MPA's first Eleven Cricket Team

Welcome to MPA's First Eleven Cricket Team Blog.

News and views on how we intend to smash Dean Wells's cricket team all over the park! The plan of action is that over the winter while they're playing football, we'll be practicing frantically in sports halls and places, honing our skills into something that resembles the Autralian National team!

Bewteen now and then we want to build up as much hype as possible to and get a big crowd down to Wellstead Gardens for a 1 day match sometime in July or August (late August I reckon).

Here's the news as of Nov 2nd...

This is slowly coming together and the team as it stands goes something like this -

Dave Thompson- Leg Spin bowler

Steve Bone - Undecided

Richard Sainsbury - Wicket Keeper

Nick Naughty - Undecided

Simon Grainge - Undecided

Chris Keeble - Undecided

Richard Sandling - Batsman

Mark Benson (R) possible fast bowler

Thomas Slater (R) Possible fast bowler

Phil Buchanan (R) - Batsman

'Ash' (one of Boney's students, but he's got real form - Played for Surrey's 2nd 11 or something) Matt Lyndsey - Undecided or sub

As yet we haven't got a clue what the batting order is, but I can tell you for one - I'm crap, hence the reason I'm concentrating on being the 'Shane Warne' of the team with the intention of bowling all of my brother's (AKA Dean Wells) team out for 50 or so! I've emailed someone tonight regarding the cricket pitch at Wellstead Gardens, so hopefully we'll get a reply tomorrow. I'm hoping as we're staff and they want this place promoted and used more often they'll let us use it for free as a way of generating publicity. On a more negative front if you look at the website (Use google and type in 'Wellstead Gardens') you'll see that it seems to be the home ground of Westcliff cricket club or someone, so no doubt they'll get all precious about their wicket? Anyway we'll see how it goes when the email comes through.

One of the problems we're going to face is equipment and I don't know how 'Into' this you're going to get, but having just bought a bat after weeks and weeks of research I've now realised how technical this can be and 'Lending' your bat to someone is just not cricket. So how we're going to get round having bats for everyone may be a problem. But there is an answer. I can get Grade 1 Kasmir bats for everyone for about £20 each if you're interested? The 'enemy' Dean reckons that at Garons they may have gear there for when we get round to practicing there over the winter. Again i'm in the process of sussing that out, but I'm sceptical about how much gear will be there to use. I'll keep you posted as and when I get more info. One last thing - I haven't got a clue how these blogs work, but by all means make contributions to it if you have some news. I'll distribute the passwords over the next few days or so. Dave
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