Badgers Cricket Club – What’s New Archive 2008

Where did October go?? A phone call from Mark a couple of days ago reminded me that the dinner and dance is only a week away, and I need to get my finger out. There may not be another update before the dinner, but Jacqueline and I are two-thirds of the way through checking the scorebook against the database and once that process is complete then I might update the site again with the partial season report.

Full details of the season closing game with Chiltern Gypsies can be found on the results page along with a two-handed match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard. The match report represents a first for the web site, since I had not registered the fact that Graham Ward had volunteered to write it and had already written a fair chunk of text myself. Rather than waste it, especially as most of my perspective took a different slant, I decided to combine the two, and I hope the end result isn’t too confusing.

I have added what I anticipate to be the final ‘fiftieth fact’ – since I’ve run out of ideas on things to include. The pie charts resulted from a bit of messing about with the Google Chart API (after reading an article in PC Plus magazine last month) and the positioning of the two chart images may vary depending on your browser and screen resolution. If it looks ugly then my apologies but I was trying to get one chart in the top left corner and one in the bottom right corner, with text flowing nicely around them, but I couldn’t get things to work exactly as I intended and ended up with something of a hack. For the bowlers I’ve also brought the previous ‘fiftieth fact’ regarding seven-fers up to date and added similar pie charts.

You should all have received an email from Simon Fox with details of this year’s dinner and dinner, and if you have not then I suggest that you contact Simon directly to make sure that you don’t miss out on the key social date in the Badgers calendar. For those that need a reminder you can find a precis of those details on the news page.

Full details of last Sunday’s visit to Ockley village can be found on the results page along with Keith Miller’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

PLEASE NOTE that Sunday’s fixture with Chiltern Gypsies has been moved to Cadmore End Cricket Club. I don’t have a full postal address but the usual map link can be found on the fixtures page, and I’ve updated the Google Map showing the grounds we play on to reflect the change and it looks like the ground should be easy enough to find once you enter the village.

Full details of last Sunday’s hammering at the hands of Headley can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

An entry in the fortieth anniversary document that I’ve always meant to reproduce here, but never gotten around to writing the code to generate in a suitable form for inclusion on the site, is the scoring and match record summaries. Thanks to the rainy weekend the week before last we now have a new record summary page that rectifies that omission. I’ve not yet decided where to place it in the navigation scheme, so there is no menu entry or text link to it anywhere yet, but rather than wait for that aspect to get sorted out I thought I’d publish it first and worry about the niceties later.

Yesterday’s game at Alleyns was cancelled due to the weather but full details of last Sunday’s entertaining win at Blindley Heath can be found on the results page along with a full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

There have been a few minor corrections under the covers – including crediting Graham Ward with a caught and bowled at Morden Corinthians that had been missed – and I’ve also done one of my periodic updates to the personal pages, which affect the best performances and partnerships but not the averages, and continue to keep both the Hall of Fame lifetime averages page and the Hall Of Fame partnerships page up-to-date.

Full details of last weekend’s close finish at Morden Corinthians can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I have updated the fixtures page with details of an extra game that Patrick has arranged for the last weekend of September which has the novelty value of being closer to home for me than pretty much anyone else (although if the M25 behaves itself it will take me nearly as long to get there, cross country through some fairly narrow lanes, as it will some of you from the wilds of Surrey).

Another pasting this week, by Maori-Oxshott, full details of which can be found on the results page along with Simon’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

This coming weekend’s game against Morden Corinthians has been confirmed as being at the Raynes Park Sports Ground, the same place that we played Morden Parish earlier in the season for those that played in that game. Full address and map links can be found on the fixtures page, and I’ve updated the Google Map showing the grounds we play on to reflect this confirmation.

Last week’s fixture with Englefield Green was rained off, but full details of yesterday’s drubbing by Reigate Cavaliers can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

The fiftieth anniversary event has been and gone and even the chilly weather couldn’t ruin what was an emotional and entertaining day. A short review can be found on the fiftieth anniversary page along with links to Rodney Fenner’s impressive array of photographs and downloadable versions of the ‘These Fifty Years’ booklet that was distributed on the day.

Normal service resumed this past weekend, and full details of last Sunday’s solid win over Ham & Petersham can be found on the results page along with a full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Finally, I am not playing next weekend at Englefield Green so the site will not be updated again until I’ve had a chance to lay my hands on the scorebook the weekend after that.

