GROUND maintenance equipment worth more than £30,000 has been stolen in an early morning raid at Stourport Cricket Club.

Burglars broke into the cricket club, in Harold Davies Drive, on Wednesday last week at about 5am.

CCTV footage has been viewed by West Mercia Police which indicates that the thieves drove a black vehicle, thought to be a four-wheel drive, along a riverside footpath after breaking a padlock off a gate belonging to Stourport Swifts Football Club.

They drove across a rugby pitch to a storage shed at the cricket club where it is believed one of the offenders was already waiting, having loaded up the equipment on to a single axle Ifor Williams trailer.

The trailer has a green sign saying Grass Roots Cricket on the side along with the Channel Four logo. The thieves left the scene by the same route along the riverside within ten minutes of arrival.

The equipment that was stolen included a SISIS Auto Rotorake Mark 5 worth £9,800, a 36-inch diesel cylinder mower, a Ransomes Greenspro 51/20 mower, a Honda self-propelled mower and a petrol driven grass strimmer.

Investigating officer PC Lee Halford said: “The stolen equipment and trailer is worth more than £30,000 and it is a blow for the cricket club which faces having to use money that had been earmarked for new training nets for the grass roots programme for kids to instead buy replacement ground maintenance machinery.

“This appears to have been a well planned operation and we urgently want to hear from anyone who may have seen the vehicle involved, or its occupants, or if they saw anyone hanging around acting suspiciously in that area in the days before the burglary.

“The trailer and some of the stolen machinery is quite distinctive so if you have been offered any of the items for sale or believe you know where it is being kept then please get in touch.”

Witnesses or anyone with information should call PC Halford on the non-emergency number 101, quoting incident reference 114-S-240713, or call Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.