AGM of Bath University Venturers Cricket Club - 25th September 2023

The AGM of Bath University Venturers Cricket Club took place in the Saracen’s Head, Bath, at 18:30 on Monday 25th September 2023.

Present a few minutes after that time were Bruce, Gregory, Joji, Dinesh, Tom, Charlie, Dan, and Simon.

1. Captain’s report

The captain noted that he had unfortunately been unable to play this year himself, but that he believed that he had sufficient information to make a report.

In the indoor league we had declined promotion after finishing second in Division B the previous year. Still in Division B, we won two matches, lost two and tied one, this being the first tie in the history of the league. The rules did not specify points for a tie, so we didn’t get any: that is, both sides were treated as having lost it. One of the wins was by one wicket, after Krish got caught trying to score the winning run: Gregory made no attempt to score the run himself but simply blocked and waited for an extra to occur, which it soon did. In our opponents’ innings in that match Gregory had bowled nine balls, from which all six wickets fell (three of them were runouts and one Hit Roof): one of his other three balls went for six. We played only one cup match as we lost immediately.

In the summer, we played eight Sunday matches of which we won four, lost two and drew two. One of the draws was a genuine one: the other, against the touring WG XI, was in an interesting state when it began to rain heavily and the match had to be abandoned. We were seven wickets down and still some way from our target, but we had time and Hrithik and Tom were batting well: we think we might have won. The Priston match was a highlight, a good win; another, though we lost, was a match against Hinton Charterhouse. This was not the scheduled match (which was rained off) but a match for Allsorts, who were able to provide only three players, one of whom has also played for us in the past. We provided the other eight and adopted the match as a Venturers one: this should be recorded on the web page when convenient, but is already in the scorebook and included in the averages. In that match, Jaideep made a hundred. We lost nevertheless, despite two excellent catches by Joji and generally competent bowling. One reason may have been that the Allsorts captain, who was still captain, did not give the bowlers, whom he mostly didn’t know, the fields they wanted; but Hinton Charterhouse quite likely had unused resources. Another highlight was that the St John’s match finally took place, having been arranged every year since 2018 and cancelled for a different reason each time. We won, thanks largely to good batting especially by Krish, and one of our better fielding efforts.

In midweek matches we won seven and lost five, including twice to BaNES. Beating the Star, on a truly awful pitch, was a highlight: after Imran had demolished their top order, a blitz by Hrithik, a sound innings by Ritvij whose technique was good enough to cope with the conditions, and a demonstration of finishing by Siddhanth were enough.

Conditions at Sulis are much better than they have been, although we were locked out at the first match. The pitches mostly behaved well; there is now a usable though not completely flat artificial pitch, and a shed and scorebox in good condition. The changing rooms are no better and there is still not much shelter and nowhere to make tea, but for evening games, it is completely all right.

There were two hundreds (by Jaideep and Hrithik) and three other fifties: we made just over 2000 runs in all. There was one five-wicket haul, by Joji, and one of four, by Imran, out of about 140 wickets that we took. Joji has compiled complete statistics.

Recruitment went well and we did not struggle for numbers until late in the season, by which time it was raining consistently anyway. The fixtures all worked well, and generally it was a successful season.

2. Treasurer’s report

We have a cash balance of just over £1000, and a little more money of the order of £100 is owed to us: we have made a small loss over the year, but not significant. The main reason for the loss was that the matches that were rained out were mostly away matches: home matches lose money because Sulis is expensive. The meeting broke up into assorted reminiscing at this point and had to be brought back together in order to accept the Treasurer’s recommendation that no change be made to match fees.

3. Fixtures

It would be good to have a slightly fuller fixture list, now that we have recovered from the insecurity caused by covid and have a strong core of regular players. However, we do not have many more opportunities for midweek matches (they have to end in mid-August because the evenings are not long enough) and weekend matches even in August are difficult. We can have difficulty raising teams ourselves because MSc students typically have deadlines in late August or early September, and because people are on holiday; but a bigger problem is often that our opponents have either gone on holiday or injured themselves by that time of the season, and also cannot raise teams. September matches would be attractive but many grounds are unavailable because of being used for football, rugby or hockey: Sulis is in this category. There are some things we could try, however. The Bell and Monkton Combe are possibilities for an extra midweek match or two, which we would be able to do. Kingswood may not work, as the people who ran the staff side there have left: the Secretary’s children have also left Kingswood so he is no longer directly in touch with the school, but he can try to find out whether there is any interest. We arranged a match at Keevil last year: they failed to raise a team, but the weather would have wiped it out anyway, so that could be tried again. We used to play an early-season match at Kilmington; and Rode, whom we played regularly until they folded, have unfolded again. We could try to contact either of them.

4. Election of officers

Bruce was elected as Treasurer (it is very difficult to change Treasurer even if we wanted to) and Gregory as Secretary. Alex had asked to stand down as webmaster: we thanked him for his service and, after a little discussion, elected Joji to succeed him. Matt remains publicity officer as he has the Powerpoint slide (there is only one, and Matt later informed the Secretary that it is actually a Microsoft Publisher file): it is quite likely that he will play more in the future, but we can also ask others to help with publicity. Tom had some ideas about this.

