‘Your report should have reflected Wray Crescent cricket pitch’s history’

• YOUR article (They should have asked us: Howzat? June 18) appeared to merely ape talking points off the Friends of Wray Crescent website.

The Friends of Wray Crescent claim Islington Council’s plans “effectively transform Wray Crescent Park into a cricket pitch”.

The claim is false and your report should have reflected Wray Crescent cricket pitch’s history since the 1980s and that the council’s plans simply repair the dilapidated pitch and condemned pavilion building into fit-for-purpose facilities.

Why is this even news? Perhaps an accurate headline of “Wray Crescent cricket pitch transformed into decent cricket pitch” lacks controversy.

In 2018 when the council spent £350,000 upgrading the football pitches at Whittington Park, Paradise Park and Rosemary Gardens, where was the outrage? How dare the council upgrade our public sport facilities!

Now the council is using a lesser amount of their own money to repair the borough’s last remaining public cricket pitch and the Tribune disingenuously leads with a headline about green space being taken away from the community.

I’m a local resident, parent, and mediocre-at-best amateur cricketer. Last Sunday afternoon my son and I walked to Wray and found the pitch empty.

It was glorious. We had the run of the place for an hour, then two other families with young children arrived and we played together.

It demonstrated two things. First, that the large lockdown crowds seen on Wray will no longer appear as our normal lives and activities return.

The second is that Wray Crescent cricket pitch is a unique space that fulfils its purpose as a sport venue when booked once or twice a week, while already allowing open access to green space at all other times.

Players at Wray recognise this, and we happily pick up beer tins and cigarette butts in the outfield, or worse (a few years ago a wheelchair was rolled onto the pitch and set ablaze, which required repairs to the artificial wicket), because that is the nature of urban cricket in public space.

I’d never played cricket in my life before I moved to Islington and discovered Wray Crescent. Cricket at Wray has been a physical, mental, and social lifeline for me and my family and it’s a massive relief for us that sport is now back.

This attack on the Wray Crescent cricket pitch should therefore be seen for what it is: an attack on the ability of the council to provide access to sport for the public benefit in a general sense.

The Friends of Wray Crescent director is correct when he mentions a land-grab. But he needs to be honest that it’s him doing the grabbing, not the council or any of Islington’s cricketers.

Your reporting should have seen through that clearly enough and explained Friends of Wray Crescent’s shameful attempt to strip away public cricket from Islington borough once and for all.

PAUL DAVIS
Jutland Close, N19