The 2005 season has reached its conclusion, and personally I feel like it has barely reached the halfway point (although I guess from my perspective that is about right). I’ve been rather lax in posting updates during the latter half of the season, but given the tight deadlines with the dinner and dance looming barely a month beyond the last ball, I have managed to pull my finger out and produce a more normal weekly update this time. Expect to see a skeletal season report, once Darrell and I have had the chance to complete the chore of checking every scorebook entry, and hopefully some of the missing match reports too.

Our traditional end of season visit to Merrow produced an entertaining tussle to go with the usual bonhomie and cordial reception from our hosts. Full details can be found results page along with a match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I’ve also found the time to edit the Eden Park match report into some semblance of order, but you’ll have to wait until next time for Graham’s other masterpieces of self-effacing understatement.

The more attentive among you may have noticed that the site has been looking a little odd over the past ten days or so, and you have my apologies for that. The site was moved from one server to another about a month ago, and one unexpected side effect of that was that I ended up reloading everything when I did the last update. Unfortunately I got my options wrong, so all the graphic files, including photographs and thumbnails, got corrupted. I didn’t notice initially because of locally-cached content, but today I happened to try and load one of the old photographs and noticed what a mess it was, and so I’ve spent a happy hour or so piecing things back together and trying to force the server to load the good copies into its cache.

Once again my apologies, but I have given up on the idea of getting any match reports sorted out, as this has been holding up the posting of site updates for the past six weeks. Graham Ward has supplied three of the missing reports, but I haven’t even found the time to edit them, let alone write reports for the matches that I’ve been involved in. You can however find all the details for recent games on the results page along with the pertinent elements from the scorecards, which brings those areas up to date as we ended up with no match on the weekends either side of the new fixture at Headley.

I’m not going to make any promises about getting caught up, or even whether any reports other than the ones that Graham has already written will ever see the light of day. I will however get around to editing those reports, and posting Allan Butt’s photo from tour, before the dinner and dance (of which more in the next update, but you should all have received notification from the Entertainments Committee).

Due to a shortage of spare time, I’m struggling to catch up, so none of the missing match reports have been added, and we are two weeks behind hand with this update. However, since I’ve now written the match report for it, we’ll just say that our second ever visit to East Horsley saw the Badgers slump to their second defeat of the season. Full details can be found on the results page along with a match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard.

I’ll try and get caught up, at least in terms of scores and reports for the games from the last two weeks, before the coming visit to Oxshott, and hopefully I’ll also find time to add some of Graham’s belated match reports and Allan Butt’s photo.

Hopefully with my return to the fray we’ll be back to the normal routine of weekly updates, but I’m not making any promises as I’ve still got more than my fair share of the domestic chores to attend to whilst Janet works her way back to full fitness. Due to editing requirements I am a little behind with posting what is actually last week’s update, but expect to see details of this weekend’s game at East Horsley along with a couple more of the missing match reports, before next weekend’s visit to Reigate Priory.

Now that I’ve got my hands on the scorebook again we are back up-to-date in terms of results, with scores from the Eden Park and Downham & Bellingham games, plus full details of last weekend’s Old Alleynians match to be found on the results page, along with the pertinent elements from the associated scorecards. I have also been able to write my first match report of the season, Simon Fox has written one for Downham & Bellingham, and Graham Ward has provided a rather belated one for the Stoke D'Abernon game. Rumours abound of the existence of reports for some or all of the missing games, but these have not found their way in electronic format to yours truly so cannot be posted here (actually, to be fair to Graham, two new ones have dropped into my inbox in the last few days, but I have not had time to edit them into shape yet).

Oh, and since we’re halfway through the season and there have been some personal milestones, I have also brought the personal pages fully up-to-date.

