Alas the recent outbreak and rapid spread of the Coronavirus has caused all our lives to change very rapidly. I completed my Chief’s Annual Letter some three weeks ago and everything for this year’s annual mailing is now ready for our printers. However it is already hopelessly out of date and completely inappropriate - so here is a replacement which I hope will not look absurd after a few more weeks.
With enormous reluctance we have cancelled all our matches until at least the end of June. By then we have will revisited the situation and will see what, if any, cricket will be possible after that. The safety of our members and their families (not to mention the country’s wider population) is paramount and, as you would expect, we are determined to do nothing that could jeopardise this. We will not have our usual presence at the Cricket Week at Canterbury which was scheduled for June this year. That match will not take place. Further, the tent which we share with the Kent CCC Committee in Tunbridge Wells (scheduled for late July this year) also looks most likely to be another casualty.
In this strange year it seems that the printing and posting of our Fixture Card and the other papers which usually accompany this Letter will be a wasteful exercise. So much of this information will be overtaken by events. The Card and other papers we usually send out will appear on our website shortly so may I ask Brethren to find them there.
We will only be posting this Letter to those for whom we have no email address. If these Brethren would like to see any of the other literature will they please contact our Hon Secretary, Anthony Fincham and he will post these to you. If there are any Brethren who receive this letter by post but who can actually be contacted by email it will save us a great deal of time if you would send Brother Anthony your email address and confirm that you will be happy for us to save your address and send emails to you. These will relate only to BB matters. Brother Anthony’s email address is bbhonsec@gmail.com and his postal address is 31 Stradella Road, London SE24 9HN.
Cricket in 2019 :
We enjoyed a good season winning 9, losing 6 and drawing 5 of our matches. A further six of our games were cancelled. Two cancellations were because rain had made pitches unplayable but four were caused by the failure of one or other of the teams to raise a team. The scourge of all wandering cricket (in particular) nowadays is the extraordinary number of games that are cancelled at short notice. I deeply regret that we were the guilty party twice this year. This was quite unacceptable and we have made changes and taken
steps to prevent a recurrence of this. It has to be said that these failures too often turn out to be the failure of a Match Manager if he fails to start raising his team sufficiently early. We work very hard to try to ensure that this does not happen and our hardworking Match Secretary does a great job in helping our Match Managers to complete their team if they are short. It really is helpful if our players support the club whenever they can if an appeal for further players goes out, so I urge all playing Brethren to do everything they can to eliminate this problem when we are able to return to normal life.
Having got that off my chest I can turn to more specific aspects of BB cricket. We all share Brother Mark Pettman’s pride in the appointment of his son, Brother Toby, as Captain of the Oxford University side this summer. He is a tall and very good opening bowler and our attack should be particularly effective when he plays for us. It was also terrific to see Alex Moen receive his Blue as well. It has been a long time since a pair of Brethren received their Blues in the same team and they will enhance future BB teams when their studies and other cricketing commitments enable them to play for us.
There were many good BB cricket performances this year including excellent hundreds from Tom Boucher, Chris Jay, Tom Pollington, Thomas Page, Matthew Shales and Jasper Smallwood. Not to be left out, two bowlers, Ben Regan and George Wooldridge, took six and five wicket hauls respectively.
All Brethren would wish me to record our thanks to Brother Rose Kingsdown and to Brother John Leigh-Pemberton who so kindly let us play some of our matches on their beautiful ground at Torry Hill. Our players love playing cricket there as they also do at Belmont whose Trustees so generously let us use their historic ground for BB cricket from time to time. How lucky we are to be able to play our “home matches” on these grounds which have been so involved with the history of BB.
My final word on the cricketing front is to thank all our Match Managers and indeed all our players for the support they give us. I believe that they enjoy it – and I know that the club flourishes because of the hard work they do behind the scenes!
Junior BB :
Brother Mark Pettman ran Junior BB with great enthusiasm and provided much enjoyment for our Juniors, their opponents and the boys’ parents alike. It proved yet again how important it is for major wandering clubs such as BB to have a good “nursery” for their junior players. We keep a firm eye on the future and value those who come through Junior BB because they indeed are the future of the Club. Several younger cricketers played occasionally for senior BB teams this year and acquitted themselves splendidly. We try hard to balance things well and I was interested to note that boys from both ends of the age spectrum seemed to enjoy playing with their seniors/juniors.
Our Juniors played seven matches winning three and losing three and they had a good draw against my X1 at the Nevill. All our games are greatly enjoyed and my thanks are due to Brother Mark and of course to the boys’ parents who so nobly ferry their boys to and from our matches.
