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Lord 'bowled over' by Mulgrave green
LORD Normanby officially opened Lythe's plush new £75,000 bowling green and cricket nets in front of a sizeable crowd of delighted villagers on Friday.
The additions are part of the Sport Mulgrave development which brought a 700,000 cricket and football facility next door to the village primary school.
The first stage of the sports complex, including flattened, re-seeded cricket and football grounds with a pavilion, was opened by former Newcastle, Liverpool and England star Peter Beardsley in 2007.
Chairman of the committee set up to arrange the plans, Mulgrave Community Sports Association's Dougie Raine, was delighted with the development, which has been nine years in the making.
"It's been a long haul since 2001.
"We've had a few traumatic times trying to gain funding but, as you can see today, it's immaculate and we're quite proud of it.
"The Football Foundation and the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) have been tremendous with the football field and nets.
"Without them and the help of the Normanby Trust we couldn't have achieved anything like this."
Dougie (67) found an ally after the foot-and-mouth outbreak which devastated the local area and badly affected the local football and cricket sides who used nearby fields.
Sports-mad Lord Normanby, owner of the Mulgrave Estate, agreed to help out and officially opened the facilities by bowling the first ball on the green, before facing a few deliveries in the new-look nets and cutting the ribbon nearby.
It wasn't an altogether unusual experience for the MCC-member and Middlesbrough season-ticket holder, however.
"I did used to bowl for Mulgrave", the popular peer admits, before commenting on the development as a whole.
"It's been an amazing community effort, everyone's been involved.
"People like Dougie Raine have been wonderful and to have this facility next to the school, well it all makes sense. This isn't just for the village of Lythe either, it's for the wider community which covers a large area."
Andrew Watson, director of Development for the Yorkshire Cricket Board and a close consultant to the ECB on the project agrees, added: "We're looking at forming an under-11 league, running as far as Whitby and Scarborough and we want Mulgrave to lead with that.
"We want more level two cricket coaches and plan to have more courses in the area.
"Mulgrave are the only club we've funded twice because of the community investment we've seen here, they've increased participation hugely."
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Weather for Whitby
Saturday 11 February 2012
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Temperature: -0 C to 1 C
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