The 2025 Supermajority

Cotswolds leg

The only real problem with the 2025 FAS Supermajority is that by the time it took place most people had forgotten what the name meant - and those who could remember envied those who couldn't. (The only "supermajority" in British politics at the moment seems to be Nigel Farage's column inches, an image almost as disturbing metaphorically as it would be if taken literally.)

In cricketing terms the tour had a fairly conventional feel to it, with the only novel element being our first match at a new ground, the exhorbitantly-priced Adlestrop, against a new opposition, Will Siebert's Exeter Exiles (who should have been an old opposition but didn't go close to fielding a team previously). Otherwise, there was a comfortable familiarity to the four day tour as we managed comfortable wins against Bibury, Slaughters United and Fladbury, and were just a ball away from beating Temple Grafton (as was the case against the Exiles too). The only blip was when an exhausted FAS side capitulated to the Marines on the final day of the tour - although the fact that none of us had played more than three matches over as many days isn't really a great excuse for our lethargy.

The post-match vibe after the Marines game was, curiously, matched at an uncharacteristically chilled end-of-tour dinner, where Pete Watkins's performance showed his softer side as he went for a set of more introspective songs - peak audience participation was not with Oasis or Guns 'n' Roses bangers but Pink Floyd's See Emily Play. We also formalised the policy, effectively forced upon us last year by rain, of unifying the two parts of the tour as one by deferring the awards to the Kent leg.

Kent leg

The Kent leg of the 2025 Supermajority was, thanks to a week of torrential rain, converted into a low-key 36-hour bender, defined by fine food and even finer wine, thanks to the uniqely generous and welcoming Dare hospitality ("me casa, su casa"). It was a cricketing event only in the sense that it was still the main topic of conversation, most of which involved some level of spirited debate - with the exception of The Hundred, which was universally despised. This was primarily on cricketing grounds: how can there be a need for a 100-ball format when there's already a successful 120-ball format? (Perhaps they should do a tie-in with the new Spinal Tap movie and rebrand it as The 121 with the tag-line "It's one more!") Although what really sent people "over the edge" was the news that some of the established English sides are going to change their names to align with IPL franchises. The cricket world clearly doesn't need The Oval Bell-Ends (with apologies to Lauren), the Manchester Jizz Lords or the Birmingham Splash-Backs.

We had so much time on our hands that the conversation eventually, if inevitably, turned to popular culture, which in turn led to the astonishing revelation that Cliff likes none of Star Wars, The Life of Brian, Withnail and I and This is Spinal Tap. Perhaps to prevent enforced watching of some of the greatest movies of all time, Cliff left early on the Saturday, leaving the rest of us to mooch around the labyrinth-like Slip Mill in the manner of Clarice Starling at the end of The Silence of the Lambs - albeit without being pursued by a psychotic killer with night vision goggles (as far as we know). These explorations revealed the amazing high culture in situ - where most people's book shelves are replete with Lonely Planet guides for exotic places their owners have never visited and Dan Brown books, Slip Mill offered up a Sanskrit-English dictionary, a collection of Wisdens extending back to Victorian times (and possibly even pre-Geoff), and da Vinci level treatises on how to draw the human form. (Fortunately for our collective sanity and egos The da Vinci Code was there too.)

The formalities at the end-of-tour dinner on the Saturday night felt strangely detatched from the FAS tour, more like the Oscars, with the awards given out for a bunch of on-field (and off-field) performances nobody could really remember properly:

Best batter: While James Houlder (natch) and Dave Kittow both averaged 80+ and Jamie Dare and Jim Streeter made 100+ runs, only on player did both: Will Crossley with 161 runs at 80.50, with two half-centuries, which included the tour high score of 87* against the Exiles.

Best bowler: Very much business as usual here, with stalwarts Harry Houlder, Jamie Dare, Joe White, Daniel Mortlock and James Wyatt all taking 5+ wickets at an average of less than 16. While Harry topped the wicket tally with 7 wickets at 9.86 he went for more than 7 an over, whereas Jamie's 5 wickets at 8.60 came at an economy rate of 3.49 and Joe was even more parsimonious, allowing just 2.50 runs an over. In the end Jamie Dare edged this, being the only bowler to have been so passionate in their appealing that they were threatened with a formal warning (from the officious official in the Marines game).

