Badgers Cricket Club – What’s New Archive 2016

The annual presentation dinner took place last night (yes, I really am posting an update the day after the event)!? Details of who won what can be found on the news page, along with a brief report of proceedings, and the Hall Of Fame Trophy winners page has been updated accordingly.

Things will go quiet for a little while now but I am well on the way to being able to provide full best performances information for all seasons prior to 1984, having already entered the first dozen or so seasons, the first fruits of which are already visible on some personal pages, most notably, for now, our esteemed chairman and the legendary Brian Moore. Once the process is complete then you can expect to see both individual pages for each season, as we already have for seasons from 1985 on, and an overall best performances ever page in the hall of fame.

Whilst on the subject of personal pages I omitted to mention with the last update that both Alec Cochrane and Pete Snook played often enough in 2016 (and over the previous four seasons) to end up so endowed but Daniel Ward has lost his since he no longer meets the qualification criteria. Whilst on the subject of omissions I should also mention that I failed to pick up on an unusual element of the second Tadworth game, which I have rectified in the revised match report.

Not sure exactly when the next update will be – I am currently managing to add best performance details at a rate of one per day, but the number of games played increases somewhat from the mid-1970s onwards – but hopefully something useful will appear before Christmas. More likely, given my track record, is an apologetic update just before (or just after) the AGM, but let’s hope that for once I can offer a little more than my existing reputation suggests.

Cross-checking of the data is now complete – Darrell and I have even taken the time to check against the paper scorebook entries, and correct some of them, so my thanks to him for sharing that chore – so for the first time ever I am now in the position to bring you the full season report in advance of the dinner and the distribution of awards off the back of the averages contained therein.

All of the other pages have been updated with the 2016 figures, including all decade by decade averages pages, the personal pages and the individual records page.

In addition those efforts mean that you can now find historical results for 2016 along with the performances and partnerships.

For the record the changes made as a result of the checking can be found on the Statistical Sett page.

Not sure what the next updates will be, although there will almost certainly be one at some time after the dinner documenting the awards made on the night and I have started work on both entering 1984 into Play-Cricket and building up a database of historical best performances, so either (or both) of those might come to friution before the AGM announcement.

The final game of the year at Westcott was blessed with some lovely weather, the odd short rain shower notwithstanding, and a DIY tea. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

After some discussion with various other club officers I have decided to forego the habit of a lifetime and publish the full season statistics as soon as they are ready this year (so no partial season report with the batting, bowling and catching missing). Primary driver for this, since it doesn’t really cost me a great deal of extra time, is that everyone can see the numbers for themselves on Play-Cricket and it no longer makes sense to pretend otherwise. I may also give up on producing the paper season report (including the PDF version) because that does cost me a lot of time and effort, so if you are particularly attached to that approach then you’d better let me know.

Therefore the next update should appear in the next couple of weeks, once I’ve had a chance to cross-check all of the data and roll the whole site over to its post season state.

The Badgers played their first home game in many a year following Ockley being unable to get a side out but willing to lend us their facilities so that we could arrange a fixture against Cuddington Casuals. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Ran out of time to get this update out before this week’s game, due to the need to spend time sorting out both an opponent and a team for yesterday, despite last minute drop outs on both fronts and the fact that I was at Lords on Saturday watching Surrey get beaten hollow.

Tadworth exacted their revenge for our win earlier in the season, although only by the skin of their teeth. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

PLEASE NOTE that Sunday’s game will be at Tadworth rather than the previously advertised Horsley & Send (which was actually cancelled before the season started, but which I did not find out about until a fortnight ago). Start time is still under discussion but will be either one o’clock or one thirty.

We made a slightly better fist of our visit to Addington 1743 than last year but in the end it was a not dissimilar story in that we let them score a few more than they ought to have got and we failed to chase that total down. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Given that I was so close to being fully up to date it seemed daft not to finish everything off this morning before setting off for Addington. Last week’s visit to Blindley Heath saw us beat the weather and our second longest standing opponents. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

A rainy Saturday afternoon has given me the opportunity to break the back of the remaining 2016 results, with only last week’s Blindley Heath game not yet recorded in the Badgers database and on these pages. I have added information on the Smallfield Manor, Banstead, Ottershaw and Deando matches and the usual summarised details of those games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

Hopefully I have made sufficient progress that the next update will bring the site up to date and I will then be able to keep things that way through the end of the season.