Full details of last Sunday’s comfortable win over Ockham can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I must apologise to both Graham Ward and, more importantly since his was within a day of the completion of the game, Allan Butt for sitting on their handiwork since the start of last week but I have been up to my eyeballs in the booklet that will be distributed at the fiftieth celebrations on Sunday. With the event looming, and the deadline for getting the document to the printers looming larger, it has taken up pretty much all of my leisure time over the past fortnight and so this site has had to take a back seat. Anyway, irrespective of my inadequacies we now have a full match report for Morden Parish and a rather more tardy one for the Beechwood game.

I have, rather belatedly, set up a separate page for the fiftieth anniversary celebrations where you can find full details of the day, culled from Simon’s latest communication, plus up to the minute information and an archive of the ‘Fiftieth Fact’ items.

Finally, I have added an up-to-date lifetime averages page to the hall of fame so that everyone can keep on top of the official position on career milestones for the club rather than having to do their own.

Full details of yesterday’s nine-man victory over Morden Parish can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I should also point out that I have been keeping the Hall Of Fame partnerships page up-to-date and have just churned out one of the periodic in-season updates to the personal pages, which affect the best performances and partnerships but not the averages (which are only added to after the awarding of trophies at each season’s dinner and dance).

Please accept my apologies for being so remiss, but I’ve had an update to the fixtures page ready to go since last Saturday – when I noticed that the details for tomorrow’s game with Morden Parish were missing or incorrect – but completely forgot to put it up. My only excuse is that I’ve been so wrapped up in preparations for the rapidly looming Fiftieth Celebration that I’ve not had any spare time to devote to the site, but that is fairly pathetic. Those of you playing in the game should have received an email from Paul Little announcing the correct start time and I hope that no one turns up an hour early because of my tardiness.

PLEASE NOTE that Saturday’s game with Clapham has been cancelled, due to our inability to put out a team. Next weekend’s game is on a Saturday too, so I do hope this isn’t setting a precedent (especially since I prefer playing Saturdays – although I appreciate that I am in the minority).

Full details of last Sunday’s game against Tadworth can be found on the results page along with Patrick’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Full details of yesterday’s game against East Horsley can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Full details of yesterday’s big win against Epsom Methodists can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

My apologies to Simon for taking the better part of a week to post his handiwork, but the full match report for Leigh is now available for your delectation and amusement.

Full details of yesterday’s game against Leigh can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Full details of last Sunday’s game against Dormansland, which I didn’t realise until I got home was the fiftieth between the two clubs, can be found on the results page along with a full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

There will definitely be no game this weekend due to an inability to put out a full team on either day.

Next Sunday’s game with Stoke D'Abernon has been cancelled already. As usual we will go to conference for a replacement fixture but as of Sunday evening it had not been decided whether this would be a Saturday or Sunday fixture due to a significant number of unavailabilities for the original day. Watch this space, and your Inbox, for further details.

Full details of last Sunday’s game against Sutton Sunday Seconds can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

PLEASE NOTE that if next week’s game turns out to be on Sunday then I am unavailable so the website updates may be a little tardier due to the need for someone else to send me the relevant details and a summary report.

Full details of last Sunday’s game at Broadbridge Heath can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Full details of last Sunday’s first game of the 2008 season at Beechwood can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Thanks to Simon Fox I’ve added more meat to the bare bones of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations news item, and you may also have noticed the changes above that make the fiftieth the focus of this front page. Thanks are due to Mark Gordon (and daughter Amy, I am led to believe) for the image of the number 50 constructed from cricket balls.

This year’s tour has officially been cancelled due to lack of numbers prepared to commit to going, and the fixtures page has been updated to reflect that.

The usual winter laissez-faire, and my own problems, have seen the site lying fallow for several months again, for which I can only apologise. I recently had a long chat with Simon Fox, in his role as club chairman, and agreed some basic parameters on updating of the site in order to try and avoid such problems in the future, and I am actively looking into ways of making some (if not all) of the content of the site accessible to other interested parties so that things like news items can be created without my involvement.

New items of current interest include details of indoor nets, the new fixtures (including a link to a new Google Map that displays the location of all grounds we are slated to play at during the 2008 season), and a small item on the rapidly looming fiftieth anniversary celebrations.

On the historical front there is a brief (and sadly rather incomplete) report on the dinner and dance, the full season report is now available for last season and the personal pages have been updated with full details of the batting, bowling and miscellaneous statistics from 2007.

I’ve also done a considerable amount of housekeeping over this weekend, including checking for (and generally correcting) broken links and errors in the underlying page markup. Please let me know if find any such problems, especially dead links in the live areas of the site (chasing down such issues in news and what’s new archives is a constant battle, but I’m quite happy to be notified of problems there too).