A cricket club, which spent hundreds of pounds on a steel gate to keep out vandals, is planning to step up security after another attack.

Cross Roads and Daisy Hill Methodist CC spent £700 on the 20-foot-wide gate after young hooligans repeatedly drove cars on to the pitch and set them alight.

It also persuaded Bradford Council to put up a concrete bollard to block off another entrance to the ground at Lynfield Drive, Daisy Hill, Bradford, after the club was forced to abandon matches because of the vandalism.

Now, after a year of peace, club officials may have to fork out for new security after the gate was wrecked in another act of senseless damage.

Club chairman Graham Langton said they had been alerted by a report of half a dozen cars being on the cricket pitch on Sunday night.

He said: "They had smashed into the steel gate, flattened the post and pulled the concrete out and then driven over it and up the lane to the ground.

"Fortunately they hadn't gone up to the square. A neighbour had heard two or three loud bangs, looked out and saw a white car speed off.

"The gate has been badly damaged and we are open to attack again. We will have to try and get a makeshift repair, but we may have to spend another £600-700 on a new gate, only this time it will have to be even stronger.

"It is just mindless vandalism. It is sickening when you try to do your best and these animals try and destroy it.

"We have got local lads from the estate involved in the junior teams, but the people doing this don't want to play cricket. They just want to be a nuisance."

Mr Langton said he was contacting the police to try and get extra night-time patrols. And in the longer term the club - which has two senior and two junior teams and plays in the Bradford Central League - is looking to move to a more secure ground.

He said matches had previously had to be called off because burned out cars had been abandoned on the cricket square.

"We would turn up on Saturday afternoon and a burned out car was in the middle of the pitch from the night before.

"We've even had people riding across the pitch on quad bikes and motorbikes when we have been playing a match and when you say anything to them you just get a mouthful of abuse back.

"A lot of hard work goes into running a club like this. We are trying to improve the facilities all the time and make the ground more presentable and this sort of thing is just a kick in the teeth."