London Saints

The Summer’s coming!

London Saints Cricket Club – annual dinner – Friday 8th April

7-8pm The Plumbers Arms, Lower Belgrave Street, SW1

8pm onwards The Sekara Restaurant, Lower Grosvenor Place, SW1

REVIEW OF THE SEASON 2010
The club’s 30th year saw us use 4 new players bringing the total number of players who have represented the club up to 172. In total 27 players were used, all of whom batted, 16 of whom bowled with 14 of these taking wickets and 15 players took catches.

Our full record was : – Played 10, Won 2, Drew 1, and Lost 7 plus our grand celebration match at Lord’s. The two victories were over Coldharbour (which arguably was a better performance than last year as it was more of an all round team performance) and Witham Friary on tour. The draw was against Ex Blues but to be fair we were hanging on. There were four fairly heavy defeats against Gents (twice), Cincinnatti and Walthamstow, a near miss in the Nelson Cup and two very close defeats, which could have gone either way, to Norton St Philip and Platt (last ball).

The obvious highlight of the season and the clubs career has to be the 30th anniversary celebration inter club match at the Nursery Ground, Lord’s which has been well documented. Just in summary though, the day saw 29 club member’s play or umpire in a day never to be forgotten. 29 wickets fell and 463 runs scored with the match going down to the 480th and last ball. An all round tremendous success with great weather and attendance from spectators as well as the success of the fundraising from the great match day programme and auction of many items afterwards. A better script could not have been written for a day which highlighted all the things that make this club special.

Six players received nominations for Player of the Year but without doubt the deserved victor was Trevor Mayhew in a season in which he continually threatened to retire. Someone of Trevor’s class will never be able to finish completely, especially as his ‘ final ‘ innings was a rare failure and we expect to see Trevor don the shirt, if only occasionally, in the years to come. He polled almost 50% of the votes cast (9 out of 19) and over twice as many as the 2nd placed player, Paul Wathan, whose greatly improved bowling was recognised. Other votes were given to last year’s winner John Griffiths, DT, Dave Nanton and The Rat for his one and debut performance.

On the batting front Trevor topped the aggregate runs and averages with an excellent 38.40 and hit the clubs only two 50’s of the season. Amazingly for someone nicknamed Duck, Finn Quinn came second in the averages with an average of 31, an improvement of 30.17 from his 2009 average of 0.83. He was only out once in five innings but that was a duck so he hasn’t completed left behind his roots but there is obvious promise there. There were other consistent performances with nine players, in total, with double figure averages.

On the bowling front, the wickets were shared around with no one bowler dominating. The skipper and John Griffiths led the way with twelve wickets each with Paul Wathan and Gavin Van Marle on 9 and Clive Dunn on 8. Once again the wickets claimed, and averages, of Finn and Dave Nanton did not do justice to their good bowling. The Wath topped the averages for the first time in his 30 year career with Clive Dunn pushing Paul closely. With John Griffiths and Paul Pearce also in the top five, it meant that slow blowers took four of the first five spots in the averages which says something about either the pitches, our area of bowling strength, or our ages. On the fielding front, the Skipper took 7 catches with the others fairly evenly shared around with Neil Hotston and Paul Pearce next with there catches each.

The Duck Trophy went down to the last game with five players in contention. Remarkably none of the five contenders could manage a duck between them in the final game so Clive Dunn (Tony Grimes) just held off Lord Lucan who seems to be in contention every year but never clinches the ultimate prize. Tony and Steve’s records were almost identical – 3 ducks each with one golden but Tony took the trophy as he played less innings, 7 to Steve’s 8. If you ignore Finn’s classic 83.33% duck ratio season of 2009, Tony’s duck percentage of 42.86% was last beaten in 2001 so was well deserved. It is still good to know though, that of the 27 players who batted this year, 14 of them made a duck (almost 52%), with 5 goldens, so as usual this trophy will be the closest fought of them all.

Some noteable milestones were achieved in 2010: – Trevor Mayhew and Garry Burrell played their 150th games with Andy Jones, John Griffiths and Paul Pearce playing their 100th. Paul Wathan played his 200th innings and Neil Hotston his 150th. Pete Berkeley scored his 2,000th LSCC career run and John Griffiths his 1,000th and Finn hit his highest LSCC score. On the bowling front, three players achieved their best LSCC figures – Finn, Gavin Van Marle and Dave Nanton.

So, all in all, it was a mixed season with less games than usual but as usual an enjoyable one. Lord’s was the obvious highlight which makes all the struggles for players over the years worthwhile, memories of which will keep the old foot soldiers marching on into 2011.

Cheers
DT

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