Chingford Cricket Club

by Jeff Runciman

The Club can be very pleased with the overall performance of all three teams in a season which could be seen as transitional with a bevy of colts starting to make a significant impact in senior cricket.

The 1st XI began with high hopes after dumping Fves & Heronians out of the league cup after bowling them out for 48 and securing a 10 wicket win. This proved to be a false dawn as they quickly departed from all the cup competitions and lost the first league games to Shenfield by a 9 wicket margin. A fine victory over Westcliff followed when a fine bowling performance of 7-49 by Jon Dyers produced an emphatic 64 run win. This proved to be the only win in the first 9 games and with osing the services of opening bowlers Jon Dyers and Grant Mather, the heads were down and relegation looked a distinct possibility. Remarkably the second half of the season produced 4 wins and 3 draws in which the opposition just escaped defeat. If we had managed to win our last two games, incredibly we would have been promoted, but felt that finishing 4th was indeed an achievement and were indebted to some fine bowling from the rejuvinated Kerry Marriott and some excellent spin bowling from Shaun McMurray. It was also gratifying to witness the performances of 16 year old Ben MacGregor who showed great maturity when promoted to open the batting plus plus weighing in with some important wickets with his left arm spin.

The 2nd XI under Richard MacGregor had an excellent season just failing to achieve a second successive promotion with a fine balance of old heads and up and coming colts. Richard led from the front taking 48 wickets with his off spin with fine support from Andy Chipchase and Paul Adshead. The pick of the batting came from Darren Ross (477 runs) and Peter Joslin (436 runs) whilst Steve Piper and Mike Lyon, who played a nmber of 1st team games, achieved averages of over 60.

The 3rd XI under Stephen Thorne once again did extremely well with veterans Carey Harborne and Michael Blake taking lots of wickets (both achieved 8 wicket hauls) whilst many of the youngsters gave good all round performances. Nick Shawyer scored a maiden century and progressed all the way to the 1st XI where he also showed great promise.

On Sundays C.Saunders of Abbots Langley scored what is believed to be the highest individual score against Chingford when he smashed 204 in the Chess Valley League match - apparently he was dropped by David Joslin off a starightforward chance in the 20s ! The Bs finished runners up in Division 2 ,just edged out of the title by Harrow on run rate.

Further significant progress was evident in the colts section thanks to the considerable endeavours of coaches James Hill and Mark Campbell. We were also greatly indebted to the London Marathon Foundation for a donation of £18,500 which enabled the complete refurbishment of our indoor cricket school.