Opening Over – An introduction to Anson St George Cricket Club

I’m starting this cricket blog. I’m not sure why. I doubt anyone will read it. Maybe a few of the lads in the cricket team will. Maybe it will simply serve my own amusement.

What probably kickstarted me into this was reading Richard Clarke’s (AKA The_Grumbler on Twitter) excellent book, Last Wicket Stand, which details the ups and downs of following Essex County Cricket Club through a successful period, whilst also sharing his motivation, love for cricket, and his personal journey in the game and his career as a journalist.

I think being able to enjoy the book is easier when you share a common viewpoint with the author, and from what I can gather I have a similar outlook as Richard on the state of the county game and The Hundred. Like Richard I also closely follow Essex CCC.

The chapter which really made me think about putting some words down on paper and sharing them with the World was one where Richard described how he retired from cricket in his mid-30s, partly due to no longer being the player he used to be or might have been.

Obviously if you stop enjoying playing the game then you probably will actaully stop playing and that’s perfectly reasonable. Alongside this there are all sorts of pressures and commitments that people face these days, and having a young family of my own I can empathise much more with this than before. So, I understand the difficulty in continuing to play cricket, even when you really want to.

But reading that chapter made me appreciate, that now in my early 40s, I still love playing despite the game feeling more difficult, the need to wear glasses, and the post-match body aches continuing up to the following Thursday. There is absolutely no doubt that this desire to continue playing cricket is all because of the impact of the club I play for, Anson St George CC, and the people I have played with and continue to play with have had on my life. This season will be my 30^th season for the club and I would love to keep going for at least another twenty. I appreciate that I am lucky that I have this club and a group of friends in cricket who mean a lot to me and that I am lucky that I still have the desire to continue playing. It’s the appreciation of all this that led me to starting this blog to celebrate the club and everyone that’s ever been involved with it.

Anson St George is a small Sunday only team located in Hornchurch, on the outskirts of North East London. We don’t play league cricket, just friendly matches played in the right way. As a team we all love the game, but most importantly we all enjoy spending the time with each other on Sunday afternoons. Anson is like my second family. Of the club’s current playing roster I have played with some of the guys in all my 30 years, and some of my childhood friends are part of it too. Even the newer recruits are part of the special fabric of the club, and we put a lot of emphasis in helping people fit in, on and off the field. Ultimately, we are all friends as well as teammates and an Anson contingent is often a notable group at any of our birthdays, anniversaries, or weddings, or any Bacchanalia in general. When I was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, the cricket team were the first people I turned to after my immediate family.

Our players are young and old, fit and unfit, between us we’ve got some good knees and bad knees, good arms and bad arms. We give everyone an opportunity to either bat or bowl, we celebrate each other’s success, and no one is judged badly on their cricketing ability (which is just as well because I can no longer catch the ball). We play to win and celebrate the team’s success. We have fun. We are all first team players in our club, there is no 2^nd or 3^rd team, there are no Saturday teams to impress or internal politics over selection or over who is paid what to score how many runs. Anson St George CC is the antidote to big club cricket.

Anson St George CC has been a constant for three quarters of my life. As a youngster, in the summer months every week was just a build up to playing cricket on Sunday and enjoying the jokes and japes of my teammates. Anson then, as Anson is now, is quite simply the people who make up the club and the team, and I have no less enthusiasm for the club now than I did when I was younger.

I’ve played for the club since a young boy and grown up with it, exposed to probably developing more grown-up relationships than other teenagers were doing at the time, and it shaped me to be the person I am today. I have had so many great memories and have met some amazing people through Anson and if all that this blog does it commit some good memories to paper then I will be content.

It has been hard to describe what the club means to be personally, but I’ve given it a good go. And here’s the twist. I’m not even that good at cricket. I’ve had my moments for sure, but there have been countless better players than me join the club (and quite a few worse as well) and I am sure that will continue to be the case. Ultimately it doesn’t matter though if we all continue to enjoy what the club gives us.

I don’t intend future posts to be as maudlin as this one. We have had some real characters in the club since I’ve been involved, and I hope that the stories and anecdotes that I can share can stand up on their own away from the sentimental and soporific mush in this post. We’ve still got a lot of characters in the club now, including some club legends, who I hope we will continue to make memories with that will hopefully feature here someday. I don’t intend this blog to be lots of match reports or commentary on our games, but more a place to share stories about our club and the people in it. I hope you enjoy it.