Simon is standing down as captain, after fifteen years. The main reason is that he did not play this year and is not sure that he will be fit to play next year: that makes it difficult for him to select teams as he does not know all the players. It was generally agreed that on-field captaincy should be carried out by Imran when he plays, as he seems to be better at it than anybody else, and that one of Jaideep, Bruce, and Gregory would be likely to act as captain when he does not: that is what happened this year. There was some discussion about whether the official captain should be Imran, who would be doing it on the field, or Jaideep, who might be better at team organisation; but Jaideep pointed out that he may not be fit either and in that case, we would be in the same position as this year. Consequently, Imran was elected captain, with an agreement that others would help him so that he does not have to do everything. We also elected Dinesh as vice-captain, which perhaps implies that he will be captain on the field sometimes. We think that we also elected Jaideep to the committee but if we didn’t the rest of the committee will co-opt him. Dan offered to run, or at least help run, the indoor team: this was gratefully accepted.

5. Other matters.

The kit is in a reasonable state. Some bats need new rubbers; we could do with more pads. There was a discussion about club shirts and other personal kit, which is something that we used to have. There is an official club logo which, like certain ancient writings, is preserved in a single example, in this case on a shirt that Gregory wears sometimes. We could revive it. There are various ways in which such kit could be provided or used: in particular, it might be good if the club had spares so that newcomers who have no whites with them are able to play in suitable clothing.

Joji has contacts in the Unite union, who have expressed interest in sponsoring us in a modest way, perhaps via kit. This was generally thought to be worth exploring.

6. Awards.

These are at the discretion of the captain. They are not always entirely serious.

• Best batter: awarded jointly to Jaideep and Hrithik, for contrasting styles (Jaideep: “he has only one shot, whereas I have at least two”) but equal effectiveness.
• Best bowler: clearly Joji, though Dinesh and Imran also bowled consistently well.
• Best fielder: generally we are all right until the ball goes in the air. Tom is consistently reliable; Akash, Subrata, Joji, and several others did well. The award went to Bruce, for being much better at actually stopping the ball than people expect, and for his spectacular and confusing runout of St Johns’ best batsman, described graphically by Jaideep.
• Most improved: this went to Kamal, who has learned a lot over the season. He now marks guard, although he still doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
• Best catch: this went to Jaideep for a catch against the Star, ahead of Akash and Joji who both took more than one good one.
• Best dressed: it is always hard to know whether this award is serious or ironic. Gregory won it, one way or the other, perhaps for preserving the logo.
• Duck of the Year: there was fierce competition here. Two bowlers inflicted three ducks on us in one match, one of them (at Hillesley) doing the hat-trick. Bruce’s duck at Hillesley was the third wicket and was a strong candidate. The other such bowler was Emma at Broughton Gifford: she bowled Krish with one that kept low, but Siddhanth charged her second ball and also got bowled, and that was another strong candidate. But the award went to the middle victim at Hillesley, Dinesh; partly because he talked to his partner (Joji) about his careful plans for how to pace the innings before walking to the other end and getting out immediately, and partly because this was only one of three first-ball ducks he made during the season, not to mention another slightly longer one.
• Most IPL-like: only Kamal was nominated in this category, and he was nominated by everybody.
• The A.J. Wolstenholme Prize for Running Between the Wickets: this premier award is named for a long-standing opening batsman for the club, who every season reliably made three hundred runs and equally reliably ran himself out three times. He seldom ran his partner out. Jaideep was nominated, though, for doing exactly that, to Krish at Hillesley. However, the award went to Bruce and Gregory for what turned out to be the final partnership of the season, in which they batted out the last three overs against Bradford with much hesitation, uncertainty, and just slowness between the wickets. But they didn’t get out.
• Special Yorkshire awards: the Geoffrey Boycott award for blocking went to either Charlie or Steve. The Secretary is not sure which. There was some confusion about which of them was six not out at the start of the seventeenth over of a twenty-over match, having opened the innings. That was, in fact, Steve: he hit a four during that over but was ninth out to the last ball of it, for ten (this was followed by Bruce and Gregory’s award-winning partnership). But Charlie had played more than one innings in a similar vein. Another Yorkshire award, the YJB award for getting out in a silly way, went to Jaideep, who trod on his stumps for no apparent reason at all.
• Best remark in a match report: always by Gregory as nobody else writes them, the point is which one it is. This time it was about Kamal cycling to the match against the Ram, causing a minor traffic jam, and what would happen if he were shown a clip of Jonas Vingegaard on the Tourmalet.
• Champagne moment: this is quite often split between a team moment and an individual one. The team moment was beating the Star on the terrible pitch at the old Stothert and Pitt ground; the individual award went to Kamal for his one-man pitch invasion (on foot, not on the bicycle) after we beat the Ram by one wicket.

The meeting closed at 20:45