PLEASE NOTE that Sunday’s game with Ham & Petersham has been cancelled and we will instead be playing against East Horsley, a team that we played a similarly conference arranged fixture against back in 1992. Unusually for the Badgers only three of the team that played in that game are playing this weekend and we probably all have mixed memories of that day. Anyway, full details and the usual map link can be found on the fixtures page and more detailed directions are available on their Surrey Downs page.

I finally managed to get back into the action yesterday (Janet was told by the doctors on Monday that she could gradually start to get back to a normal lifestyle, she drove a car for the first time since the accident on Friday, and had already agreed that Darrell and I could play at Old Alleynians) but more of that in an update later this week. The fact that I’ve now got the scorebook and need to get fully caught up has prompted me to post this interim update, which has only been delayed by a lack of my time to edit match reports into shape since I’ve had most of the material for nearly three weeks now.

Thanks yet again to Graham Ward and the wonders of electronic communication we have the details of two recent matches, against Milton on the Sunday of the Tour weekend and Woldingham the week after, on the results page, along with the pertinent elements from the associated scorecards. These figures have still not been fully checked, so if you spot any errors then please let me know.

Graham has also supplied match reports for the Milton game and for the record breaking performance at Woldingham, and has also forwarded on Patrick’s report of proceedings at NPL Teddington.

Allan Butt has very kindly supplied a team photograph from the Milton game, but I need to spend a little time remembering how to shrink the image to a more reasonable size and create a thumbnail for it, as well as crafting a suitable display page. Hopefully the picture will find its way into the photo gallery over the next week or so.

In my role as statistics keeper I’d like to point out that a couple of Badgers have recently passed lifetime milestones, but the somewhat confused nature of the recording and reporting of games this season has meant that the feats have gone unremarked. Allan Butt took his 250th wicket for the club during the Stoke D'Abernon game, making him only the fifth Badger to pass that mark, and with the way he’s been going I wouldn’t bet against him reaching the 300 before he hangs up his boots. Simon Fox also reached a significant figure, in his case 2000 runs, during the NPL Teddington game, and since I do have a match report for that one I’ve added a little note to it. Eleven other Badgers have scored more than 2000, and something tells me that it won’t be long before Patrick joins Simon amongst that group.

I have also corrected the sequence of the current season’s results, which you were obviously all too polite to mention was in the opposite order to the more normal one flagged up by a note at the top of the table.

This weekend is the Badgers’ annual pilgrimage to the Cotswolds, and since I still had a day’s leave booked I abandoned the invalid for the day and made the trip to Oxfordshire intending to watch, score or umpire the Hook Norton game. Sadly the weather intervened and the match was called off by midday, but I didn’t waste the opportunity to get hold of the scorebook and spent an entertaining couple of hours in the bar of the Crown & Cushion in Chipping Norton tapping away on the laptop whilst revelling in the usual wet weather Tour atmosphere (which we’ve had a fair bit of practice at over the years).

The weather did eventually relent and allowed seven of us to get in a round of golf at Rye Hill, which became somewhat surreal as, about halfway through our rounds, the clubhouse and surrounding area were invaded by pupils of Warriner School (in whose grounds we play Milton in the Sunday game) who were holding their school prom there.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I can now bring you a fully up-to-date results page, along with the pertinent elements from the associated scorecards. Please keep in mind that, due to the battery on my laptop running down, I was not able to cross-check any of the data entered, so there may well be the odd error that will have to be corrected later.

Thanks to Keith Miller there is also a match report for the most recent game against Beechwood, but I am still waiting for anything further from Graham Ward, who I understand is also sitting on one report crafted by vice-skipper Pat Redding. Hopefully some or all of the missing reports will turn up over the next week, and I’m also hopeful that we can now keep things ticking over in terms of results and scorecards for however many more matches it is before I actually manage to get onto a cricket field this summer.

Thanks to Graham Ward I’ve been able to get started on entering the results and scorecard data for this season, so full details of the first game of the season at Broadbridge Heath can be found on the results page along with a match report and the pertinent elements from the scorecard. More to follow once Graham gets hold of the scorebook again and finds the time to type up the other match reports from whatever scraps of paper or backs of fag packets he found to scrawl them on.

