1993 Season Review
by Michael Blake
The 1st XI in Peter Tarrant’s second and final season as Captain obtained their biggest win haul for several years, of six victories. In view of this a final League position of 13th was particularly disappointing but nevertheless an improvement on previous years.
For the first time at Chingford our side comprised an overseas player, Paul Russ and his contributions were considerable in that he topped our lists for leading run scorer and wicket taker in the League. Alongside him, skipper Peter Tarrant had blooded a young side with the likes of James and Danny Hill, James Runciman and Steve Piper doing well enough to give us optimism for the future. An obvious deficiency of the team however was the lack of a quality wicket keeper.
The second XI were rarely short of runs, with Peter Joslin hitting two centuries but the bowling lacked a cutting edge and the side finished 15th
The third XI under Paul Hart had the League title in their sights and a win at Hutton in the final game would have secured the Championship. In the end we were lucky the game was on following heavy overnight rain – Harty lost the toss and a batting disaster saw Hutton win easily. We lost out to Chelmsford on the League, in the end having to settle for third place but still a tremendous showing with 10 wins secured. Some great performances came in the batting from the consistent Des Piper and Andy Norgate who hit 160* against Walthamstow at Old Chigs. Also openers Phil Joslin and Bill Cashmore in three consecutive games scored over 500 runs without losing their wickets!
Paul Russ beat Graham Lord’s long standing Club record individual score, when he smashed an amazing 207 in the midweek match at Coggeshall – even more remarkable bearing in mind that the match started 3 hours late due to rain!
Cricket week saw a moving occasion with Chingford facing the Chinghoppers in the Terry Dennehy Memorial Match. Many thanks go to Peter Hall for his incredible efforts in organising the Hoppers team which contained eleven former Chingford players.
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!