Good evening
I’m the Geoff Pook tribute act –
although so impressed was he at the prospect that he decided
to disappear to New Zealand for the night.
Welcome to Wilsons annual presentation evening
– thanks to Phil for organising and the staff here.
I will be brief – I want to give a
brief overview of the season, deal with some personal thanks,
I have the top three champagne moments and then the serious
end of the evening – the awards
So – the season. It was (slightly)
drier this year – not quite the dry brown wicket days
us spinner/batsmen enjoy – but the number of rained
off fixtures was low compared with last year.
So we managed to get 48 games of cricket
in this year on Saturdays and Sundays and countless (I say
countless because I haven’t counted them) Tuesday evening
games so the Treasurer is at least a little happier than last
year.
By way of interlude I have some messages
from the Treasurer – if you have any monies outstanding
or club cheques you haven’t paid in then can you do
so this week as he wants to close the accounts.
Whilst we are in interlude – can I
remind everyone of the 100 club – forms available. It’s
a cheap and painless way to support your club.
Right, I said I’d be brief so I’ll
crack on (sorry for those that went long on the sweepstake)
It was a season of weddings (congrats to
Tim and Mary who got married in July and even your Hon Chairman
got married this year too), selections policies about weddings
and we also had the dreadful spectacle of your Chairman being
described, in the press, as a “first teamer”.
Zak I know was particularly annoyed by that description! I’ll
return to that in a bit.
The first team finished 7th – a position
made to appear slightly worse by the
Now I’ve got to be careful in case
the league or Keyworth are here – by the opportunities
for first team action that were given to our younger members.
Something I’ll also return to when I announce Zak’s
first team player of the year and his comments on the season.
The second team got promoted – which
I think is about the 3rd time in 4 years. Now, I have to put
a pretty serious health warning on that statement. We finished
3rd, so weren’t going up, then we heard that Keyworth
had been docked 8 points for fielding (and presumably batting
and bowling) an ineligible player, putting them 1 point behind
us, so we were up.
Only then we found out they were appealing
(not something I’ve ever said about Keyworth before)
and so we didn’t know if we were up or down.
Then (are you keeping up) we found out that
there appeal had been dismissed so we were up again so Phil
and myself went along to the league presentation (despite
having to spend the previous weekend with him on his stag
do in Malaga – Phil’s getting married in April,
so early congrats to him and Wendy).
Despite not seeing the Division L trophies
we checked with the press officer (the same one who had described
me as a first teamer so we ought to have been suspicious!)
who assured us we were still up.
So Phil and me endured the 4 course salad
on offer, and mentally prepared our walk to the front to get
the trophy, only for the compare to announce that Div L hadn’t
been decided yet due to ongoing appeals.
We understand that both ourselves and Keyworth
have gone up which hopefully will be the final position.
So well done Vaz and the boys – a really
good, if slightly unorthodox, performance.
The evening league went well – well
I say that, but I haven’t seen sight of any scorebooks
or league tables but Ifty and Les give a good talk. What I
do know however is that a lot of young people, and Ifty, got
involved in the evening league this year which has got to
be a good thing (if you ignore the Ifty bit!)
So on balance a strong year – we’ve
plenty to do, principally in getting more people involved
in pitch preparation, youth teams etc – but a good first
proper year at the new ground.
Which leads me nicely and unrehearsed into
the second part of what I wanted to say – some personal
thanks.
As you will recall we changed all our officers
this year and so I’d particularly like to thank Phil
Herd and Tim Taylor for helping us new officers through the
year. Both of them do a lot of hard, unseen work which I then
just write up into meeting notes so thanks to both of you.
I’ve already thanked Phil for orgainsing tonight and
thanks are also due to him for organising the tour to Bristol.
I’d like to thank Dave Nattress for
the many, many hours spent preparing pitches for us all to
play on. A lot of those 48 games were at home and a lot of
work goes into getting the ground ready, so thanks Dave.
I’d like to thank the few extra people
who’ve started to get involved in helping with the pitch
preparation – we’ve had a few false starts but
a few more people are involved. We need some more but thanks
particularly to Jeff, Ifty and Sean for their help so far.
Thanks also to Ifty for running the evening
league team, with help from Les who has, again, been very
active in the club despite “unavailibility” this
year. Thanks also for introducing us to the concept of “pass
us the suttie” which I can explain later for those that
weren’t there when we took the sightscreens down.
On the subject of sightscreens, thanks also
the Richard Taylor and Ideal Cleaning for their very kind
sponsorship of the sightcreens.
