Once again, we have reached the conclusion of a hugely enjoyable summer of cricket and friendship. This year’s end of season celebration took place shortly after the passing of our wonderful Queen and before the cricket a minute’s silence was observed with a Toast to follow; what an extraordinary lady and a fine example of humanity for us to follow.
The Inter Club game that followed was huge fun, with JC and The Sunshine Band overcoming The Southern Cider Drinkers in an exciting 7 a side format, by 64 runs to 60. Highlight of the evening was to see young Jack Hammett opening the bowling for the Cider Men, steaming into bowl at his dad, who looked pretty determined not to be his sons first wicket in adult cricket! It looked as though Jack would remain without a wicket or assist, but with the last ball of the innings, the chairman took a wild swipe and snuck the ball up into the air, Jack was on it in a flash and took several pats on the back from his teammates. Despite a tense finish The Sunshine Band held on for a narrow win and there followed a very successful raffle, thanks to the efforts of Neil Chambers over £500 was raised towards club funds, thank you Neil.
Neil was also the recipient of the first of the seasons trophies to be presented, The Absolutely Quackers award for most Ducks of the season, three zeros was enough to win it this year. Champagne Fielding moment went to Mark Hammett for dropping a spiralling catch onto his chin and ending up in A and E – luckily, we were playing just around the corner. Sam Franks and Ralph Cook keenly contested the bowling and batting awards with Sam topping the bowling with an average of 8.58 and Ralph topping the batting with an average of 78. Player of the Year was the ever dependant Jon Pengelly, who hardly misses a game, racked up just short of 400 runs and took 14 wickets: through some incredible fitness regime he doesn’t seem to get the injury issues that many of his teammates fall victim to either. We must pay more attention to how he looks after himself.
Tim Hubbard was almost unanimously voted Clubman Of The Year (The Joyce Roy Trophy) for the sterling work he does in spending two afternoons each week mowing the outfield, I’m not sure what we would do without him.
On an evening like this what really stands out is the army of people contributing to enable cricket to take place in our rural community. If you look behind the bar you see our Head Teacher and our published author (Pandora’s Cave by Jane Hugen Tobler is out now £8.99 on Amazon), then you look over to the left and you have our legendary chef of Yellingham fame; this year our scorer, Adam, has juggled his cricket with his Wheelchair Basketball exploits, great to see. Chris Kittow has taken over as our regular umpire this season, when not playing golf, you just can’t have too many Kittows about the place (apparently). Then we have our numbers man and our overseas player, Fred the American, Treasurer since the club started 8 years ago, great effort. Shane and Katie contribute in so many ways, always the first to offer support and assistance. Each year the club has evolved and whilst we’ve had more injuries than we would have liked this year, it has produced opportunity for other (younger) players and our membership has grown again as a result, which is great to see.
And so the sheep (who can’t wait after a rubbish summer on no grass) are keen to reclaim their rightful home and ensure we comply with our slightly unusual planning permission that permits cricket from April to September as long as the sheep return for winter, happy days.
Jon, Tale Millers CC