Best all-rounder: This is pretty much the intersection set of the above categories, with only three real contenders: Will Crossley, with 161 runs at 80.50 and 4 wickets at 13.25; Jamie Dare, with 108 runs at 54.00 and 5 wickets at 8.60; and Harry Houlder, with 55 runs at 27.50 and 7 wickets at 9.86. All worthy winners, but Harry Houlder also took two catches, as well as excelling in the field more generally.

Best wicket-keeper: Chris Barras managed 4 catches and 2 stumpings, his 6 dismissals being more than all the other tour 'keepers combined. (Would be interesting to engineer a tour where he doesn't keep in any games to see if he'd still win on residuals.)

Best fielder: Statistically, Jim Streeter led the way with 3 catches, with six others on 2; of those the stand-outs were Jamies Houlder, with two ultra-sharp grabs at gully, and Wyatt, similarly sharp in front of the wicket, and Daniel Mortlock, with two diving efforts against the Exiles. In the end the numbers had it, Jim Streeter not only collecting this award, but also making progress in the tense, if snail-paced, race to overhaul Cliff Dare's record for outfield (i.e., non-'keeping) catches. Pre-Covid this was a non-topic as Cliff's 38 catches was well ahead of Joss's total of 33; Harry, in third place on 22, had only a little more than half of Cliff's tally. In the last five years Cliff has taken two catches to go to 40, but Joss (38), Daniel (36), Harry (35) and Jim (33) have all upped their games, and a couple of "high-yield" tours by any of them would finally see a quantity-based FAS record in the hands of someone other than CRSD. (It would obviously be more fun to be talking about the blue ribband run-scoring or wicket-taking records, but Cliff will hold both for at least a decade more.)

Best performance: While it's inevitable that one will look to the usual numbers here (biggest innings; best bowling figures; most catches/dimsissals), this is all about context. For instance, Dave Kittow's 82 and Harry Houlder's 4/17 against Slaughters United were highly creditable, but came against a makeshift side comprised mainly of kids and their non-cricketing parents. So it's natural to look at the hardest-fought game of the tour, against the Exiles at Adlestrop. This included Will Crossley's tour-high innings of 87* and James Wyatt's superb spell of 4/38 from 12 overs. Getting through so many overs after having played no cricket for a year was a fantastic effort, but even more heroic - think Boxer from Animal Farm (a reasonable analogy given we were playing in a paddock) - was the mammoth body-breaking effort of Joe White, who sent down 13 overs while conceding just 27 runs and taking two wickets, including a diving return catch to get us within one wicket of victory. While still suffering even at the awards ceremony - he refused all offers of help to come up to receive the trophy - he insisted he "enjoyed it at the time". (We've all been there.)

Most improved young player: The twin requirements of "young" and "improved" make this award the trickiest of all. We did actually have some excellent new young players on tour in the form of the Sampford Arundel gang introduced by DK: Oscar Milton and Crossleys Charlie, Ed and Will between them played 13 games, scored 229 runs, took 7 wickets and held 2 catches, finally bolstering our seam bowling stocks which had, with the exception of Jamie Dare, been getting noticably slower every year. But you can't have "improved" on your first tour so they weren't in contention. In the end we exploited the fact that the award citation doesn't actually say any explicitly about cricket, and so the most-improved young player was judged to be Rosie Dare, based on her massively improved frisbee skills, as ostentatiously demonstrated to the awards committee earlier in the day.

Bin juice award: While there was no physical award to hand over, it felt important to acknowledge the most torturous experience on the tour, which was clearly the attempt of "the body or the living person" of the tourist named Tommy Dare to participate in the Temple Grafton game. The photos in the match report paint the picture eloquently enough, although to truly experience the horror you need to scroll back to James Houlder's post on WhatsApp:

"Managed to snap a great shot of Tommy D fetching the ball from the field at Temple Grafton"

Character of the tour: "Just because you are a character, doesn't mean that you have character," as Winston Wolf said in Pulp Fiction. While logically correct, it is possible to have both, as demonstrated effortlessly by our host Joss Dare, meaning a Slip Mill fourfecta of awards this evening.