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Hi all, So it's upon us, the 2011 season.

The following fixtures are arranged, please make a note of them. I'm hoping that we'll be able to play Weston super Mare as well and arrange an alternative ground for home fixtures with Phoenix and Wells.

Bank Holiday Monday 2nd May training match at LCC

Sunday 8th May vs Wells (away)

Bank Holiday Monday 30th May training match at LCC

Sunday 5th June vs Hawkesbury (away)

Sunday 10th July vs Hawkesbury (home)

Sunday 7th August vs Hawkesbury (away)

Bank Holiday Monday 29th August training match at LCC

Sunday 4th September vs Wells (away)

Sunday 11th September vs Bristol Phoenix (home)

We'll have an AGM on Thursday 14th April at the club at 7.30pm. Please email me with items for the agenda, if you have something you want to discuss. I'll send the agenda out a couple of days before.

Next Saturday 9th April is Club Force Day at LCC. I expect the club chairman will write this week with details but if you're available to help prepare the club for the season, please do come along in the morning.

From Saturday April 16th we'll be training each Saturday at 10am. Monday evening training will start at the beginning of May when there's more light.

I'll also post all these details on our blog at http://www.lansdownladies.posterous.com.

See you soon,  

Lucy.

http://www.lansdownladies.posterous.com

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hi all,

It's 2011. I know, it's ridiculous.

So it's time to drag your cricket bag from the cupboard under the stairs, clean the dried mud off your spikes and stroke your bat.

It's time for winter nets, the time of year where we grump about the cold and dark at the start of our sessions and emerge blinking into the light as March takes hold. That's when the heart breaks open and is filled with the dappled light of warm summer afternoons in the outfield or at the crease and the mouth is replete with the taste of barbecued chicken wings and bakewell tarts washed down with warm tea.

Come on, you know you want to. 

Thursdays from February 24th, 8-9pm, Beechen Cliff School. Five sessions, £5 per session or £20 in advance for all five. 

Hope to see you soon,

Lucy x

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The dinner last night was excellent, the clubhouse looked brilliant and the players were smartly turned out. The speech you write is often not the speech you give. So here's what I wrote - it's not entirely what I said. 

Our team awards went to Ali Turner for the season's Most Improved Player and Sarah Veal for Player of the Year. I knew Ali couldn't be there so I had already planned with her husband that I would call her during my speech and he would give her the award while I was on the phone. She later turned up at the club for a lap of honour. 

Sarah Veal couldn't be at the dinner because of illness so Karen Thomas accepted the award on her behalf. 

Captain's_Speech_2010.pdf Download this file

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My timing is really off.

This week, England begin their Ashes campaign carrying with them the tools to command the series and win in Australia for the first time since the Eighties. 

Next Saturday, we have our club dinner and awards night and, as captain, I will be giving a speech. 

This Tuesday, I am flying to Timisoara, Romania and I'm not back until late friday night. 

It's a huge week for cricket and I will be in Eastern Europe, a place not known for its enthusiasm for the game. Is there a chance that my hotel will have internet access so brilliant that I will be able to watch the test match on Sky Player - will Sky Player work from an international IP address? Will I be able to listen to Test Match Special as I go to sleep?

Will I, in the dead of night, creep down to the hotel bar to discover other English patriots hunched around the one television in the hotel that is showing the coverage?

Will I find that Romania has a cricketing underbelly and its roots are in the revolutionary city of Timisoara? 

And the speech. I'll have to write it on the 'plane on the way home, should I photocopy the pages from the scorebook? I have a recollection that last year, I wrote my speech on a train home from London and delivered it that night. Work has this funny way of intervening in my cricketing life. How lovely it would be to sit around all week, pontificating on the season and crafting some amusing stories to share with the club next Saturday.

Instead I shall be hurtling over central Europe, struggling to recall the exact state of the game, early in the season when we took this catch, or that wicket. When we tasted glorious victory or bitter defeat. When we felt the sun on our backs. 

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After my post yesterday, I had a nice chat with @HomeOfCricket, otherwise known as Old Father Time at Lord's. 

He kindly confirmed that the MCC Rules do not state that women are required to wear dresses. He even emailed me the rules and I can confirm that there are stipulations about styles and types of clothing but that it is acceptable for women to wear trousers. 

So it is the Marston's promotion that is stipulating that laydees wear dresses. I await their response and when I have it I shall share it with you gladly. 

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I never win anything. 

This week I won an invitation to a Pre-Ashes Celebration in the Long Room at Lord's, unfortunately I'm not able to go. However, I was rather taken aback by the invitation email which included details of the "mandatory" dress code. As a 'lady', I would be expected to wear an evening dress. 

This was my response:

Dear Fern,

I'm no longer able to attend the event at Lord's next Wednesday. 

