A MILLIONAIRE businessman has been revealed as the new owner of one of Derbyshire's best-known village cricket clubs.

Steve Binch has pledged to let Ockbrook and Borrowash Cricket Club carry on as normal.

He outbid the club for the land, in Victoria Avenue, Ockbrook, which sold last week at auction for £155,000.

It was feared the new owner, whose identity had been a mystery, might force the club to leave and try to get planning permission for housing.

But Mr Binch, 46, told the Derby Telegraph: "As far as I'm concerned the club can remain running as usual.

"At the end of the day I have young kids and I live in the village myself; why would I want to alienate myself? It's about putting something back into the village."

The new owner, who lives at Hopwell Hall, off the A52, also took over the Wilmot Arms at Borrowash last year with business partner and Ockbrook builder Carlo Chiarella.

"We're not asset-strippers," said Mr Binch. "The pub, which we have spent a fortune on refurbishing, is testament to that. If we were asset-strippers we would have bulldozed that and built on the land."

Mr Binch, who founded Tamworth-based car rental firm Drive Assist in 1992, was rated among Britain's wealthiest people on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2008, when he was said to have a personal fortune of £65m.

He said he had seen the land was up for up sale after driving past the ground and spotting an auction board. A friend had actually bid for him at the auction in London.

There were "15 or 16 other bidders", he said, which was why he paid such a high price. He wanted to add the land to his property "portfolio".

But he will not be a regular spectator at games, He said that although his son was a cricket fan and played at Risley, he himself only went down to the Ockbrook club once a year, for the annual Bonfire Night display.

Ockbrook and Borrowash Cricket Club, which won the Beechwood Derbyshire Premier League title last season, has played on the ground for 160 years.

The guide price for the 4.7-acre site, which was previously owned for decades by Burton-based pub group Punch Taverns, had been as low as £50,000.

Lyndsey Morgan, chairman of the cricket club, said: "We are delighted to find out that our new landlord is a local man and we are excited about working with him to secure our future.

"He has told us not to worry about anything; it's business as usual.

"We look forward to having some more discussions with him in the near future."