Badgers Cricket Club – What’s New Archive 2009

I’ll start with a big thank you to Jacqueline who, for the second year running, willingly helped me with the chore of cross-checking the scorecards generated from the database with the actual scorebook data. It is a difficult job to do solo so her assistance was more than welcome.

Our checking did find one mistake – Patrick was shown as a DNB at Seven Sports rather than not out – which caught me by surprise as I would have expected that error to be spotted by my code somewhere along the line, and so I ended up extending an existing integrity checker to look for such logic errors in the batting and bowling data. One side effect of that is that it found a couple of other errors, one of which has stood in the records for the past twenty-one years. Therefore I am sorry to have to tell Mr. Willmott that he now has one less not out to his credit, since he was so recorded at Newchapel back in 1988 when he was in fact run out and Alan Tickner that he took one less wicket at Loose in 1995 when the scorebook showed him with two, when in fact only one is recorded in the bowling analysis. Fortunately neither error had a material effect on the destinations of any silverware, but I don’t doubt that there are other mistakes hidden away in less obvious places (although the advent of the web site and the switch to weekly entry of the scorebook data has made it more likely that problems will be identified sooner rather than later).

Anyway, the result of all this hard work is that you can now find historical results for 2009 along with a partial season report plus the personal pages have been updated with all the 2009 performances and partnerships (with the vagaries of the selection mechanism resulting in Rakesh, Sahil and John Larkin all now having pages despite playing just eight games between the three of them this season). The season report and personal pages will be updated further once the destination of the various cups has been revealed at the dinner.

On the subject of the annual dinner, you should all have received an email (or snail mail if you don’t have access to the electronic variety) from new chairman Allan Butt with details of that event on November 21st, and I suggest that if you have not yet done so that you contact Allan straight away to avoid missing out. For those that have lost or cannot be bothered to track down that email then I have updated the news page with the extra details of the evening.

Finally, I have been making a whole raft of changes behind the scenes – many of which will not be visible to the naked eye as they relate to the separation of content and presentation – and have started on trying to make better use of the facilities that our new hosting provider makes available to us, which ought to allow for more dynamic content.

The season ended with the now traditional visit to Merrow and the nearly traditional final game loss. Full details can be found on the results page along with Foxy’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard. You can now also feast your eyes on the full match report for Alleyns which Graham Ward provided over two weeks ago but which I have only just found the time to apply the blue pen to.

Rather than hold up the posting of the usual match-related information, whilst Jacqueline helps me to check the data recorded in the database against the scorebooks, I am treating this as a normal update and will follow it up in a few days when we have finished that chore and I have updated the various areas of the site that change at season’s end.

The season finishes with a Saturday game this weekend and therefore I’ve tried to rush out this update before leaving for a twelve thirty start in Guildford. Please excuse any typos or other mistakes as I have not had the time to take the usual level of care.

Contrasting results over the past two weekends, with a slightly shaky win last week at Ockley following a pasting the Sunday before at Headley, where not for the first time we were on the receiving end of a brilliant individual innings and failed to match an imposing target. Full details can be found on the results page along with summary match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

A couple of anomalies have come up over the past fortnight, so I must apologise for forgetting the downloads directory when I recreated the site in it’s new home – which meant that the PDF versions of the last two season reports and the fiftieth booklets gave errors when accessed – and also for the fact that the go.to email address appears not to have been routing messages for at least the past eighteen months. I place the latter fault at Virgin Media’s door but I’ve changed the settings to route to my personal domain address instead so any mail should be flowing again now.

Due to the amount of time spent in sorting out the domain name transfer in order to resurrect the site I did not find the time to write a summary match report for Alleyns until this morning, and I’m still waiting on Graham Ward’s more complete version, so this update is also late and again glosses over the most recent game, a tough loss on the heath at Headley.

Allan Butt, possibly slightly in self-defence, has pointed out a weakness in my mathematical skills and I can confirm that the age gap between Allan and Jake is in fact a couple of months less than sixty years. I have adjusted the Blindley Heath match report accordingly and offer my apologies to both parties for my sloppy calculations.

A pleasant afternoon in the leafy environs of Dulwich saw the Badgers win on their first ever visit to the Edward Alleyns Club. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Still lagging behind, so Sunday’s win at Alleyns will be glossed over so as not to hold up the update for the previous three matches. Expect another update at the end of the week and hopefully I will have some more positive news at that point about getting our normal domain name (and links from the search engines) back into working order. I am now fairly certain that our existing hosting company has gone out of business which makes sorting out the domain name a real pain so it may take a while.

It seems I contrived to miss one of the tightest ever finishes in club history two weeks ago whilst away on holiday, as the visit to Chipstead, Coulsdon and Walcountians culminated in a (sort of) last ball finish. You can read all about it in Simon Fox’s full match report and I have also managed to cobble together reports for the drawn games at Oxshott and Blindley Heath the week before and after. The details of all three matches can be found on the results page along with the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

Having finally found enough time to complete the utter chore of reconciling both the Ham & Petersham and Reigate Cavaliers scorebooks – in order to find and correct problems with our batting totals – and Darrell having been kind enough to provide a summary report for the former, I find myself still a week behind the game since I have nothing from last Sunday’s visit to Oxshott. That will have to wait until I have the scorebook back, since I am not available for the coming game with Chipstead, Coulsdon & Walcountians, so expect another multi-game update in early September.

We are in the middle of a run of tough games at the moment and fighting draws against Ham and Reigate have sandwiched a sound thrashing, in quite beautiful surroundings, by first time opponents Windsor Great Park. Full details can be found on the results page along with summary match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

The location of the 2009 dinner has been confirmed and you can find the skeletal details, including a date for your diaries, on the news page.

