PRESIDENT; Mr. P. Hobbs  COMMITTEE:  Chairman Paul Bates; Secretary Adrian Lamberth; Fixtures Adrian Barrett; Treasurer Matt Balkwill; Captain Jason Stephens; Vice-Captain Dominic Lowe

Players - Matt Balkwill; Adrian Barrett; Duncan Barrett; Paul Bates; Kevin Cheeseman; Mike Hills; Dave Hurren; Dave Lamb; Tim Lamb; Adrian Lamberth; Dominic Lowe; Alex Newman-Smith; Duncan Perry; Jason Stephens; Howard Turner; Jason Walliker  GUEST APPEARANCES- A. Rooke, G. Lowe, R. Lamb, D. Bell, O. Lamb, P. Lamb, L. Spencer, S. McKinnon, R. Parsons, J. Vane, C. McCarthy

1995 - THE SEASON

The "guest appearances" is included as a one-off, mainly as it includes our future President, one Peter Lamb.

    7 wins, 9 losses and two draws is not too bad an analysis to end the season on. After a draw at Valley End (always better than a beating) we experienced a good win against Woking Remnants 3rd XI at their ground. Bec Old Boys was a conference arranged fixture who originated from near Tolworth. The afternoon was mostly sunny and bright but was tempered by a gentle but persistent cool breeze from the north. The home side batted first on the level field that doubled as a football/rugby field in winter and took control. We managed a few wickets here and there but runs were not to be stopped. As a consequence our reply was curtailed when wickets ran out trying to hold on for a draw.

    1995 also saw us compete in the Anchor Mature Cheddar Cup, an evening 20-over knockout competition which incorporated a lot of villages in the south-east of England. We could be described as lucky to have received a bye in the first round, however at our first game proper in the second round we faced Egham. Now here was a serious cricketing club with no pretensions; here we were at their ground for the taking. And were we taken, to the cleaners that is, as they systematically put us to bed with boundary after boundary, with a lot of deliveries taking to the sky - but still toward the boundary. Captain Jay Stephens remembers this game well as wherever he placed himself in the field to help stem runs, the ball just followed him there. He must have had six of the more difficult catching chances ever to come his way - just during this one evening! With no match on the 14th May, and the 4th and 11th June not appearing to have taken place, only five games - including the Egham evening game - were played played before the tour, not the best preparation. Then, after seven weeks without a win, we beat Abinger in the last game before departing for Cornwall and not by a little margin either.

    At this time in the mid-1990's, we had the makings of a good side and this year saw other good victories. The win against Maybury looks impressive, but in all honesty they were in a league below us. The Lightwater fixture was often unpredictable so a winning margin of 57 runs is an excellent result for this season. The surprise is Brookwood. As this is written in the new millennium a win of that margin against them is unthinkable where every run counts. To slam them into submission to the tune of 209 runs - that isn't a typo, is it? Ripley were no slouches so what better way to finish off a decent season than with a win.

    The downside of the season though, were the losses. Charing Cross beat us into a pulp and a wide-margin victory but more disappointing than that are in the later half of the season where we lost by a narrow margin of runs or by a handful of wickets. For a team to catch us up is disheartening but if we didn't score enough runs, then some better-than-usual bowling was needed early on to give us any chance of defending what could be a meagre total. To be fair, Grayswood, Chertsey Rec, Windlesham and Bisley are teams against whom a victory was earned and not just there for the taking. In later years we indeed beat all of them, but not this year.

THE FIRST CORNWALL TOUR

Click the hotel to check the PONSMERE out

    As our original tour policy was to vary the location, this year saw us begin a long friendship with the village of Perranporth, on Cornwall's north coast in late June. This break away from it all had been organised by Rowley Craddick from Taunton, near where we stayed last year. He got us an excellent deal at the large Ponsmere Hotel on an outcrop overlooking the spacious beach. The other difference this was altering the dates to the second-last weekend of June in an attempt to hopefully get consistently better weather. We were not disappointed and played three full games in excellent conditions. Just as it was on the Isle Of Wight last year, Saturday is league day so we played Chew Stoke, another touring team from the Bristol area. We arrived at the hired council pitch in Redruth looking for the opposition. And waited. And waited... Eventually they turned up and gave us a gentle fight before winning with reasonable ease, despite a "good" Friday night. Holmans Sports Club from near Camborne gave us far harder time on Sunday, by taking it all the way to the last over. A tight over prevented the batsmen scoring the dozen or so runs Holmans required and we gained a good draw despite an unexpected plague of local bees in the hazy sunshine. By Monday the weekend had taken it's (by then) usual horrible toll on us as we were comfortably beaten by Perranporth CC. But nobody really minded as the evening wore on first at the clubhouse, then later back at the Ponsmere hotel bar.

    This tour saw the debut of the Blottery, a plastic carrier bag containing Ping-Pong balls numbered 1 to 49. All tour attendees MUST pick six numbers up to 49, and when a Blottery is called six balls plus a bonus are picked out. One number constitutes a half or a short, two up and it's a pint or a double, and so on. All "winners" down their drink in unison, IN ONE, so best of luck, as it has been known for four numbers to come up. The whole weekend was captured on camcorder and the best bits were edited together for viewing one chilly autumn evening, which was interspersed with comments along the lines of "Did I really do that?"

  We

 Two

 Wit

THE ANNUAL AWARDS

The Awards Dinner was slated for "sometime in September" to be arranged. Don't believe it - by the time the averages were worked out and certain occurrences had been remembered and awards purchased accordingly, I wouldn't be surprised if the middle of October as nearer the mark.