The 2011 season at Cotford St Luke Cricket Club is now underway

We even have fixtures!

Practice sessions are on Tuesday evenings 18:30 until it’s dangerously dark!

They’re at Bishops Lydeard Cricket Club, who kindly allow us to use their nets.

Attempts are being made to get our own nets in Cotford St Luke but, whilst it’s looking pretty good, I can’t say for definite when/if that will be.

We’ve been pushing for nets in the village for a while to increase the visibility of the club and hopefully get a few more recruits.

We have kit organised from a sponsor, which is a great start to the season. This year it’s time to really push to get the club off the ground.

Matches have been booked as follows:

Sunday 22nd May: At Porlock, a 30 over match beginning at 2PM.

Sunday 30th May: Possible 6-a-side at Bishops Lydeard – to be confirmed.

Sunday 24th July: Against Wembdon CC – time to be arranged.

We’re hoping to get one or two other fixtures arranged too. We’d organise more if we had more players but we can’t organise games until we’re sure we can get an 11 because as it is we have to ‘borrow’ players from outside the club.

So if you’re interested, please come along to practice. It’s all very casual and the standard is suitably low enough that nobody need feel worried.

We played 3 games, losing 2 and winning 1, which wasn’t good enough to get us through to the next round but since we must surely have been the team there with the least match experience (since we have virtally none), it wasn’t too bad a display.

Indeed, we didn’t get destroyed by any team and we generally fielded and bowled well, so it’s a promising start to Cotford St Luke Cricket Club for this season.

There was a decent turn out (for us) too with 7 seniors (out of 9) and 4 juniors turning up to play. We still need more players but – painfully slowly – we’re building a squad.

It was a surprising day in that, even though there was a cool wind and intermittently overcast weather, we all seemed to get a bit frazzled by the sun. I was quite sore the next day and had some bizarre stripes where my shades had been. My wife took some snaps and I’ve included a selection of those here (click on a picture to see a bigger version):

Rules as follows:

Competition rules

• Entry fee of £30 per team.
• 5 overs per innings (maximum of 1 over per bowler).
• Batsmen retire on 30 and can return during the innings should all other wickets fall.
• Any wides – two runs and no extra ball (except in final over).
• Any no-balls – two runs plus any runs scored off the ball (no extra ball – except in final over).
• The team with the most runs wins the game. Should it be a tie, the team to lose the least wickets wins.

Competition format:

• 10 am welcome and briefing, 10.30 am start.
• To save time during innings, two games will run simultaneously (ie. When the first innings of a match ends, a second match will begin its first innings to save ‘changeover’ time. After that, the respective second innings will be played).
• Round robin group stage (4 teams per group) leading to semi-finals and then finals.
• The two bottom placed teams to play each other for the wooden spoon.
• Minimum of 3 games per team.
• Unlimited amount of squad members per team, however only six playing at a time.
• Match fee includes cricket tea (served from midday onwards).
• Barbeque available in the evening.
• Fully stocked bar.
• Lots of fun, a great setting and hopefully some good cricket!

Given that we can have any number of players on the squad and we get a minimum of 3 matches, we’ll try to give everyone who turns up a game. We’ll canvas for interest a bit closer to the date.

They’re going to charge us £10 a time to use the nets, which is extremely reasonable indeed and works out at about £1 a head given the number of people who’ve been turning up to practice sessions recently. Please try to remember to bring £1 along to sessions.

We have also written to the Borough and Parish Councils to ask them whether it’s possible to allocate some space in Cotford St Luke so that we can have our own nets. We pointed out that the petanque/boules pitch is rarely (if ever) used and seems to be a bit of a waste of space at the moment but would be ideal for a couple of cricket nets.

We’ll try to continue practicing at the Bishops Lydeard Cricket Club nets. We have permission from the groundsman to do so, although we may have to make a small contribution to use them (£1 per person was suggested). Unfortunately due to an act of vandalism up there the gates to Bishops Lydeard Cricket Club are now locked, so we can only practice when there’s a key-holder from the club there (and we’ll just have to hope someone will be on Tuesdays).

We’re going to attempt to get the cricket club into shape a bit, including getting our own nets in Cotford St Luke if we can (it is yet to be determined whether this is possible). We’re also moving forward with getting a club bank account opened and we’ll think about organising a few (friendly) games in a few weeks time.

We need more people though, so please pass the word around (and bring them by force if necessary!).

Last season we practised up at the Bishops Lydeard Cricket Club nets by kind permission of the groundsman there – I’ll investigate whether it’s possible to continue doing that this season.

Election of Club Officials

• John Hassall was elected as Chairman.
• Gordon Ansell (that’s me) was elected as Secretary.
• Rod Lathem was elected as Treasurer.
• Adam Barnett was elected as Fixtures Secretary.
• Chris Couchman was elected as Club Captain.

Bureaucratic Stuff

There are things like a constitution to be sorted out, which is just a proforma sort of thing used by cricket clubs and The Treasurer will set up a bank account for the club.

Subscriptions, Money & What We Might Spend It On

It was proposed that the club charge a £10 joining fee plus £20/year in subscriptions, which will cover a few subsidiary costs and maybe get a few items of kit.

We do hope to pursue other sources of money too such as the Council and the ECB (England & Wales Cricket Board), and we could engage in fund-raisers such as a quiz night at the club.

Funds raised could be used for things like getting our own nets and, eventually, laying a cricket square somewhere in Cotford. John suggested that if can rotate one of the football pitches through 90 degrees we may be able to fit a cricket pitch in the freed up space. This would be something to look at for the 2011 season.

Ideally we’d like a dedicated field for cricketing activities but two things make this unlikely: first, most of the surrounding fields in Cotford are flood plains, even assuming one was available for use; second there’s the cost, which would probably be prohibitive at the moment.

Immediate Aims

The 2009 season has now ended and we really won’t get things going until April next year, although we may try to have a few indoor nets sessions over the winter.

It was decided that next season we really just want ‘casual’ games against teams that are fairly similar to our own whith the emphasis on enjoyment.

About half a dozen of us met up in the bottom field for a practice session, consisting mainly of people who either hadn’t played for many years or had never really played at all.

After 2 practice sessions we were thrown into our first game against Staplegrove, who are a league side.  We got well and truly trounced. Staplegrove batted first and made 300+ and then bowled us out for about 70. Then they let us have another innings and bowled us out for about 80.

To add to my disappointment at that defeat, wearing new shoes on a hard surface and playing a long innings in the field, I managed to damage my Achilles tendon and could barely walk for 2 weeks. It was about a month before I was right again and I missed two games in the interim, one of which was rained off and the other we lost.

We kept practising on Tuesday evenings though, initially on the bottom field in Cotford and then, by permission of the groundsman, up at the nets in Bishops Lydeard Cricket Club, which was a vast improvement.

We then had a game against the Environment Agency at Bridgwater which we actually managed to win with 3 balls to spare. You’d have thought we’d won the Ashes.

We’re still not going to be competing at league level for a while yet but we have improved a lot in just one season through regular practice and a few games.

The problem we’ve had all season is a lack of numbers, which is something we hope to correct next season.