I’ve recently changed to a new laptop at work that drives its screen at 1400 by 1050 and have discovered that some browsers (specifically Opera v7 and Firefox v1) make a mess of the left hand menu at that resolution. Internet Explorer v6 seems to make some automatic compensation to cope but the others make a mess of the Javascript menu system because of the problem. I have no solution just yet, but I am aware of the problem and have been experimenting with various alternative approaches, none of which have improved things any just yet.

The new laptop is running Windows XP SP2 and that has also lead me to the realisation that the Javascript menus fall foul of the default IE scripting security in that environment, so it becomes necessary to activate scripting on these pages for the menus to work. Nothing I can do about it, and the text menu links should mean that the whole site is still accessible, even if you choose to stop Javascript running.

Just in case you were wondering, yes the Badgers are still in existence, and yes we are playing cricket this summer. Unfortunately I (Steve Pitts) am not currently involved due to the fact that my wife Janet fell off her horse whilst out on a hack the Sunday before the season started and is currently housebound, and unable to perform her normal roles, due to three cracked lumbar vertebrae. Since I am therefore acting as nursemaid and mother as well as performing my usual function as comedian (I mean father) I have not even been able to get along to watch the team, let alone play.

I had hoped that someone amongst the active team would be able to provide me with results and match reports so that I could at least keep the site ticking over, and I did suggest that we could make use of our Play-Cricket site to enable others to enter the required information, but so far nothing has been forthcoming. As a result of talking to those Badgers that attended Allan and Susi Butt’s twenty-fifth wedding do, I can tell you that we are unbeaten so far this season, and that both Patrick Redding and Richard Ward having picked up where they left off last season, but I have no more than that.

I have made a few minor updates since the AGM: both the current club officers page and the historical club officers list have been changed to reflect Graham Ward’s official appointment as team secretary, a role that he performed admirably for much of last season in Barry’s absence; the fixtures page now has map and website links for all games including the new ones; and I’ve added the 2004 trophy holders to relevant page in the hall of fame.

I’ve also done some of the tidying up that I would normally do at the start of a season, but I can’t get things set up properly until I have the scorecard details for at least one game, since much of the new season handling revolves around the database that drives most of the data on the site and I can’t trip the related logic until I’ve got something to feed it.

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that the site has been down for three or four weeks, but what may not be apparent – unless you’ve visited during the past couple of days and saw the temporary notice to that effect – is that we’ve moved home. The address remains the same but the site is now hosted by HostPlanetUK rather than freenetname, following one too many interruptions to service. I doubt that anyone else will feel the benefit but the new setup gives me access to more information, more behind the scenes facilities and may allow us to do some things with the site that were simply impossible before.

The downtime was preceded by a somewhat longer than anticipated off-season hiatus, for which my apologies (I’ll not trot out the usual excuses, you probably know them all off by heart by now). I did have an update ready to go as soon as the dinner and dance had passed, but it never made it into the big bad world outside of my own network and has been incorporated with these more recent changes. Those of you that missed out on the dinner might care to take a peek at the news page to see who won what, but we are too far removed for me to remember much detail.

I’ve not yet done a report on the recent AGM, but you can find the latest provisional 2005 fixture list along with some details of this season’s indoor nets and Cotswold Tour.

As a by product of the awards having been made at the dinner you can now find all of the 2004 statistics on the averages pages, including a full season report and fully up-to-date personal pages.

Hopefully things will settle down to a more normal pace now, so don’t expect to see a great deal more appear here (unless someone would like to send me a report on the AGM to post) until the new season looms large.

My apologies for the site being off air for several weeks, but this should all now be resolved as we have a new host. I will post more about that change and all the other news once I get home tonight, but for the time being I justed wanted to get the site back on the web. Things have changed under the covers but you’ll have to wait until I update again to find out exactly what and where.