Message from the Club

Anyone for cricket?
We’d love to play!

We’ve never had a season like this – thus far, across all the Colts teams, we have played 13 out of a scheduled 41 games. Whilst we always expect to lose a few games to the weather, we don’t expect to lose 68%.

At this stage of the season we’d have expected all our teams to have played 5/6 games each but this is how it stands:-

U9A 2

U9B 2

U11A 2

U11B 2

U13 1

U15 2

U17 0

U11 Girls 1

U13 Girls 1

Not only that, we have also had to cancel countless training sessions, often at short notice. It might be me, but the rain does seem to fall on Mondays and Fridays!

It’s not a lot different for the senior teams, who lost virtually all the pre-season fixtures, and have played approximately 50% of their fixtures.

We’re sure that you and your boys/girls are as frustrated as we are – it’s such a short season anyway; and we had such a good preparation with the indoor sessions being so well attended across the board, that we were really looking forward to this season. We do appreciate your on-going patience and support - if there is a sport more susceptible to bad weather we’ve yet to find it. Not only is it difficult (and not much fun) to play and train when it’s wet, it’s nigh on impossible to prepare a wicket to play on whilst the ground is wet, and its been wet a lot this year.

Some of you will know that we have a very old artificial strip down at Penns Place, which is beyond repair. Our fund raising focus this year is to be able to replace it – it will cost around £5,000 to do so but when its in place, it will give us more options and enable more games to played after recent rainfall.

We hope we will get some decent weather soon but keep the faith, the cricket we have been able to play has been very encouraging, with improvements evident at all age levels. The Managers and Coaches are frantically trying to rearrange the postponed fixtures, albeit we will struggle to get them all in before the summer holidays.

In the end, we might just end up having to write off 2012; however we’re already planning for 2013 and can look forward with increased confidence.

As is common with a lot of sports clubs, the cricket can only be played as a result of the efforts of a small minority of very willing volunteers and Petersfield Cricket Club is no exception. We’re always looking for new blood: parents who are willing to volunteer to help this continue. A number of our current volunteers will be standing down soon as their own children have moved through the Colts section and into senior cricket and beyond.

Best wishes
Mark Friend

Colts Manager

Please also be aware that the club has a Facebook page and a Blog

http://petersfieldcc.blogspot.com/

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/195481287136935/

Please contact me Madbluepfc@yahoo.co.uk and I will add you to the group.