Chingford Cricket Club

A Review of the 2016 Season

Results were as follows:

1^st xi – A poor start to the campaign saw us out of both the League Cup (v Hadleigh) and the National (v Hertford) before the end of April. We were soon in trouble in the League, kicking off with 3 straight defeats but the sequence was ended by a remarkable 9^th wicket stand between Paul Shawyer and Liam Lannen which earned us victory over Hornchurch when we had been staring down the barrel. After this results were somewhat erratic and it all came down to a great escape on the last day at South Woodford. With rain forecast from 4pm Chingford won a crucial toss and were back in the pavilion by 3:30 having secured a vital win to overtake Buckhurst Hill (who were losing at Wanstead) in the table and condemn them to the drop. Our major rungetters were Mubasher Hassan with 505 runs and 1 century and Ben MacGregor with 469 runs and 2 centuries but there were few other batting highlights. Similarly with the ball the side found wickets hard to come by with only Liam Lannen (28) and Ben MacGregor(25) returning over 20 wickets. In the T20 we were eliminated by a loophole in the rules when Woodford Wells refused to replay a rained-off game citing “girls coaching” as the reason they could not play on any of the seven replay dates they were offered

2^nd xi – The 2s had a difficult time and particularly poor availability for what was ultimately a winner takes all clash with Woodford Wells on the August Bank Holiday Saturday ultimately cost them their place in the Premier Division. There were few individual highlights although Chris Stephens led the batting with 385 runs and Richard Offord the bowling with 20 wickets

3^rd xi- We were in Division 2 and from the offset were one of four teams that broke away at the top of the League. We were in touch with the leaders all the way only to fall away in the run in , losing 4 of the last 5 games. However our 3^rd place finish was enough to secure our return to Division 1 for 2017. Jamil Akhtar led the way with the bat with 376 runs, whilst a potent bowling unit was led by Talal Sultan with 26 wickets, well backed up by Faizan Awan and Scott Prestedge who bagged 23 victims each.

4^th xi – Sadly the 4^th xi were relegated on the final day of the season, despite every effort from skipper Carey Harborne with limited resources. Our game with Ilford was abandoned giving us 6 points, whilst further East at Shenfield the weather was more favourable enabling them to complete their game and overtake us. The leading batsmen were Ali Butt (354 runs) and Qasim Ali (332) whilst Carey Harborne spearheaded the bowling with 15 wickets.

Sunday xi – With limited resources at our disposal we competed well in Chess Valley Division 3 and recorded a 6^th place finish. Runs were never a problem with regulars Rezwan Rehman (906runs), Jamil Akhtar (879), Amit Ashok (695), Zeshan Rehman (509) and Michael Blake (447) forming a formidable top order. However this was not enough at the standard we were playing as our bowling desperately lacked the penetration to trouble the quality of the batsmen we were competing against, despite the notable exception of Tanvir Hasan who bagged a creditable 43 wickets in 16 appearances.