Carmel & District Cricket Club
| Founded | 1965 |
|---|---|
| Website | www.carmelcc.co.uk |
| Address | Pen-y-Gelli Cricket Ground |
| Club captain | Barry Mcgauty |
| Club established for | Cricket |
Carmel & District Cricket Club is a team based in Flintshire North Wales who play competitive cricket in the North Wales Cricket League. They are the only Welsh village team to have defeated an international cricket team, and have staged several matches between national teams at their Pen-y-Gelli ground.
Carmel was founded as the result of a public meeting for those interested in the formation of a cricket club held at Carmel Village Hall in September 1965. The main people behind the meeting were Norman Cross-Parry, Meirion Griffith and Bill Parker.
The club initially played their matches at the Golch ground, opposite the Halfway House pub on the old A55 road, now the A5026, in the village of Carmel between Lloc and Holywell.
The club's first ever match took place against a now defunct team made of workers from BJ Construction. The inaugural season also saw matches against the likes of Abergele, St Asaph and Northop Hall.
Eventually the Golch site was up for sale and the club successfully applied to the Sports Council and Delyn Borough Council for grant-aid to re-establish the club on another ground.
The one chosen for the new ground was a large 7.23-acre (29,300 m2) site with good quality soil for a cricket square located some two miles (3 km) away from the existing ground. Carmel proudly began their first season at their new Pen-y-Gelli ground in 1991 and Conwy CC provided the opponents in the inaugural match. Backed by ambitious club secretary Stan Taylor Carmel continued to develop their facilities at the ground and in July 1998 former England cricket international Tom Cartwright and Mrs Dorothy Taylor opened the new pavilion.
Carmel have also made recent forays into international cricket, which began with the Iron Curtain Cricket Tour in 2007 under the captaincy of Timothy Abraham, who had been inspired by the Harry Thompson book Penguins Stopped Play. The touring side played Estonia in Tallinn and Latvia in Riga. Carmel defeated Estonia in the final of the Helsinki Sixes tournament in Finland but lost twice in longer matches against the team.
But it was a match against Russia in the Russian National Basbeball Stadium in Moscow which was the highlight of the tour where they became the first touring side to ever visit the city.
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