We have discontinued the old Wisden Awards and as a way of remembering our Ninth Chief, Nicholas Heroys, we have introduced a new award to the two leading Juniors of the year. Brother Sue Heroys, the Ninth Chief’s widow, presented BB caps to this year’s winners, Rufus Pullen and Ollie Streets, and we will continue to do this in the future. It is a long time since a member of Junior BB made a hundred against the Chief’s X1 and Ollie’s very good hundred against my team that day was particularly impressive.
Tents / Boxes This year we took a Box in the Les Ames Stand at Canterbury and the experiment proved to be an eye-opener. It was less expensive and actually rather nicer than our traditional tent which was unavailable owing to the positioning of the big screen in front of where our tent had always been previously. We did learn a thing or two in this first year, took note of them and will make sure that things work even better in future years. As you will have read, the wretched virus will put an end to this arrangement in 2020 but we certainly plan to continue with this in future years. It was enormous fun. The arrangement whereby we share the Kent County Cricket Club Committee’s Tent at Tunbridge Wells Cricket continued to be a success and will be repeated when the virus next permits this. As ever we are grateful to the KCCC Committee for making it possible. It certainly suits us both.
In 2020 there were no four day matches planned at the Nevill in Tunbridge Wells and instead we had agreed that we would once again share the tent for the three different one day matches which are scheduled to take place on Sunday 26th, Wednesday 29th and Friday 31st July. It is possible that Brethren might enjoy coming to watch a limited overs match rather than one day of a four day match, but for those of us who love the proper game it is an unwelcome development caused by the introduction of the astonishingly ill- conceived “100” competition which side-lines Championship cricket in the ECB’s headlong pursuit of money at, what many consider to be, the expense of cricket as we have known it. If these games are to be saved by an early victory over the virus, the Tent Managers’ details will be found on the Fixture Card on the website. If the games are on, do come!
The Benevolent Board Only one change has taken place this year. Brother Peter Cattrall, our Keeper of the Books, has stood down from the Board. He has fulfilled his role with distinction for considerably in excess of 25 years. He and Brother Mandy have done a wonderful job in keeping our extraordinary and precious Books up to date and looking good. It has been a labour of love and I am really grateful for their concern and diligence. The Books are the oldest complete record of any cricket club in the world and contain the scores of every match since our formation in 1858. As such they have a significant value and are our proudest possession. We now keep them under lock and key in the Archives of Canterbury Cathedral which ensures both their safety and their continuing condition. I am delighted to report that Brother James Ryeland has followed Brother Peter as our new Keeper of the Books. I am very grateful to him and relieved that the Books continue to be in good hands.
May I take this opportunity to thank our Officers and Board Members for giving their time and enthusiasm so uncomplainingly and ensuring that BB still flourishes in what are difficult times. We owe them a great deal.
BB Golf Our three matches were greatly enjoyed and we had better results than last year. We might even have won our fourth event - this year, the Quadrangular Tournament was played in Gloucestershire, but for the fact that a car breakdown meant that we were left one player short for the final and thus forfeited one of the four matches in the final, a hurdle which we could not surmount! This year’s golfing events are shown in the Fixture Card on the website and, despite the cancellation of the match at Rye next month (virus), our other Golf Match Managers will be delighted to hear if you wish to play. Brother Andrew Dixon has taken over the running of our very enjoyable match at Chislehurst from Brother Peter Cattrall who always made the day fun for us all.
Finances We have maintained the status quo by making a (very small) profit this year after exceptional items. We have sufficient (though recently reduced!) reserves for our needs and Brother Paul Bromley, our hard-working Hon. Treasurer, is doing everything possible to ensure that subscriptions can remain at their current level for the foreseeable future.
The Mystery We will be reprinting the Mystery in 2021 (as we do every four years). It is an historic and valuable document to us but, bearing in mind today’s laws on privacy, I must offer the opportunity to any Brother who does not wish his name to appear in the booklet to make this known to the Club. Anyone wishing us to delete his entry from the Mystery should contact the Hon. Secretary of BB, Brother Anthony Fincham, whose address is given above. However I would be extremely disappointed if anyone should take this as an opportunity to discontinue his membership!
Appointments Upon the recommendation of the Benevolent Board I have been pleased to invite the following players to become members of BB : A.Bird, R.E.M.Boyd, B.Cooper, H.E.Dix- Perkin, J.Drewe, F.T.Falcon, M.Law, J.S.Middleton, T.H.Nicholls, W.Oates, A.T.Pask, R.N.F.Pullen. I am also delighted that Chris Swadkin, until recently the President of Kent County Cricket Club has accepted my invitation to become a Social Member, and very recently I was delighted to appoint Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, KCVO, CB, ADC(P) the incoming President of Kent CCC as an Honorary Life Member of BB.
May I wish you all a good year and let us hope for a speedy resolution to the Coronavirus which is making everything so uncertain at present.
Tony Monteuuis