Welcome to a new season… and a new look
We are incredibly excited to kick things off not just with cricket, but with a major off-pitch upgrade: our brand-new Club website is officially live. Redesigned from the ground up, the new Rayleigh CC website has been built to bring everything together in one place. You can now enjoy live Play-Cricket integration directly on the site, meaning fixtures, results, statistics, and historic scorecards are just a click away in our brand-new Match Centre. We’ve also introduced dedicated team and player profile pages, plus seamless YouTube live stream integration so you can watch matchday action right from the homepage. It’s a completely new look for a new year – head over and have an explore!
AVailability Reminder
The Club has decided to introduce an availability tracking tool for the 2026 season called Spond. Spond is an easy to use and free to download app for your smartphone (both iOS and Android) which is already used by our youth teams.
If you want to play adult cricket on a Saturday, please register for Spond and respond to availability requests. Nearly 80% of all adult members are now signed up, so please help our captains to plan for the upcoming weeks as we head into the league season.
Fantasy Cricket returns
Think you’re the best selector at the club? It’s time to put your money where your mouth is. The Rayleigh CC Fantasy Cricket league has officially launched for the 2026 season! Pick your squad, manage your budget, and compete against your teammates to see whose draft picks actually deliver on the pitch.
As usual, player values have been determined by comparing performance and matches played in 2025 and compared against fellow members of the Club. An AI tool has been used to remove bias, using the Play Cricket API to pull all playing data. Negative weekly points have been increased for 2026, including:
Outdoor Training
The grounds team has done a phenomenal job getting the outfield looking immaculate. With friendlies fast approaching, it is officially time to get back to outdoor training.
Training for our youth teams has already returned – thank you to our coaches for working around the current unavailability of the nets.
For the seniors and women’s sections, training will officially return next week (w/c 13th April). Please note, the nets are still pending maintenance and may not be ready on Monday. In that case, the outfield will be used for fielding training instead.
The schedule for the remainder of the summer is as follows:
*Older youth players and women who are looking to play adult Saturday cricket are very welcome to attend on Mondays and Thursdays
Fitness & Conditioning Training: A Strong Start!
A massive shoutout to everyone who attended our first pre-season fitness and conditioning session, with local PT Ellie Newton! It was a huge hit and a fantastic way to start shaking off the winter rust. If you missed out, don’t worry – there are plenty more sessions on the schedule, running every Wednesday from 6pm throughout April.
