Former England Blind Cricketer & long term BCEW Business & Competitions Director Dave Gavrilovic has been appointed as a trustee of The Primary Club, VI cricket’s biggest funder.
Dave has 20 years experience as a charity trustee & has held roles as Chair, Vice Chair & Treasurer at different times for British Blind Sport, BCEW & Northants Steelbacks VICC. In 2011 Dave received The Torch Trophy Trust Award for his volunteer work in sport & in 2016 he was awarded Outstanding Contribution to Disability Cricket at the ECB Natwest OSCA’s.
Dave’s appointment, together with legend of visually impaired sport, Metro’s Mike Brace, means that there are now two VI sports people on the Primary Club’s board of trustees.
On his appointment Dave said, “It’s a real honour to have this opportunity to play a part in The Primary Club’s amazing work supporting VI Cricket & VI Sport in general. I’ve benefited from Primary Club funded projects since the age of seven so am delighted that I can now give something back.”
In 2018 The Primary Club were inducted into the Blind Cricket Hall of Fame for their incredible work, the charity’s history is below:
The Primary Club is one of those slightly odd, very English, institutions that happened almost by accident. The Club was started at Beckenham Cricket Club, Kent, in 1955 by Ralph Lilly, Keith Patterson, Norman Patterson and Mike Sheeres, four slightly inebriated young bachelors, depressed by their own performance with the bat. They vowed to support F R Brown’s Fund for Blind Cricketers. Membership was initially limited to those out first ball in matches for or against Beckenham and in nine years, the Club raised £45.
As it became increasingly apparent that there could be a real role for The Primary Club, what began almost as a joke became a serious, if idiosyncratic, charity which grew rapidly. In 1973 the BBC’s Test Match Special team, in particular the late Brian Johnston, started to talk about the Club on the radio and members were recruited from cricket-playing countries all over the world.
There are now more than 3,000 members who contribute regularly. Since it began, the Primary Club has raised well over £5 million. It is the major supporter of the thriving network of VI cricket clubs in the UK but, although its origins and heart are in cricket, it also supports a wide range of other VI sports.
In the last two years, with the help of substantial legacies from the late Kenneth James and Ethel Murray, the Primary Club has made record grants totalling £670,000 to clubs and organisations throughout the UK including futsal, baseball, dance, goalball, golf, skiing, swimming, sailing, tandem cycling and the new sport of Showdown, as well as cricket.
Originally all Club donations went to Dorton House School, run by the Royal London Society for the Blind. In recent years the Club has given considerable support to British Blind Sport and has also provided funds for sporting and recreational facilities to over 50 schools and clubs for the visually impaired all over the UK.
In 1997 Derek Underwood MBE, one of England’s finest cricketers, who began his cricket career in Beckenham, became Patron of the Club. Derek sadly passed away on 15 April 2024. On 1 June 2024, Stuart Broad CBE became the new Patron.
More information about the Primary Club can be found at www.primaryclub.org.
