HOWZAT! Members of a cricket club have bowled over their fans by stripping off for a Calendar Girls-style photo shoot.

Egerton Cricket Club’s first and second team players discarded their whites to pose for a number of tongue-in-cheek pictures to raise money for the club's Junior Foundation.

Caroline Finch, an assistant child protection worker who is part of the club’s Junior Foundation, came up with the idea. She said: “We were thinking of what we could do for Christmas and I thought ‘why not do something risky and ask our members to pose naked for a calendar?’

“It was a lot of fun putting this together. The lads who joined in had the right mindset and we all had a laugh. There was a lot of covering of the eyes on some of the photos!”

One of the cricketers featured on the calendar is Mrs Finch's son Ben, aged 19, who plays as an all-rounder for both the first and second teams.

Most grown men would be forgiven for feeling bashful at the prospect of being photographed naked — but Mrs Finch said that her son and some of the club’s other members were only too happy to strip for the calendar.

She said: “My son is quite proud of his body so I don’t think was a problem for him. Some of the older men didn’t tell their wives until we put the calendar out.”

The club has made 100 copies of the calendar and has sold about 60 so far.

It hopes to raise more than £200 from sales of the calendar, which it will use to purchase a bowling machine for its junior and senior teams.

The pictures for the calendar were taken by Wanda Amesbury, a photographer from Egerton.

She said: "We took the pictures in early November on a chilly Sunday afternoon. The lads were great and after a little warming up they soon lost their inhibitions. I was pleased with the results."

Egerton Cricket Club needs £1,200 to buy a bowling machine and has so far raised about £100 from sales of the calendar and £700 from a recent Christmas market event.