The Guardian's excellent column The Spin was today all about unconventional fields with the wicket-keeper back on the boundary. Included was this story:
"In 1988 the ploy was used in a slightly different fashion by the Reverend Andrew Wingfield Digby, captain of Dorset, in a story retold in Andrew Ward's Cricket's Strangest Matches. With 11 overs of their two-day Minor Counties match against Cheshire remaining, the game seemed to be dwindling to a draw. Cheshire were 92/6 but in the middle of a solid 43-run seventh-wicket partnership. The batsmen, Neil Smith and Geoff Blackburn, seemed dug in for the duration but there was no suggestion of them chasing the 201 needed for victory.
"So Wingfield Digby dismissed his wicketkeeper from his post and ordered Graeme Calway to bowl wides. And that Calway did, 14 of them in all, and all running down to the boundary. In all it meant 60 runs from the over (Calway having already been struck for one boundary off the bat) and left Cheshire with a far more palatable 53 to chase in 10 overs. The batting team, thus tempted, were bowled out and Dorset won by 18 runs with 12 balls to spare."
The club records have been updated, with lots of new statistics, mostly related to season records, as well as individual contributions.
After being hosted by Imperial College London for many years, the FAS web-site finally has a home of its own, at http://www.fascc.net.
Is Mill Dene Garden your favourite? Have you whiled away the hours sitting by the Mill pond watching the trout and the kingfisher? Or is it the cream tea that really turns you on? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes" then take the chance to cast your vote for Mill Dene Garden in the BBC Gardeners' World Gardens To Visit In 2010 on-line poll.
The 2009 Kerfuffle, which concluded successfully on July 18, has seen a bumper crop of stuff left behind at Mill Dene. If you are missing any of: a multi-coloured towel; a sun-hat (marked "Defy"); a white sock; a pair of black shorts; a navy blue sweater; a book entitlted The Daring Book For Girls (!); or a fur hat, then please contact Baz. If nobody is forthcoming then these items will be disposed off at the end of August.
The 2009 FAS tour, which will be held between July 12 and July 18, now has a name: The Kerfuffle. And it also has a warm-up game, against Remnants at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge on July 1. If you can make it, please contact Baz.
As some of you noticed, the entire web-site was down for the first half of October. The reason was a failed disk just when the Imperial College Astrophysics Group (which kindly hosts the web-site) was between IT managers. The fact that you're reading this message means the situation has now been fixed, and hopefully will remain so.
The 2009 FAS tour will be held between July 12 and July 18. More details, including its name, will follow in due course.
The 2008 FAS Cotswold Carry On has now been and gone with, in stark contrast to last year, great weather, lots of cricket and plenty of FAS success. You can read all about it here.
With the publication of the second 2008 FAS bulletin, the countdown to the 2008 FAS Cotswold Carry On has now begun, with a full fixture list now available.
The 2008 FAS Cotswold Carry On will take place from Sunday, July 12, 2008 until Friday, July 18, 2008. You have been warned.
The 2007 Cotswolds Cricket Affair was completed dominated by rain which, with some help from a few nominal opponents, saw six of the eight tour games cancelled, not to mention Baz and Wendy's home flooded. With the basement completely inundated, the den was touch-and-go, and the dining room saved only by heroic bailing efforts, cricket ended up being a decidedly secondary consideration this year.
Not that they've changed much after a tour on which only two games were played, but the all-time records have been updated, the main result of which is to illustrate Jamie Houlder's and Joe White's inexorable march into FAS immortality.
Sadly we've lost a second fixture for the week: Stanton have been unable to raise a team and, even with the offer of several surplus FAS players, it was eventually decided that the cancellation of the fixture was the only option. Not only that, but the club's struggles are such that it's possible that this fixture will be lost permanently; as Baz put it so well in his e-mail: ``we will all be devastated if we lose a fixture on one of the most beautiful grounds in England''.
The first match of the 2007 Affair proper has been cancelled: Tarbarrow got their dates wrong and so haven't been able to get out a team for the Saturday, July 14 match against FAS.
The 2007 Cotswolds Cricket Affair is now just a few weeks away so, to plagarise the recently published FAS Bulletin, the Jouster will soon be foaming, the banter will soon be flowing and Clifford will soon be sweating like an amorous wild boar. The main message is to please send in availabilities this week if possible.
