I've spoken to Gillian at Welstead Gardens regarding another match between now and June 15th and it's not possible. I've suggested to 'Sports Science' (our opposition) that we may be able to play a match at 'The Rec' instead. As yet they've not responded, but if they do it's not guaranteed that we'll be able to use 'The Rec' I'll have to speak to Nigel the Groundsman and see if that will be possible?
Tonight it looked as though I'd be practicing on my own over at Great Berry but when I arrived there were 3 blokes already on the field playing cricket in the corner near the kids playgorund area. I set up watching the blokes bowling and batting and they looked okay. Once I'd got the stumps in the ground one of the blokes acknowledged me and I beckoned him over and we all had a bit of a knock about and some bowling.
It turns out that they all live around the field - Ancar, Suhail and his son Hasan and they were all pretty good and really up for a game. Ancar works in computers in some capacity (An expert). Suhail (Some of this maybe wrong and I'll have to apologise if it is) is a surgeon and his son Hasan is a prospective A-Level student that may be attending our college in September! But here comes the really good bit. Suhail when he was a youth played cricket at International level representing India's under 19's and toured England and was based at Warwickshire back in the day! It gets even better...... Both Suhail and Ancar reckon they could get more blokes involved and were talking in terms of this Sunday possibly turning up with enough people from where they work to get a 20/20 match going between 10.00 - and 1.00pm! How good would that be!
So MPA first XI's get your butts down to Great Berry this Sunday and get involved. I've given Ancar and Shail the blog address so hopefully they'll have a look and start working to get this together. In the meantime here's who we might be able to get together.....
Richard Sainsbury
Alex Wood
Alex #2
Simon Grainge
Nick Naughty
Mark Soye
Rod Jeanes
Thomas Slater
Terry the Bloke
Badger
Paul from the IR
Nakul Handa
Dave Thompson (me)
Chris
Jack
So that's 15 players. 3 more with Ancar, Suhail & Hasan (18) so they'd only have to get another 4 more players and we'd have a proper match! (apart from umpires). We might even be able to borrow the scoreboard from 'The Rec'?
So who's up for that?
Note Ancar, Suhail, Hasan, Jack, Chris and Alex #2 indeed anyone that hasn't got my email address - I'm going to post it here for a couple of days. I much prefer to communicate by email rather than phone davidthompson001@btinternet.com
Just a quick run down of who we are - The majority of us up until October 2006 had never played cricket before in our lives (Including me). The team has been formed since then - picking up new people as we've gone along. The 'Core' members of the team are -
Dave Thompson
Simon Grainge
Alex Wood
Thomas Slater
Richard Sainsbury
Nakul Handa
Mark Soye
Nick 'Naughty' Oconnor
Chris 'Badger' Keeble
Terry 'The Bloke'
Rod 'The Aussie' Jeanes
Recent additions - These lads are still in the throes of doing their GCSE's and as yet have to prove their committment to the team, but we're looking forward to having them in the team as they're good players and we're hoping we'll see them throughout the summer and on through the winter in the nets?......
Jack
Chris
Alex #2
So currently we're up to 14 possible players along with Paul form the IR 15 players.
The majority of the players are lecturers from South East Essex College and we all work in the Media dept (Media & Performing Arts) hence MPA. We've got 3 matches lined up over the summer 2 with the 'Sports Science' Dept at the college and another with a bunch of Australian and Kiwi lecturers that live and work in the Southend area as teachers. But we're looking to play more matches.
We've got 2 pitches - Welstead Gardens in Westcliff on Sea and 'The Rec' Langdon Hills that we have free access to subject to availability. We practice regularly at 'Great Berry Open Space' on Sunday mornings 10-1pm and a few of us practice 3-4 evenings a week at Great Berry between 7.45 and dusk.
Over the winter we practice in the Nets every fortnight.
With regards to the matches this summer the consensus is that places in the team are allocated to the 'Core' members as a priority by virtue of the fact that they've paid subs all year. Alex Wood is the captain and he has the task of picking the team and whether he veers off of this arrangement erring towards picking a team with a view to winning has yet to be seen with the influx of new members. It's expected that at the end of the season we'll be taking a different approach where team members will get a game based on ability and merit. We may also join the CCC cricket club conference where you can arrange fixtures on-line with clubs of a similar ability. This will mean that next summer we may have a lot more fixtures and we'll be aiming to have a match every fortnight throughout the summer?
So in conclusion we are looking for new players and we'd be pleased to have new players join!
Alternatively - say for instance if Ancar, Suhail and Hasan feel that they don't want to commit to joining the team if they can get together another 8 players we could play informal matches at the weekends and join us in the evenings and Sundays for a practice if teams can't be fielded?
Dave Thompson
One final bit.... I was bowling pretty well tonight and just to prove my point about if I bowl against people that are not familiar I will take wickets. I bowled everyone out tonight some of them twice and these blokes were pretty good! I batted as well and was quite pleased with my batting, I think I was LBW'd off of Suhail who's a deceptive bowler but held my ground, but admittedly I wouldn't have made a lot of runs.
Come on let's get this 20/20 match going this Sunday!
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