Wroughton Wranglers Cricket Club has thrown its weight behind the Poo Free Parish campaign, a Wroughton and Wichelstowe Parish Council initiative launched earlier this year to persuade dog owners to clear up after their pets on the parish's parks and footpaths.
The club becomes the latest local organisation to sign up, joining a growing roster of supporters who have agreed to spread the message through posters, social media and, it is understood, general tutting. The council says the campaign aims to protect green spaces that are increasingly shared by walkers, families and, in the Wranglers' case, people trying to field at deep square leg without incident.
Club officials are understood to be taking the pledge seriously, having reportedly reassigned one fielding position purely to scanning the outfield before play, a role previously occupied by whoever fancied a rest.
A scoring system is said to be under discussion, in which any wicket taken within five yards of an unclaimed deposit is awarded as a maiden over, regardless of what the batsman actually did.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she remembered when a cricket pitch was kept clean by men with a roller and a bit of pride, not a parish council campaign with a name like a seaside ice cream van. 'Ron used to say the only thing you should find in the outfield was a ball,' she said, adding that she was not one to gossip but had noticed a certain spaniel two doors down had form.
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the story had given him a new way of describing his firm's open plan office, where an unclaimed sandwich has sat under Julie's desk since August without anyone claiming responsibility. 'We call that one a silent slip catch,' he said, before clarifying that he meant it as a metaphor, not a health and safety update.
The parish council is expected to announce further sporting recruits in due course. The outfield, for now, remains unclaimed.