That FAS is taking child welfare very seriously was already mentioned on this news page (about a year ago, strangely enough), and Wendy Dare remains our child welfare officer. As part of this, all (potential) umpires are required to have a CRB check, which also involves the filling in of several forms (available from the FAS office). Youth players (i.e., those under 18) also have to have form (again obtainable from the FAS office) which should be completed by their parents/guardians. This includes contact details, medical details etc., an travel consent slip, and a video/photography consent slip. Finally, there is also a Private Vehicle Registration Form for any vehicle carrying young people to or from a match run by the FAS; if this is relevant to you please, once again, obtain the form from the FAS office.
The 2007 Cotswolds Cricket Affair has finally been announced. It will run from Saturday, July 14, 2007 until Friday, July 20, 2007, and the fixtures are available by following the above link.
For those of you staying at Mill Dene during the tour, please remember to bring your towels (Douglas Adams would be proud) and, where possible, sleeping bags.
As one of many special silver jubilee activities special FAS silver cufflinks have been commissioned. These splendid items are being produced by Priory Cast Products, Unit 14, Lanston Priory Workshops, Station Road, Kingham, Oxon OX7 6UP. Orders can be telephoned through to Richard Henshaw on 01608 659001. Prices are yet to be finalised, although there is an option of plain or hallmarked, and a choice of three background colours: red, blue or green.
FAS began the on-field side of its Silver Jubilee year with a victory against Cambridge's Remnants CC in a warm-up match on Tuesday, July 11. In a twenty-over evening match we restricted Remnants to 101/6 (with Faruk Kara taking 2/25) and than chased their total pretty comfortably, led by Pip Dickinson, who smashed 65 off just 39 balls.
Like every other cricket club in the country, FAS has adopted the ECB's child welfare policy ``to ensure a duty of care to all members of the club by adopting and implementing the ECB Safe Hands -- Welfare Of Young People In Cricket manifesto. As such we now have our own child welfare officer -- Wendy Dare is the lucky office bearer -- and have also implicitly committed to any umpires having a CRB check, which involves filling in a short form. But that's not all: any youth players (i.e., under eighteen) must fill out a standard form, containing contact and medical details, which should be completed by a parent or guardian. Finally, there is a private vehicle registration form; this should be filled out by anyone owning a car which is likely to be carrying the above-mentioned youths between games. All of the above forms can be obtained from the FAS office by contacting Baz.
With the FAS Siliver Jubilee Tour just a few weeks away, the time for action is at hand and great glory awaits those who act now. And here acting could mean any of: signing up for the pre-tour match against Remnants in Cambridge on Tuesday, July 11; paying your subscriptions; or returning your tour availiability sheet. And once you've sorted out the cricketing side of things, there's the Silver Jubilee Dinner on Friday, July 21: so far the response has been pretty good (and there's even talk of an ex-Test cricketer revealing his hidden talents), but Baz wants ``more -- much, much more''.
The above is just a summary of the FAS newsletter sent out in late June and, aside from the above points, there is much else of interest, such as what we'll be eating during the tour. However even more important is that, whilst the dates in the newsletter are correct, those in the fixture card (which you should treasure as an FAS collectible and definitely not sell on eBay) are wrong. To confirm, the Silver Jubilee tour runs from Sunday, July 16 to Saturday, July 22, and not from July 10 to July 16 as indicated on the card.
With the start of the cricket season (and the epoch-defining publication of the May FAS newsletter) preparations for the 2006 Silver Jubilee Tour have begun in earnest. The fixtures list has already been finalised, with the focus falling, in particular, on the evening of Friday, July 21, on which the Silver Jubilee Dinner will be held.
The 2006 FAS annual dinner was to be held at The Cricketers' Club, London on Friday, April 21, 2006 at 7pm (for 8pm) ... but has been cancelled due to lack of interest.
The recent tours' statistics have been updated to include the 2005 Mardi Gras and, during the course of the year, should see the addition of data from as far back as about 1990 in preparation for FAS's silver jubilee.
Full details of the 2005 FAS annual dinner, to be held at The Cricketers' Club in London on February 17, 2005, have now been made available.
There is now also a section of the web-site with combined statistics from the last eight tours which will gradually be expanded as the mind-numbing task of typing in old (and only marginally legible) scorecards is completed.
The 2004 Post-Amble has now been and gone, leaving us to look forward to the 2005 Mardi Gras.
The first bulletin for 2004 has been sent out, with the Post-Amble fixtures enclosed. There is also a pre-Post-Amble match against Remnants CC on Wednesday July 7.
After lying fallow for a few years, the FAS web-site has been brought up to date (a status that will hopefully be maintained). Many thanks to Heather and Faruk Kara for setting up the original version of this site (all of the material from which has been pilfered to provide the basis for the current incarnation), and to Baz Dare and Debbie Salmon for access to the daunting FAS archives.