Scarborough's future resting on outside aid

The club say the North Marine Road venue requires a significant cash injection to ensure its facilities remain up to first-class standard.

Scarborough has a five-year staging agreement with Yorkshire which runs out after the end of next summer.

The East coast club are trying to negotiate a new 10-year arrangement but acknowledge they have to improve their facilities, which were last year heavily criticised in the national press.

Yorkshire, who are understood to receive around 40,000 a year from Scarborough for the privilege of hosting two County Championship matches and two one-day games, say they are desperate to keep first-class cricket at their one remaining outground.

The county have played there since 1874, while the venue is home to the world famous Scarborough Cricket Festival which attracts thousands of visitors each year and this summer enters its 124th year.

But with Yorkshire hardly awash with cash and in the throes of building a new 21m pavilion at Headingley Carnegie, which will help preserve international cricket at their Leeds headquarters, Scarborough are reliant on outside assistance.

The club hope to receive plenty of support from the local community during a special NatWest CricketForce fundraising weekend at the end of March, when volunteers and businesses will be urged to help give the venue a lick of paint and a general sprucing up, but grants and investment are sorely required.

Yorkshire's chief executive Stewart Regan commented: "The bottom line is that we want to keep playing at Scarborough for many years to come.

"The Scarborough Festival is a wonderful institution and needs to be preserved and protected as one of the jewels in the crown of Yorkshire sport.

"At the same time, if first-class cricket is going to remain at Scarborough we have to ensure the ground is fully fit for purpose.

"We need to have a proper development plan in place to improve the facilities for our loyal supporters.

"Ideally we'd have a bottomless pit of money that we could throw at this problem, but that simply isn't the case.

"There's a lot of money being invested into Category A grounds at present and one consequence of that is that it's making the facilities at outgrounds look a little bit tired.

"We're having to redevelop Headingley to help it retain its international status and the gap is widening between the facilities there and at Scarborough.

"Ideally we want as many businesses as possible to help us improve the facilities at Scarborough because not only does cricket at Scarborough have great appeal for our supporters, it also has a huge economic impact for the whole of East Yorkshire."

In addition to ongoing talks with Scarborough Cricket Club, Yorkshire are in discussions with Scarborough Council and

Welcome To Yorkshire in an effort to generate funds for the venue.

All first-class counties are under pressure from the England and Wales Cricket Board to ensure the facilities of grounds are kept up to scratch, and although the ECB say there is no immediate threat to North Marine Road, neither Yorkshire nor Scarborough are resting on their laurels.

Gordon Hollins, the ECB's head of venue parnerships, said: "When an outground becomes tired it's usually the seating that becomes tired.

"I'm not saying that's the case at Scarborough, and the ECB don't have any problems with the venue, although we welcome any developments that might improve the facilities at North Marine Road."

Scarborough Cricket Club chairman Bill Mustoe said: "There certainly aren't any major problems with Scarborough but we do want to create a better spectator experience.

"We want to modernise and upgrade the toilet facilities and we also want to make improvements to the seating.

"But I'm very confident that first-class cricket will remain at the venue for many years to come and we hope to have the new deal with Yorkshire in place by the end of next month.

"We've got the largest fixed-seating venue outside of the Test grounds with 10,400 seats, while some 28,000 people watched first-class cricket at North Marine Road last year which shows the huge levels of interest in cricket at Scarborough."

This year, North Marine Road hosts Yorkshire's County Championship games against Essex and Hampshire plus one-day matches against Northamptonshire and Middlesex.