Well that is another season over and done with. In terms of results it wasn’t our best with only 2 wins and a draw but there were some close games which we went on to lose and all the games were played in the right spirit. There aren’t many new faces on the Sunday scene apart from Ashfaq Ahmed who you may or not know is Akhlaq’s (Khan) brother. When he has played, he does so with a smile on his face and is a capable cricket player. We also had KP pop down for a couple of Sunday games. Now there is a man who plays cricket in the park hill way! Always having a laugh and fitted right in with his batting… Apologies if you feel like I have missed you out but I generally can’t think of anyone else at this moment in time.
All results can be found at http://parkhill.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/results.asp
I am afraid it’s quite hard to give a detailed report this year because as you may have noticed, the Sunday season was greatly affected by the rain. Games were either being called off way in advance or on the day when we seemed to get a month worth of rain half hour before we started the match.
The biggest problem with the rain was it put a dampener on our season. There were a couple of weekends during the season where the weather was nice but we didn’t get enough players to look for a fixture. At the time I was angry about this because I thought people would want to get a game in but looking back I can see that people plan other things because they are expecting the game to be called off and it didn’t really feel like a cricket season. Unfortunately there isn’t anything we can do about the weather so we just have to grin and bear it and hope it gets better next year.
On a semi-related note, I feel we are still a couple of players short at the moment. The days of players playing regularly on both days have gone so we need a greater squad to accompany this. If you have any friends or family who are interested, or you yourself fancy a return to the Hill then get in touch or come along to winter nets.
It is also important that we keep the players we have at the moment to make sure we keep the camaraderie we have built up over the last few seasons and to make sure we have no problems with numbers going into next season.
At the last committee meeting Symo brought up a point which I happen to agree with. As it stands the Sunday scorebook is a mess! I realise as captain the buck stays with me on this one and I accept that but still feel it should be made aware to everyone at the club. I won’t go in to too many details but there are just too many gaps that should be filled in and it is very difficult to update Play-Cricket. Perhaps next season the social sec and the captains can run an evening when everyone learns how to score properly.
On the same subject, we occasionally struggle on a Sunday for scorers/umpires. It would be really helpful and greatly appreciated if guys could take responsibility for learning how to either score or umpire.
As you know my season was cut short due to injury so I would like to thank Symo for stepping in the last couple of weeks. In terms of next season I doubt I will be able to participate in many winter nets sessions but will try my best to get to every one. That said I am pretty confident I will be fit enough to start the season so, unless there is anyone with burning aspirations, I would like to carry on as Sunday captain.
I would just like to thank everyone who made captaining the Sunday side a great pleasure once again. This season wasn’t the easiest but I feel like we stuck at it well and we can go into next season with great optimism.
On a final note Razi is now a proud father of a little baby girl. I am sure you will join me in congratulating him and his family and maybe buy him a glass of milk to wet the baby’s head.
Thanks for reading and hopefully see you all at the dinner
Cheers and Up the Hill!
Dan
Park Hill Cricket Club 