Now the season’s over it’s time for my final newsletter of 2018 in which I’ll briefly review the season and tell you about some developments planned over the winter months.

Senior cricket

Well it was quite a season for our senior teams. The 2s were crowned champions of their division and will play in Division 2 of the Surrey Championship next year and the 1s narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier league finishing 3rd in Division 1.

The 2s, lead superbly by Matt Baker, had a great season and deservedly ended up as champions, winning 13 games and losing only 2. Their success was built on a strong batting line up with Dave Baker the leading run scorer with 499 runs at an average of 71 and Matt Joblin, Matt Baker and Dave Mercer all scoring over 300 runs and averaging more than 50. Player of the season was awarded to the other, 17 year old, Dave Baker, who successfully transitioned from our colts set up and took 29 wickets at an average of just 14. Dave also took the Young Player of the Year award as well, a great effort from someone so young and a real credit to our colts set up and an example to those boys coming through. The team has real depth and can look forward with confidence to challenging for promotion again next year.

The 1s were agonisingly close to returning to the premier league after a 3 year gap, with their fate only sealed in the last minutes of the season when Esher won a tight game against Guildford to secure second place. The team played some great cricket and, indeed, lost fewer games than the two promoted clubs but were left ruing a couple of poor end of season performances against Esher and Farnham. Mike Nicol was again leading run scorer with 491 at 38, with strong contributions from James Crowson, Ollie Trower, Mike Wakefield and John Tribe. Crowson also took 29 wickets in a good first season for the club, but was pipped to the player of the season award by captain, Adam Dyson, who scored 416 runs at 32 and took 34 wickets at 19, in addition to his leadership of a talented team. The experience of this year will stand the team in good stead for another tilt at the premier league next year.

It was great that we were able to field a 3rd XI on a number of occasions this season and we will reinstate the team next season. We have applied to enter the Surrey Downs League in 2019 and expect our entry to be confirmed at the end of October. This is a very important development for the club and will ensure that we can provide a weekend game of cricket for all our adult members next year and, equally importantly, it will provide our older colts with the transition to senior cricket. The Sunday Strollers also provides this transition for our colts and continues to provide social, friendly cricket for our members under the leadership of Dave Everest.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the many volunteers (umpires, scorers, caterers, grounds etc.) involved in adult cricket for all their efforts this year. They all played an important role in what has been a successful season.

Colts cricket

The colts had another good season and it was again great to see so many youngsters involved in training and playing competitive cricket at the club. In total we played almost 100 matches this season for age groups between U9 and U19 and we have every reason to be very optimistic about the strength of the players coming through. The season culminated in a very well attended dads/lads match and awards evening. There were awards for each age group, but particular congratulations go to the following:

Colt of the Year
Nathan Vos, an Under 14 wicketkeeper/batsman, who was the leading run scorer across all colts age groups and regularly played for older age groups, all the way up to Under 19.

Rising Star
Adam Ransom, a hard hitting Under 12 batsman and spin bowler.

One to Watch
Leo Hunter, an Under 8, who bowls quickly for someone so young and hits the ball hard.

Champagne moment
Tom Quickfall, an Under 13, who recorded the amazing figures of 6 for 11 in 4 overs.

Again, many thanks goes to the all the many volunteers involved in running the colts section, in particular the age group managers and their support teams and coaches, who put in huge amounts of time and effort throughout the season.

Looking ahead to next season, I am pleased to say that Ken Rose will take over as overall Colts manager to replace John Friend, who will step down at the AGM in November. John has done a fantastic job leading and running the colts over a number of years and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank him for all his efforts.

While next season seems a long way off, we are preparing already and have booked winter nets at St.Johns school from January to April. Further details will follow soon.

Plans for 2019

Overall, the club has made good progress this season and we have a stronger foundation to build on and some exciting opportunities ahead of us. The Committee has prepared a development plan for the club which sets out our longer term vision and objectives and the short term plan for 2018/19 required to make this happen. The acquisition and development of the land adjacent to the ground gives us a fantastic opportunity to really move the club forward and we’re committed to trying to take advantage of this. The full development plan will be posted seoarately for you all to read. It’s quite a long document but hopefully it will give you a sense of what we’re trying to achieve at the club over the next few years.

Volunteers

When you read the plan, you’ll see that one of the key actions over 2018/19 is to recruit more volunteers to help out at the club. Like all community clubs we are reliant on the goodwill and commitment of our volunteers and as we take on more to deliver our development plan, that need increases.

We are not proposing to make any changes to the committee this year, other than Ken’s appointment as Colts manager, but there are some specific roles/jobs and areas that we are looking for people to help with. In particular we are looking for a website and social media manager and someone to help with the marketing of the club to local schools. There are many other smaller tasks that we can always do with extra hands to help out, particularly in running the colts section of the club, so please do let either me or Ken know if you are prepared to give a few hours of your time, it would be a great help.

We are also looking to increase our profile in the local community by building links to local businesses. The primary aim is to gain sponsorship for the club but we also want to open up our facilities for use by the wider community and offer our members more as part of these arrangements (eg discounts at those businesses etc.). We are building a target list of businesses to approach so any suggestions/contacts that any of you may have then please do let me know.

Dates for your diary

Before I sign off, a couple of dates for your diary:

Closing the club for winter - Saturday 6 October, from 9am

We’ll be doing our usual closing up job, all volunteers welcome to help out at the club from 9am until around noon.

Annual General Meeting - Thursday, 15 November at 7.30pm

Further details will follow in due course, including agenda etc.. All members welcome.

Once again, thanks to everyone for all your support this year and I look forward to seeing you in 2019!

Ian