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Ash, Georgia, James and George wig out.

http://www.thestateofthingstocome.co.uk

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http://www.lucysweetman.co.uk

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http://www.lucysweetman.co.uk

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Hilariously, the very nice chap who watched our match versus Wells on Sunday, put our leading wicket-taker on the opposite team. It seems that Lansdown CC player Sarah Veal not only kept wicket, bowled for six overs, took three wickets and scored sixteen runs for our team, she also bowled for Wells, taking the final wicket on the last ball, denying Lansdown victory. 

That's quite an effort, Vealy!

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We play Wells CC a couple of times a year, it's a game that is always played competitively and in great spirit. We like the Wells women very much, they really enjoy their cricket and when we visit them, provide most excellent home-made cakes. 

Yesterday they came to us and we played one of those games that you remember for a long time. Wells brought a full squad of regulars and smattering of newbies. We had eight players: some old stagers, two with only a match under their belts and one who'd never played before. 

In the unexpected late August sun, we fielded first, with Wells kindly lending us a few of their players to fill the gaps. In the absence of our regular 'keeper, Vealy and Zoë shared the gloves, leaving us without the storming power of their usual opening partnership with the ball. They took their wickets separately and caused serious problems for all the Wells players. The bowling was shared around but always with an experienced bowler at one end to keep Wells down as much as we could. Wells withstood our attack and after one early breakthrough, we failed to take more wickets as Wells' outstanding player Emily Day made her way to a half-century. She would have reached it in double quick time but for one of our newer players, Fiona West, fielding in the deep on the on side. Fi pulled off brilliant stop after brilliant stop, saving boundaries and frustrating Wells' very able bat. Emily retired at fifty and we made our way through a handful more Wells players, keeping their score down to 113 off 25 overs. 

The innings break was welcome, twenty-four gallons of tea were drunk and ninety-eight pork pies eaten as Wells examined their fines book. 

Vealy and Banger opened the Lansdown innings and after a couple of overs began to find the gaps and the rope, despite Wells' ring of death approach to short fielding. Vealy got herself to 16 before being bowled, Banger thumped her way to the mid-twenties before playing across a straight one from Emily Day. The Captain entered the fray after the wicket of Karen Thomas fell and, after Banger's demise, was joined by Fiona West, hero of the boundary. 

Coming together on 58 with around twelve overs to go, the Captain and Fi set about trying to maintain the required run rate while fending off the pace of Emily Day. A few boundaries off the less-experienced bowlers meant that the partnership kept in touch with the rate and, despite a couple of hairy moments (including the Captain being dropped twice off airy-fairy shots in the air), made their way to the 23rd over with around 6 runs to get. Wells were getting twitchy and the Lansdown players were feeling quietly confident, as long as they could maintain their concentration. If only they could. Wells captain Liz stepped up to bowl, the Lansdown skipper took a couple of runs off the first ball, left the next and edged the last to the keeper. Disaster. 

Now into the final over, in came debutant Jo Stennett to face her first ball in competitive cricket. Crushingly for Jo, she was bowled around her legs first ball. Now it was Lansdown's turn to get very twitchy indeed. In came Pamela, playing in only her second match. After a nervous first ball, she pushed one passed the field to get off strike. 

By this time a small crowd had gathered on the steps of the clubhouse, the Lansdown players were watching on and there was a deathly quiet around the field. The Lansdown captain could only watch from the boundary, still wearing her pads, hands to her head. 

And so we arrived at the final ball of the innings, Fiona on strike, one needed to draw, two to win. The bowler ran in, Fi lifted her bat for the swipe she needed to win us the game and the ball thumped into the leg stump. Devastation for Lansdown, joy for Wells.

Sometimes you have the luck to play a great game of cricket, we lost but we lost well. Wells' bowling was much improved on our last few meetings and they made their total difficult to chase. Each player on the field had a glory moment and the sharp pain of a lost opportunity. That's how cricket should be, euphoria and bitterness in one game. 

I've posted some pictures of aftermath in the bar. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Yes, it's that time of year again. We're down to the last two matches of the season, they're both at home and we'll be facing Wells this week and Hawkesbury next Sunday. 

We're a bit low on players this week, a combination of enthusiastic festival-goers and an all time high injury list. I've never seen so many of our squad hobbling about in a season. We've been plagued by torn calf muscles and dodgy achilles tendons, sore shoulders and even my own cricket ball vs mouth incident - although it didn't result in me missing a game. 

Anyway, we're a small but intrepid bunch taking on Wells today. We had a good training session in the drenched outfield yesterday morning but today the sun has been out and the ground should be good and dry. We'll borrow a couple of fielders and give them a run for their money. 

The only question is: will the infamous Emily Day of Somerset CCC be in her whites today?

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http://www.lucysweetman.co.uk

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http://www.lucysweetman.co.uk

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http://www.lucysweetman.co.uk

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