A Review of the 1991 Season
by Michael Blake
To say that the 1991 season was disappointing at 1st XI level was an understatement. A final position of 19th in the Essex League table accurately reflected the fact that only one game resulted in a victory, this being a morale boosting win over 1990 Champions Ilford in only the second game.
In contrast the 2nd eleven under new skipper Phil Joslin were regularly in the top six of their division and the team deserved better than a final position of sixth. Features of Phil’s captaincy were pep talks in the dressing room and a new innovation called “fielding practice” before each match. The backbone of the team was the varied bowling attack, although the seam department did have a few no ball problems! It was also encouraging to see three of our U15 colts(including James Runciman and Leigh Carpenter) breaking into the side towards the end of the season.
The 3rd eleven season mirrored the 1st team’s despite the availability of several former 2nd team regulars and Jeff Runciman’s extra 3rd eleven played some interesting village games with his sprinkling of golden oldies and promising young guns. We were however delighted with our new 3rd eleven ground at the Old Chigwellians (famous last words!).
An unusual occurence happened in the 3rd XI match at Tottenham Old Grammarians where all nine opposition wickets were dismissed by HART ! But...it was 5 to Paul and 4 to Steve !!
Centurions in the League were Peter Tarrant with two tons for the 2nd XI and Derek Lacey with one for the thirds.
Donning the white coat regularly were Bryan Knight, Roger Behling, Ted Alston and Bunny Swinfen.
On Sundays results were excellent with the Sunday A’s under the capable leadership of Fraser Lawrence and Richard Alston (141) and Nick Gibbs (97) put on over 200 for the first wicket against Cockfosters.
In the Sunday Bs , Shakeel Kadri found himself in two interesting statistical situations. Firstly getting a ton at Winchmore Hill....off his own bowling (although to be fair, he did bowl 22 overs) and secondly rescuing Chingford from a potential all time record low score by smashing 58 against Broxborne at no 8 after Chingford were incredibly 3-6 after being earlier 0-4.
Our Colts Under 15 side under the management of Terry Dennehy reached the final of the IDCA competition before succumbing to Gidea Park and Romford.
Rain washed out three of our five games on the Devon Tour, but Paul Hart still had time to run out Jamie Hill on 99 at North Molton A second two day tour was planned but at the last minute we changed plans to play the games as one-offs on consecutive days. The second of these two matches saw us up against a Cheam side amazingly that included Ali Brown and Mark Butcher of England, Andy Smith of Surrey and a pro from western Australia called Auty. Memories of this game include (other than me getting out Smith and FBS dismissing Butcher!) the most enormous six by Brown I’ve ever seen off a perfectly good ball from Andy Lewis that went over the squash court at Peaches Close and Butcher saying to Peter Tarrant after he’d kicked the fourth consecutive dellivery “are you going to hit one in a minute mate ?”
Cricket Week was again blessed with beautiful weather. This was a bowler’s nightmare as we successfully chased 257 and 300 on successive days. The latter match against Peter Hall’s XI was (at the time) believed to be the highest ever Chingford score batting second .
In May we hosted the Club Cricket Conference President’s match in honour of Ron Lynch and Ron also reached a further milestone on achieving an amazing twenty years as League Chairman.
The data on the scorecards has been lifted from a variety of press cuttings, scorebooks and old records. Where the team totals are unclear I’ve entered it as a default 100 or so, and where the method of dismissal is unclear I’ve added it as Hit Wicket and where the exact number of overs is unclear it’s a default 10 ! Hope you enjoy reminiscing and let me know of any gaps in the data we can plug!