As previously suggested I am working my way through the missing 2016 results, updating the Badgers database and these pages. On this pass I have added information on the Iscoyd & Fenns Bank, Malpas, Oxted & Limpsfield and Ripley matches and the usual summarised details of those games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

Hopefully I will be able to continue to update the site with results over the coming days and get caught up before the end of the season, but as ever there are no guarantees.

The site has lain dormant for too long, and my apologies for that, but hopefully most (if not all) of you reading this know that our Play-Cricket site is kept up to date with the results as they happen as well as any changes to fixtures. Unfortunately there have been a series of problems, starting with the aforementioned issues scraping the Old Whitgiftians result, then with anomalies in the Tadworth scorebook, followed by a technical issue around the transfer of the Iscoyd & Fenns Bank game on tour from Play-Cricket into the Badgers database and then a variety of other matters arising from scorebooks. All of that has meant that I simply have not had the time to both process the scorebooks fully in order to populate everything that Play-Cricket supports and to scrape everything into the Badgers database to update this site. In fact, I have only sorted out the Iscoyd issues over this Bank Holiday weekend – helped by having Jacqueline and another competent scorer on duty for most of the past few weeks to speed up the scorecard checking process – and thus have started the process of bringing this site up to date. Rather than delay an update further by trying to get caught up in one bite, I will take it a handful of games at a time.

On that basis I have added information on the Old Whitgiftians, Bagshot, Tadworth and Horley matches (the latter was a real nail-biter) so the usual summarised details of those games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

Hopefully I will be able to update the site with more results over the coming weeks and get caught up before the end of the season, but we’ll see.

PLEASE NOTE that we now have a fixture for this coming Sunday, at Bagshot whom we last played in 1988 – funnily enough that one was a Conference arranged fixture (albeit that the CCC failed us this time). The usual details, including map links, can be found on the fixtures page.

No other update to see here at the minute as I’m having problems scraping the Old Whitgiftians result from Play-Cricket into the database and those problems are going to necessitate code changes, which I haven’t had the time to sit down and write this week – something to do with the amount of time spent trying to track down a game for this weekend.

Two more solid wins to report following the visits to Dormansland last Sunday and Stoke d'Abernon the week before. The usual summarised details of the games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

I have also finally got my finger out and updated the Google Map with the locations of our opposition for this season, (only) just in time for the first planned game that wasn’t on last year’s slate. The introductory paragraphs on the fixtures page have also been updated accordingly.

The last two weeks have seen contrasting games, with an exciting one wicket victory on Ham Common last weekend having been preceded by a fairly dull and processional loss to Beddington the week before. The usual summarised details of the games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

One element that I have recently changed, as a displacement activity when I could have been writing match reports, was to remove the lifelong use of the “wkts.” abbreviation in match results text. This made perfect sense when the reports were printed using fixed pitch characters on an old dot matrix printer with an 80 column wide page but serves no real purpose these days – I’ve just never really thought about that aspect of it until now. I may not have clobbered all instances of the abbreviation just yet, but the next time everything gets generated from scratch they should all disappear.

PLEASE NOTE that we have a change of fixture for Sunday, with a game against Beddington having been arranged when Weybridge Vandals contacted us to say they were very strong this week and did we want to arrange something else.

The new season started on the intended first weekend for once, although the trip to Beechwood saw the temperature plummet such that the scorers were huddled under blankets and the players (mostly) swaddled in as many layers as they could manage. Despite the cold we had a cracking game to get the season off on the right foot, and pulled the win out with two balls to spare. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

In addition to rolling the site over to the new season I’ve rather belatedly brought the fixtures page up to date, although the 2016 version of the Google map of locations is not yet ready.

Just like last year it is remiss of me not to have updated the site sooner, but this year’s AGM will be held tomorrow night. You should all have received an email from Chairman Allan Butt with details of the occasion. As belt and braces I’ve added an item to the news page with a summary of the arrangements.