Claire Green makes history at Shrewsbury Cricket Club
Claire Green insists she’s proud to be the first woman appointed chairperson of Shrewsbury Cricket Club.
The Shrewsbury-born accountant, a loyal servant to the club for many years, has stepped forward to take on the role at London Road after the long-serving Richard Chapman opted to stand down.
Green said she has met women who are presidents of cricket clubs but had not heard of any elsewhere who occupy the role of chair. It’s certainly a first for Shrewsbury, a club formed in 1839.
Green, a popular figure at London Road, stressed she is excited about Shrewsbury’s future and hopes to further raise the profile of a club whose first team has twice been crowned national champions and also become a leading force in the widely respected Birmingham & District Cricket League.
“It’s a big honour for me personally and I’m really proud to take on the role,” she said. “I know it will be difficult to follow in Richard’s footsteps but I’m looking forward to the hard work the role involves.
“I’ve been associated with the club all my life. My dad, Mike, used to play for the club and I would come with him to matches from the age of four or five.
“I then became second team scorer when I was 10 – and the lads will laugh as I kept making them aware but last year marked my 30th year as club scorer, a lot of them for the seconds and, in more recent years, for the first team.”
Green served on the Shrewsbury committee for 20 years from the age of 16 before taking a break to concentrate on a three-year spell as treasurer of Shropshire County Cricket Club.
But she added: “I’ve now relinquished that role to put all my focus into this one. We’ve got a number of new faces on the committee so I want to be that figurehead if I can to take the club forward.
“I want to get to know everything about the club and all the members. My objective is to continue to raise the profile of the club.
“We’ve come a long way as a club but there’s a lot of changes for this year – with new first and second team captains in Ben Stebbings and Tom Somerville – so we’re not standing still.”
As well as concentrating on her new role as club chairperson, Green plans to continue as first team scorer ahead of what promises to be another exciting season.
“This time last year we had huge changes to our 1st XI with a number of players no longer able to play having moved away from the county,” she added. “We did manage to bring in some good players, with Ollie Westbury perhaps the stand out.
“We thought if we could finish mid-table that it would be a good season, but we picked up after not a very good start and managed to finish third, not many points behind Kidderminster in second, so I was chuffed for the lads. They really came into their own second half of the season and there’s some young and talented players coming through.”
Pictured: Claire Green, Shrewsbury Cricket Club’s new chairperson, at London Road.
