A module of Picnic Cricket in the Park is set to see junior cricket return to Pemberton Park in Greerton during the coming summer season.

Pemberton Park. Photo: Google Earth.

While Greerton senior club cricket has undergone a renaissance in recent years, the junior game has languished in the wilderness.

Enter a partnership between the Western Bay Cricket Association and the Greerton Cricket Club to run Picnic Cricket in the Park at Pemberton Park during term four of the school year.

Last year, WBOP Cricket Association rolled out Cricket Picnic in the Park, in conjunction with the Mount Maunganui Cricket Club at Blake Park. The new initiative is aimed at introducing four to seven year old newbies to the game of cricket in a fun environment.

Picnic in the Park Cricket is about parents rocking up to Pemberton Park with a rug to sit on the bank and watch their children get immersed in the introductory steps of the great game.

The games will finish with a sausage sizzle where parents and their youngsters can mix and mingle with other families and perhaps relax on the bank with a BYO picnic meal.

The programme starts with the very basics of the game, starting with hitting, catching and bowling the ball. Step one is for the youngsters to learn to hit the ball from an elevated tee. Other first lessons include how to throw a ball and the windmill way to bowl at the stumps.

The eight-week Picnic Cricket in the Park module at Pemberton Park will progress in simple steps, where in the last two weeks the children will take part in six aside games to round out their introduction to cricket.

In term one of the 2015 school year, it is expected that many of the youngsters will progress to playing Saturday morning division three cricket at Greerton Cricket headquarters.

In order to make the Pemberton Park module affordable to all, the cost has been kept to just $10 for the eight weeks of the introduction programme.

A registration night is to be held at Pemberton Park on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 from 4pm to 5pm. Further registrations will be taken on the opening night on Friday, October 17.