Summer Is Here!
And with the advent of the new season, despite popular demand, I have decided to make the (possibly futile) effort of resurrecting my blog to write up the games I play this summer. If you have read my blog before and are returning to do so again, I salute you and thank you. If this is new to you, welcome, it will be interesting to see how long it takes you to realise that it is just the idiotic ramblings of someone who is rubbish at cricket and decide that you have better things to do with your time.
So, what’s new this season? In a stunning turn of events, I will no longer be captaining Winton’s 5th team. No no, this season I will be captaining the 4s! How did this amazing promotion come about you ask? Well, there are two possible answers – and I will share both and let you decide:
1. My tactical brilliance and inspiring presence in the team last season led the club to decide that I had to be leading a team at a higher level.
2. Despite my lack of insight into the tactics of cricket and complete inability to inspire people to perform on the cricket field the 4s needed someone to captain them and no other idiot was willing to do the admin involved.
Hmm, which could it possibly be? Mind you, when you look at the leadership of the England Team and their lack of insight into the tactics of cricket and proven inability to inspire people to perform on the cricket field, it hasn’t done them any harm. So perhaps Winton CC are just following England’s lead? So, onward I march to face new challenges.
This is also probably a good time to recap the aims of the blog, just in case you are reading it expecting reasonably accurate reports of games played.
Aims of the Blog
In order of priority
1. For the blog to go viral and make me a fortune for doing something that I put minimal effort into. So, please all forward the link to friends, family and acquaintances with a recommendation that it is a ‘must read’. On the down side for this, no one reads blogs anymore (or anything else come to that) and if I truly wanted to ‘go viral’ I would have to make 30 second videos, involving me doing a dance, probably wearing hot pants. And I think we can all agree that no one wants to see that.
2. I am writing a report of my team’s games so I can deflect attention from my own failings and take credit for other peoples successes. So, for a game that we win, you will probably read a lot about insightful tactical decisions. For games that we lose, I will be leaning a lot more into my team’s failings in batting, bowling and fielding. Yeah sure, this is not fair. History used to be written by the victors, it is now written by anyone that can be bothered to get something onto the Internet.
3. This blog is is partly a process of me screaming into the void and desperately listening for an echo. The nihilist existential blackness at the heart of my soul leads me to often question if the world is real and if anything that I do matters. Seeing something that I have created on the web gives me some reassurance that I do indeed exist. This is of course a rather ‘heavy’ theme for a light-hearted blog. So I will be exploring it more fully in my forthcoming philosophy / cricket book ‘If the Universe Does Not Exist, How the Fuck Could I Be Given out LBW for That?’. Soon to be available in no book shops anywhere.
This is probably a good time to point out that although I do indeed captain a WCC team, this blog or the views expressed therein are in no way endorsed by the club. To be frank, a lot of the views expressed therein are not endorsed by me either, they more just appeal to my sense of humour.
The Season To Come
This year, with WCC 4s I will be playing in Dorset Division 3 rather than the Hampshire Leagues. This comes with swings and roundabouts. In Hampshire SW Divisions, the games were either in the Bournemouth or New Forest area, so travelling was easy. In Dorset there will be longer journeys. On the plus side, although there are a lot of lovely grounds in the New Forest, I have played at most of them. Whereas I have not really visited any grounds in Dorset and we will be playing some ‘proper’ Village teams. So I hope to be playing on new grounds, in beautiful surroundings. Hopefully some games will be on an actual village green, with a pub right next to them. Extra points if the pub is called ‘The Bat and Ball’. Looking at the fixture list though, I am not convinced that all the fixtures are in actual real places. For instance, we are playing a team called ‘Puddletown’. I’m sure that this was the name of a charmingly animated kids programme I used to watch when I was six years old in the 1970s? Although I think they did have a cricket team – the infamous grudge match against Trumpton getting well out of hand leading the famous ‘Trumpton Riots’ celebrated in song and myth.
One question that I am not yet sure of the answer is what the standard of the league will be. The Dorset Leagues have 7 Divisions, so I was of the view that having 4 divisions below us, that must be getting rid of the complete cloggers and by Div 3 it must start being of a decent standard perhaps on a par with Hampshire Div 4? However, when I suggested this to a couple of people at the club, they were quite scathing, saying that the Dorset Leagues were far weaker than the Hampshire Leagues and that there was no comparison. I do note that these were people that played in, and were used to the Hampshire Leagues, so it is possible that there is a bit of bias. So, this is now a question that I am going to put on the back burner and decide to ‘suck it and see’. I will give a measured view of the standard of play in Dorset Div 3 at the end of May when I have some evidence to go on.
Home Ground
This season, my teams home matches will be played at Slades Farm. For those of you not from Bournemouth, this is not as rural and lovely as it sounds. Indeed, long time readers of my blog will know I far prefer playing at Winton Rec (my home ground last year) than Slades Farm. I am now having to revaluate my views, as like it or not, Slades Farm it is for me. So let’s have a look at a photo of each venue.
Slades Farm
Winton Rec
And yes, you would say that Winton Rec is a nicer place to play cricket. On the plus side though, Slades is probably a far harder place to come as an away team. The pronounced slope can be difficult to deal with if you are not used to it. On a breezy day I am told the wind can be biting. The news that the changing rooms were burnt down in an arson attack can also be a bit off putting. Also, the fact that the local crack heads like to shout abuse at the fielders is something that should be a bit outside the experience of the gentlemen and yeomen of Dorsetchestershire that we will be playing. So, hopefully we can look to use Slades as Winton’s own ‘House of Pain’ to gain home team dominance. Probably won’t bother doing a Hakka though.
Predictions for the season?
Well, not sure really, as I said above, I am not to certain of the standard of opposition at the moment. Last season, the 4s gloriously managed to get themselves promoted, which will always make a more challenging follow on season. We also had a couple of people leave / move away = life happens. Some players that were playing for the 4s will be playing for a higher team at Winton this year on the grounds that they are really good. On the other hand, we’ve had some new players join and some stronger players from last year remain so there are grounds to be hopeful. As I am now looking at my team list for the first game of the season on Saturday, I have to say, it is looking like a strong outfit and I am feeling optimistic. So, I am going to go with a target of winning more games than we lose and getting a top half of the table finish, I think that is a fair target after a promotion.
I am really looking forward to the new season, with the first game only a couple of days away. To everyone involved in cricket this summer, I truly hope you all have a good one and go well. Play hard, be respectful to your opponents and remember to saviour the enjoyment of what you are doing. The summer is short and over far too quickly, so make sure you make runs whilst the sun shines. Just going to check the weather forecast for Saturday...... Oh for fucks sake........