My working life is such at the moment that it is a battle to keep up. I still haven’t found the time to enter last week’s scorecard data for Ham & Petersham, but I have finally finished off the summary report for Seven Sports, so that is all you get this time.

Another surprisingly uninterrupted game in Chertsey the Sunday before last produced another Badgers’ win, this time at the expense of Seven Sports. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

A slightly damp but ultimately successful visit to Ockham on Sunday saw the Badgers post their fourth win of the season. Full details can be found on the results page along with Simon Fox’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Another new fixture last Sunday, against Old Suttonions, produced an entertaining game that swung back and forth and ended in a closely fought draw. Full details can be found on the results page along with Graham Ward’s full match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Due to the speed at which it was finished off and uploaded to the web (literally moments before leaving for Sunday’s game in Reigate) there were a few minor issues in the previous update. To that end I’ve made a few changes to the recent match reports and corrected an error introduced into the 1984 best partnerships but do still need to do something about the preamble text for the individual records page which went up before it was complete.

A new fixture last Sunday, against a side made up primarily of youngsters, saw the Badgers notch up their third win of the season. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I have 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.

My apologies for failing to get an update out over the past few weeks, but I’ve been struggling to find the time to get everything done, with the match summary for Leigh proving a particular obstacle.

Since the last update we’ve had a losing draw at Tadworth, missed a weekend due to an inability to fill a TBA via the CCC, beaten Woldingham Village, delivered a fairly poor performance – especially in the field – in defeat at Leigh and shared an exciting finish to a glorious sunny day at long-standing opponents Dormansland. Full details can be found on the results page along with summary match reports and the pertinent elements from the scorecards.

I have also added a new entry to the Hall Of Fame showing the individual statistical leaders in a variety of categories, both season and lifetime. This is the last of the sections from the fortieth anniversary document that I can replicate until such time as the older scorebook data is entered into my database (and I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath waiting for that to happen!?)

Today is the anniversary of the very first Badgers’ match, so we can genuinely describe ourselves as fifty years old. We didn’t get to celebrate the event at all, since yesterday’s game at Stoke D’Abernon was called off mid morning due to the wet weather.

Last weekend saw the Badgers handed their first loss of the season by Sutton Seconds. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I must apologise for misleading you all with my ‘correction’ to the previous week’s scorecard, since it turns out that Richard Ward was indeed bowled between nicking the delivery that got him out and the keeper catching it. Mea culpa

An interesting game last Sunday, on a rather dodgy pitch at Broadbridge Heath, finished in a draw. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

Having spent a fair chunk of time poring over the old scorebooks at the tail end of last week, trying to find out how close I was to playing my four hundredth game for the Badgers, I have made a few adjustments to the historical games played figures for several players still active who had seasons prior to 1988 where they qualified for the averages – Allan Butt, Simon Fox, Keith Miller, Dave Tickner and myself. This affects a whole raft of pages across the site, but has the most visible and interesting effect on the miscellaneous statistics on the Hall of Fame lifetime averages page (where a plus sign after the games played figure indicates that a player has one or more seasons where innings was used instead of games played and a question mark indicates that the only such season is 1981, where I am stymied by the loss of the scorebook).

The 2009 season got underway on Sunday with a solid victory at Beechwood. Full details can be found on the results page along with a summary match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

The AGM has come and gone, with some fairly significant changes, and you can read a capsule review of the event on the news page along with information on pre-season indoor nets and the details of a reunion event for all current and former club members. The fixtures page has also been updated, with the fixture list distributed at the AGM, replete with map links and I’ve created a new Google map with the locations of our 2009 opposition.

A couple of items included in the last update were omitted from this section due to the rushed nature of the update, but it might be worth noting that Richard Ward has taken his place amongst the Badgers pantheon and now has his own personal page and I’ve figured a way to change the match reports pages to include a header that provides a quick link to each report.

Since the AGM I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes trying to tidy everything up, bring as much as possible up to date (including the current club officers page, the historical list of officers, the list of trophy winners and the links page), roll things over ready for the new season and make adjustments that will simplify that process in future seasons. Much of that work won’t be visible to the naked eye but the more observant among you may notice that both the archived news pages and the What’s New archive have had a lick of paint. Oh, and the clubhouse page is no longer horribly out of date.

One other major project I started back at the tail end of last season is also starting to peep through, and if you check out the all-time best partnerships, official batting or official bowling pages (or indeed the latter two tables in the season reports) you will now see little key symbols that link to an explanation of the content of each table (although they won’t work unless you have Javascript enabled and you may need to educate any pop-up blockers). I intend to keep adding to that detail as and when the fancy takes me and I also hope to figure out the best way to link through to the formatted version of the keys page for those that would prefer to read through the information rather than figure out which tables they’ve not yet read about.

Whilst the scorebook checking was complete in time for the dinner (with a big thank you to Jacqueline for her assistance) there wasn’t time to prepare and check the partial season report and other updates that generally happen between the end of the season and the dinner, so instead we have jumped straight to the ‘season complete’ state. However, this update should have been finished and posted on the web within a few weeks of the dinner, but yet again I find myself apologising for my tardiness, and creating this update at the last minute before the AGM tonight, details of which can be found on the news page along with a brief report of the dinner and dance.

All of which means that this update has not been checked as thoroughly as it might, but you can now read the full season report for the 2008 season, the various averages pages by category have been updated with the same information, the historical results for 2008 have been added and the personal pages now have full details of the batting, bowling and miscellaneous statistics from 2008.

For those that prefer paper copies of these things I have also uploaded the ‘for print’ versions of both the 2007 season report and the 2008 season report ready to be downloaded and printed. As with the fiftieth booklet you’ll need Abode Reader to view or print the PDF files but it is a free download from the Adobe web site.