Chingford Cricket Club

A Review of the 2022 Season

After two seasons of covid disrupted cricket it was nice to actually return to normal. However Covid did leave its legacy with some clubs abandoning teas and some general courtesies permanently and others only supplying meals at 1^st and 2^nd xi level (as was agreed in the Essex League).

We were buoyed at the start of the season by an influx of 1^st and 2^nd xi players which resulted in improved playing strength of all our senior xis plus the return of Jamie Hill as Cricket Chairman. All in all 2022 was one of the most successful seasons in Club history with two League Divisions won, One Promotion and to cap it all the League Cup won by Chingford for the third time.

2022 was one of the driest Summers on record as a new Club record for the earliest fixture in the Calendar Year was set on April 3 when the Sunday xi played Nazeing Common. In fact just one Saturday and one Sunday fixture fell foul to the weather in the entire season with the usually lush Forest Side outfield turning yellow for several weeks, resulting in runs aplenty.

The 1st xi with Andrew MacGregor at the helm got off to an absolute flyer with victories in the first two rounds of the League Cup followed by wins in three of the first four Premier League games. Alas after this the form subsided badly and only a crucial win over Hutton in August kept us out of the relegation places as we finished 8^th again. The League Cup draw had been relatively kind and Division 1 sides Billericay and Harold Wood were handsomely defeated in the quarter and semi-final to set up the Final v Chelmsford at Wanstead CC. The weather in the run up to the Final had been awful and only a tremendous effort by the host Club saw the game go ahead. Batting first Chingford amassed a formidable 254-5 courtesy of 83 from Dan Lawrence and 68 from Peter McDermott. Chelmsford were never up with the run rate and ran out of overs on 210-9 to leave Chingford competition winners. Overall Tom Balkwill led the run charts with 816 well supported by Peter McDermott(781), Andrew MacGregor (732), Viv Hassan (536), Alex Maskell (486) and Alfie Taylor (485). With the ball overseas Mitch Drennan took 39 wickets at just over 20 each whilst Ben MacGregor, Viv Hassan Bill Prideaux and Liam Lannen all returned over 20 wickets.

One of the problems in the 2^nd xi League is the huge gulf between Premier and Division 1. The 2nd xi under Nadir Noori had returned to Division 1 but there were only 3 sides in the Division anywhere near contention for promotion. We won the first eight League games and fourteen in all, but in the end we had to settle for the second promotion slot with the two key games both lost against eventual Champions Epping. Runs were scored aplenty with Kishen Patel hitting 1000 including 200 v Colchester (the 5^th highest ever innings in Club history), Rishi Roy 793 and Ali Butt, Bilal Kamal and Nadir Noori all over 350. Scoring all these runs is however not without its issues as the middle order men became redundant for weeks on end. With the ball George Duke took 28 wickets and Nadir Noori 26 ably backed up by 7 other bowlers who returned a double wicket haul.

The 3rd xi with Faizan Awan in charge took the Division 2 Championship by a country mile. 11 consecutive wins to start the season in some style and a tally of 14 wins saw a welcome return to Division 1 for 2023 as Champions. The best batsmen was opener Usman Younas (425) before his season was curtailed early through injury while Lewis Dixon and Jack Page both contributed over 250. With the ball a varied bowling attack of Faizan Awan 24 wickets, Ross Simmons (22) Scott Prestedge (21) and Richard Offord (21) had far too much for the opposition. Youngster Abduallah Hussain showed much promise, weighing in with 14 wickets at just 17 apiece.

Stuart Cox again led from the front he 4^th xi who were runaway winners of Division 1 West winning every single game in the League that we played with. There was little in the way of quality or competition from any at all of the opposing sides who were generally disposed of with ease. Indeed one of the problems of regionalised cricket is that the geography creates mismatches when Divisions are created on location rather than cricketing merit. Plus limited over cricket in mismatches is almost pointless and devoid of excitement. Stuart’s influence around the Club ensured that strong sides were regularly fielded and the leading run scorers were Bernard Storm (609), Michael Blake (294) and Stuart Cox (278). However it was with the ball that most of the games were won as Stephen Thorne took 29 wickets at just 11 apiece, Stuart Cox took 27 wickets at 9.89 and Bernard Storm 15 at 12.

The Sunday xi had a disappointing season with 7 wins, 7 draws and 9 defeats and in complete contrast to what was happening on Saturdays, no game actually won until 12 June. The batting was generally of more than sufficient quality for what we needed but a woeful lack of variety within the bowling saw numerous winnable games all end as draws when we should really have forced a victory. In Division 3 of the Chess Valley League we finished 5^th but with only one game won on the field the bowling issues were also prevalent. Tom Balkwill hit 1199 runs, but was well backed up by Ali Butt (782), Ross Simmons (550) and Ayaz Shah with 542 at an average of 108.4 ! With the ball the three off spinners all provided a bowling backbone and performed creditably, namely George Duke (36 wickets), Scott Prestedge (25 wickets) and Stephen Thorne (20 wickets) but our other bowlers of different variety did not deliver what we needed to bowl sides out.

Results in 2022 were as follows:

The Colts section under Mark Campbell continues to ridiculously exceed expectations with record number of members and a record number of fixtures being played on Sunday mornings and given all the activity we now have our own Colts committee to provide the necessary administration. The purpose of any Colts section is to provide future players for the Club senior teams and it was great to see Bilal Kamal picking up the Essex Development Team Player of the Year showing that all the work being done is not just producing a quantity of players but also some pretty impressive quality too.

In May we were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our former President Ted Sandrock shortly after his 101^st birthday. Ted had first played for the Club in 1949 and will be sorely missed.

Tom Balkwill created a new Club aggregate record number of runs for a season, scoring 2483 including 8 centuries and was a more than worthy winner of the Jack Watson (batting) Trophy.

On the international scene the Club were delighted to see Dan Lawrence play 3 further Test matches all v West Indies and he was unlucky not to make his maiden century at Bridgetown where he was dismissed for 91 in the first innings. It was also lovely to see Dan making the effort to turn out for his Club in the League Cup Final.