Camden Cricket Club players, coaches, supporters and volunteers will have a new reason to feel safe at the ground this summer.
The club recently purchased a life-saving defibrillator after receiving a grant from Cricket Australia's Grassroots Cricket Fund (GCF).
The funding comes directly from Australia's professional cricketers, who united four years ago to deliver the GCF to make cricket more accessible to all Australians, with $30 million committed across multiple years.
Camden Cricket Club secretary Greg Little said the club saw the defibrillator as an essential item. "We saw it as an important health issue for our players and their parents," he said. "It's the sort of thing that is necessary to have, but it's also the sort of thing that we never hope that we have to use.
"Our main grounds are being refurbished and soon we'll have a amenities building to use so it will be stored there so that we can look after the health of players and their families." Mr Little said the club had had its eye on a defibrillator for some time. "We had grant opportunities come up for cricket equipment and COVID recovery grants that we applied for," he said. "But this grant was an opportunity to get the defibrillator which is an important thing to have for any grassroots club."
Defibrillators are devices that use electricity to re-start the heart or shock it back into its correct rhythm in the event a person goes into cardiac arrest. Mr Little said the ease with which the device could be used also appealed to the club.
"I am familiar with how to use the machine but the instructions are very clear so it's the kind of thing people can pick up and use without prior experience," he said. "It's obviously good to understand how they work, but it's not something that requires in-depth training."
The club caters for children as young as six years of age, through to senior players Mr Little says are in their 50s. "When you have junior players you also have their parents and carers who come along as well," he said. "Having a defibrillator isn't something that a lot of clubs think about but we saw it as essential to keeping people safe. "This is an important step to safeguard our players and their families."