Finally, a word about your captains. Firstly,
Vaz – I think we can all agree he is unique –
I remember particularly the fact that one week I bowled spin
and Amir bowled fast and we both got some wickets, so naturally
he asked us to do it the other way round the next week and
of course we both got wickets – genius. Vaz is very
active in the club and we would sorely miss the work he does
if he didn’t do it.
Secondly, Tom Moore – Tom captained
the Sunday side this year for the first time. For those that
haven’t done it, it is one the least thankless tasks
in the club but Tom did a great job which confirmed many of
us, even his dad I think, in our views that he’ll make
a very good
third team, sorry I mean first team captain
in the future.
And finally Zak and I did say that this section
was for personal thanks. Zak took the first team captaincy
off me this year which I am very grateful for and did a great
job, particularly in carrying out his belief that we need
to spread the playing strength across the two teams more evenly.
I didn’t always appreciate this this year and I have
to say was not as supportive as I might have been so I wanted
to say that publicly (even though he isn’t here tonight)
and that I will do better next year.
Zak did a great job nuturing the young talent
we have and also in picking out Mark as one of his constant
picks. Mark was involved in a number of unexpected and valuable
partnerships this year and also took 12 wickets, so great
pick from Zak. Thanks then to Zak for all his efforts this
year.
Why not have a round of applause for all
those!
Right, before we hit the awards bit, I’ve
picked out some club and individual champagne moments.
Now I should just say that we’ve had
champagne moments for some years but given the current economic
climate (which I’m not going to join in with the rest
and blame on the East Midlands Regional Development Agency)
we’ve downgraded it this year to a same bottle of sparking
white wine.
Some notable issues coming out of my trawl
through the scorebook include:
Some interesting batting collapses:
We were 104-5 against Chesterfield in May
and then 5 overs later we were 105 all out
80-5 against Attenborough and then 82 all
out
And no-one will forget the 52 all out, in
the league, against Risley
On a lighter note, on 10th August the scorer noted that Les
Hardy lost his hat in the wind (whether that was before he
went out to bat or not isn’t clear)
And that game was notable in that Geoff Pook
and Jeff Moore shared a 50 run opening partnership in which
Geoff Pook hit a six, giving him one more career six now than
Jeff Moore.
I’ve mentioned the tour to Bristol
and one of the best moments was Tim Caldwell’s 46 ball
91 at Failand and Portbury which unfortunately was only the
2nd best knock of the match as Charlie Walker hit 160 against
us. It mustn’t be forgotten (and wont be) that Jono
Andrew dropped Charlie when he was on 10! The knock obviously
went to Tim’s head as that night he locked me out of
my room and I had to sleep in my car!
We also had an opening stand of 172 between
Sean Bush and Imran Khan against Stanton, a game in which
Mark took a five for, another highlight of the year.
But my choice of champagne moment of the
year comes from the tour. We’d had three hard days of,
er, cultural visits and exchange and so were a bit tired.
Our final game was against one of the top teams in the area
and we faced a very quick overseas pro. Most of us avoided
him successfully, by backing away. But one chap was very brave
and got into line only to be hit squarely “in the box”
causing both the most painful and funniest moment of the year.
So for that the winner of the champagne moment of the year
goes to Phil Herd.
Right onto the proper awards. We have 5 awards
to give out – batter, bowler, first team and second
team player of the year and then my award for the clubman
of the year.
There are three things to mention here. Firstly
we had two players that made centuries – Methab Ahmed
and Tom Moore and we’ll be sorting out trophies for
them
The batting award was tight as ever - 7 batters
scored more than 300 runs and 8 players averaged over 30 and
the player with the most runs over the season was Tom Moore
with 478.
In terms of the award, in 3rd place is Tim
Caldwell with 397 runs at 33.08, second is me with 320 runs
at 35.56 but the award really is going to the right player
this year. With 401 runs, 9 scores above 20 in 12 innings
and an average of 36.45 the award goes to Jeff Moore.
The bowling award was also tight –
7 bowlers took more than 20 wickets with Imran Shahid coming
top of the pile with 34.
In third place with 19 wickets at 16.68 is
Tiim Caldwell, in second place with 28 wickets at 14.36 is
Nadeem Ghani
But with 24 wickets at an average of 13.25
the award goes to ,,,, er me.
Messages from Vaz and Zak
The final award is the clubman of the year
and as usual this year its going to someone who over a number
of years has been a stalwart of the playing and non-playing
life of the club. He has played hundreds of games, travelling
quite a way to get here, has been on every tour, been to about
every committee meeting for 19 years and never, to my knowledge,
been heard to moan about anything.
Unfortunately he can be here tonight but
I set off tonight saying I was the Geoff Pook tribute act
and I’d like to accord him our top tribute by announcing
that he is my club player of the year for 2008.
