The last two seasons have been difficult for our club and as another season ended with the mood and morale around the club being at a possible all-time low their were rumors that the club was facing a crisis.
A quick re-cap... Over the winter of 2016/17 some significant players in the 1st XI announced that they wouldn't be playing again because of newly emerging commitments, these are blokes in the late 20's for the most part and the impression I got was that they had work relate opportunities or had young families. I don't know how many of them made the decision initially, but it seemed that once these blokes had made their intentions clear, others followed suit on the basis of not wanting to play in a team without the blokes that they'd been playing cricket with since they were 11 or 12. The resulting domino affect almost wiped out the 1st XI meaning that all the other teams below them had to move up a level.
The consequence of this was that a great many of the games that we played in over the summer were over before the coin was flipped. My own team the 4th XI was affected the most. Everyone moved up to the 3rd XI and that meant that every 4th XI game the club struggled to get players for. Some how we got through 2017 and were looking to recruit new players over 2018.
2018 was worse and within a couple of months the 4th XI team was dropped from the league because we failed to get a team out on three occasions. I had my toe broken early in the season, but found myself playing in the 2nd XI with a broken toe two weeks after the break occurred. Loss after loss, meant that people were less inclined to play and even I hit a real low and considered moving to another team. The primary reason for this was, the bloke I played under adopted the strategy of were possible batting first to basically get it over and done with as soon as possible, trotting out the adage... "Who wants to be chasing leather around the field for 3 or 4 hours in this weather". To be fair there was something in it from the weather point of view as this was one of the driest and warmest summers ever. But his approach meant that we'd go in and score a ridiculously low total... and the only people that would get a look in with the bowling would be the seam-up pace bowlers.
On the odd occasion he'd share the bowling around, but invariably it meant that maybe we'd get 2 or 3 overs each at best. Most games I didn't get a bowl and all season I managed to bowl 31 overs - 50% lower than most years. In essence most of us were turning up to field and then go home after having tea, many of the games were over before tea!
There was no influx of new players, a few Dads got involved thankfully, but by the end of the season it was grim. There was talk of the club disbanding and the majority of them going to Benfleet, other people said that there was talking of leaving our current league and trying to join the T Rippon mid Essex league but it was all hushed up as people were worried that if the league got to hear about the situation we might get kicked out and there was no guarantee of the T Rippon league accepting us. Ironic when this was the 50th anniversary of the teams existence.
Bank Holiday anniversary event
The August Bank holiday sees the club put on a fun day and the kids wing of the club get their parents and everyone to come along and the players from the adult teams turn up and show their faces. Usually, it's a pretty good marketing event and kids that come along with their cricket playing mates get the bug and turn up the following season. In recent years the event has been a bit lack-luster. This year there seemed to be a concerted effort among the players to turn up - it might have been preceded by a meeting where the committee said that we all needed to pull together for the sake of the club. As the day neared it was obvious that the day would be ruined by rain - predicted to start at 10.00 and rain all day thereafter. Sure enough it did, but... a lot of players turned up including me I might add to lend support to the kids branch of the club and the people behind the kids section were very appreciative.
Again at the event there were the rumors of this being the last season, but there was news that there was going to be a meeting to discuss the clubs future in the coming weeks.
The meeting
Brutal was the description I gave it when I came away. The meeting seemed to be made up of three groups. (1). The committee (2) The players (3) The youth arm of the club.
The Youth arm of the club seemed to have an agenda - wholesale change. The youth arm of the club is big, with tons of 'Pre-phone owning kids' e.g. under 14 with no sense of autonomy. Over 14's is another matter, they're as rare as Dodo's - two maybe and they'd been playing in the 3rd and 2nd XI facing the same situations as us the adults, there is no Under 15's team. But this faction wanted action. They made the case that there was no filtration of kids into the under 15's because there was no interaction between the players and the kids and that this needed to happen and that the club would die if the kids didn't stay on and go on to play in the 4th XI and so on. The players needed to be involved in the youth arm of the club.
The committee early in the piece openly admitted after 2 years of decline that the situation had got to the point where they had exhausted all ideas and were now in a position where there was nothing left and asked the club whether they felt that they should stand-down and let a new batch of people take over and inject some new life into the club?
It was obvious from the discussions that the the youth arm were up for it - fronted by a bloke and his wife who had moved to Basildon from Zimbabwe and now had kids playing at the club. In addition they had previous experience back in Zimbabwe. They made a case for potentially taking over and it was put to the audience and we all agreed in principle that they could, providing there was some form of transitional arrangement where the out going committee was involved in an organised hand-over.
Further discussions were had on the future of the adult arm of the club and whether it was going to make the move to the T Rippon league. It seemed that there were protocols to follow and that there wasn't a precedent for the situation and it seemed uncertain how the existing league would react. Furthermore it also seemed that there was no guarantee that T Rippon would accept us. Despite all this it was agreed that we'd leave the existing league and then try and join the T Rippon league. The main benefit seemed to be that the T Rippon league was much larger and there was scope for a team such as us to move up or down within the league if we managed to be accepted.
That seemed to be it with everyone having to wait now until November to find out the outcome of leaving out existing league and whether T Rippin would accept us.
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Other stuff
September and October were unusually warm again. The Paddock was parched throughout Sept and October with deep cracks all over the wicket still with virtually no rain.
Usually by this time I'm seeding the wicket and looking for there to be lush green grass, but it was still parched and yellow.
I'd put some seed down on Oct 6th, but it hadn't taken...
Weekend
13/10/18
Very warm weather 24-26 degrees c. The wind was southerly
and was blowing warm – it was like a hot summer day! I sat in the garden in my shorts
sun-bathing at breakfast it was lovely! Later in the afternoon I took my crate
of balls over to the paddock along with my G9 camera and had a bowl and videoed
it. As I hadn’t bowled in 2 weeks or so, I wasn’t sure how it would go. To be
honest I felt a bit knackered – it’s always surprising how quickly you lose
your fitness.
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