up those goals publicly at the start of a season.

The traditional approach is to view the men’s first team as the pinnacle due to it being the highest standard in the club and therefore the focus of much of the attention.

I’d say this is outdated. But I still see it often enough through the ways teams are discussed and profiled on social media and where other sections of clubs are ignored.

(That said, there are plenty of examples out there where clubs clearly champion all areas of their set-up online like Doncaster Town, St Chad’s Broomfield and Crossflatts, to pick a couple off the top of my head).

Ash told me that the first-team staying up isn’t the only focus for Baildon:

“Staying in the Premier Division is not the be-all and end-all.  We wouldn’t say, ‘we don’t think our team is going to be good enough. So what we’ll do is we’ll just get 11 new players regardless of where they live or how loyal they are to the club.’ We don’t do anything like that and would never plan to.”

That said, it is highly competitive when it comes to squad refinement year-to-year and Baildon did what everyone does in terms of seeking out quality additions who might have wanted to play in the Premier Division once that was sealed last September.

One aspect of assembling and maintaining a squad at a club that pays is keeping everyone happy. A recent article of mine about Scarborough Cricket Club first eleven dropping out of the YPLN was one of our most popular of the year and it certainly taps into that broader debate.

“We don’t have those that are on vastly different amounts. I think people understand that there are players in the team who will add more than others. We do have to be a little bit careful in disclosing what people get – but there is a general understanding that the better players are better paid.”

“There are some players who don’t get paid in the first team and they understand the reasons why they don’t get paid – and there’ll come a point where we want to reward people’s loyalty.”

Tax implications when paying players

Naturally, paying players come with certain responsibilities, not least to HMRC on the issue of tax and Ash shared that over the years, it occasionally surprised a player or two:

“There have been a few awkward conversations with players around paying tax as we do everything through the books and we don’t give people money in brown envelopes!”

Onto other areas of business and Baildon Cricket Club again have the support of Forever Granite who will adorn the front of the playing shirts. Meanwhile, Home-Care Perfection (based in Shipley) are the sponsors of the juniors’ shirts as well as being on the back of the seniors’ too.

Easipay Carpets are another principal sponsor; so if the ground staff at Jenny Lane are looking to transform a muddy deck into a slab of granite or need a spare carpet for junior games on the outfield, they know just the right people.

The focus of this has been the Bradford Premier League first team at Baildon but it’s a club that’s proud of having breadth and diversity in terms of four senior Saturday sides, a women’s team and a mixed ability group.

Ash reckoned one of the most difficult challenges they’ve had over the last few years has been being able to get four teams out on a Saturday:

“I captain the fourth team and there were some times last year when we’d get to Tuesday night and we’d have three players!”

Mixed Ability Cricket saw an eight-week project back in 2023 coaching those with disabilities and autistic people really take off and they had over 40 participants for a July session last year.

It’s a partnership that’s clearly working between national disability charity United Response, Baildon Cricket Club and International Mixed Ability Sport (IMAS).

It’s a reminder that for all the perfectly understandable talk of transfers and trophies, a cricket club is really all about community.

At Baildon, they have a Beer and Gin Festival (4-6 July 2025) that is a key fundraiser and also a poignant reminder. The event is a chance to remember Simon Heginbotham who founded the Festival and lost his battle with depression a few years ago.

Baildon also have an annual memory walk to raise funds for the mental health charity MIND in Simon’s memory; an event that doubtless brings the club together to remember one of their own.

My thanks to Ash for shining a light on life at Baildon Cricket Club – a theme that we returned to more than once was the sense of everyone being equally valued and that collective identity should stand them in good stead for another busy summer of cricket.