Badgers Cricket Club – What’s New Archive 2019

The awards dinner has been and gone, and for the first time in more than thirty years Janet and I were unable to attend so I cannot bring anything more than second-hand news on the event, so basically nothing more than who won what:

Rather like it had in 2018, the 2019 season just fizzled out, with the Badgers struggling to get a team on the designated final weekend and then failing to find a fixture for the last weekend in September when we could have put out eleven, although I suspect that the weather might have made it all moot on both occasions. In the meantime I have fully checked the statistics (which is nothing like the chore it once was before I started processing each game in full as the season progresses and is mostly automated these days) and performed all of the standard end of season processing.

Given that everything is visible on Play-Cricket these days it was decided a while back that we would publish the full season report in advance of the dinner, and the distribution of awards off the back of the averages contained therein, rather than pretending that no one knew the destination of the cups directly decided by the averages. All of the other pages have been updated with the 2019 figures, including all decade by decade averages pages, the personal pages (for which Rod has qualified for the first time and Daniel re-qualified) and the individual records page. In addition you can now find historical results for 2019 along with the leading performances and partnerships for the season just gone.

Not sure what the next update will be, although there might well be one at some time after the dinner documenting the awards made on the night and in addition to continuing with some background work on the underlying site structure, which might result in switching to the new page layout before the start of next season, I hope to get the full 1984 data loaded into the database and exposed here. The relevant information was entered into Play-Cricket some time ago but, due to what happened with batsman retirement in the Hook Norton game that year, I am battling with changes to the fall of wickets handling in various areas of my code, that will need to be working before I can even import the data into the Badgers database, let alone generate any output from it. Some or all of that might come to fruition before the AGM announcement, or if past performance is anything to go by, it might not!?

Sadly there is no game tomorrow, with Westcott having cried off and the Badgers struggling to put out a side anyway. There is talk of trying to arrange a fixture for next week, but that will depend on something suitable coming up via the Conference or some other source.

The annual visit to Horsley & Send last Sunday produced another close game and another exciting finish, with the Badgers scraping home with four balls and three wickets to spare. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

Our return visit to Ripley last Sunday produced the same result as the previous trip but a much more interesting game of cricket, with the Badgers chasing down just shy of 200 with an over to spare. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

This weekend’s game has been moved from Smallfield Manor, who cried off on Friday morning, to give us our second repeat game of the season, at Ripley this time.

Last Sunday saw Blindley Heath become the second most frequent opponent for the Badgers, behind only nearby Dormansland. The friendly confines welcomed us again and behind a Gordon masterclass – two brilliant diving catches, one for Jake and one for Mark, four late wickets for the skipper and (hopefully) the return of his batting mojo in a 50 run match winning stand with Rod – we notched our sixth win of the season and snapped a four match losing skid. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

Our second visit to Stoke D'Abernon in 2019 saw our second loss to them, albeit in a closer game as they were indeed weaker in the batting department whilst we were exactly as weak as last time. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

I have discovered that the bug in the ‘by wickets’ calculation mentioned in the last What’s New entry affected a couple of the earlier games too, so the detailed scorecards for Leigh in 2015 and Westcott in 2017 have also been corrected. I noticed another long-standing bug in my code whilst live scoring the game at Westgate on tour, which meant that the innings notes for individual batting milestones had one too few balls faced every time (easy to spot when their number three was going nuts and racking up his fifty in just 15 balls). That error was fixed for the tour games and beyond but regenerating all of the scorecards for the other issue has meant that all existing cards are now correct.

The final blank date on this season’s calendar has been filled in with a return visit to Stoke D'Abernon this coming Sunday, who tell me they are somewhat weaker than for our previous visit.

Our twenty-fifth visit to Leigh produced as close and exciting a game as you could wish for, on the kind of sticky dog that would have had Derek Underwood licking his chops and very nearly saw us without a game (fifteen more minutes of rain in the morning and the home side would have been forced to call proceedings off, I was told in the bar afterwards). The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

I have also found time to complete the staistical notes for Old Whitgiftians and added one or two additional items regarding partnerships to the notes from tour. A bug in my scorecard checking program, where a win by wickets was incorrectly expressed when a team was entered with more than eleven players, even though only eleven of them actually took part, has been fixed and the detailed scorecard for Westgate adjusted accordingly.

Tour has been and gone bringing decent weather, three games of cricket, plenty of carousing and some individual performances to remember (both on and off the field). We played at Walmer, Westgate-on-Sea and Margate but some fun and games around the scoring record for the Sunday game have meant that it took me a while to pick the bones out of the last half dozen overs of our bowling. That is all sorted now, best as I can, but another Sunday has passed in the meantime, so we also have our visit to Old Whitgiftians to include in this update.

The usual summarised details of the games can be found on the results page along with statistical notes only match reports, but only for the three tour games thus far, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecards and the new-fangled full fat scorecards.

Tour is looming, last weekend’s match at Newdigate was cancelled due to lack of numbers and yet I have just realised that the update for the week before was still languishing incomplete, so my apologies.

Our seventh visit to Ruxley Lane to play Ewell (aka Deando Ruxley aka Deadno aka Ceraf) and the hosts handed us our second loss there. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

Our return to play alongside the Oxted beer festival, after a year’s hiatus, produced a rather one-sided loss amongst the noise, broken windscreen and growing focus on the World Cup final at Lords. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

A Conference arranged fixture saw a return visit to Old Wimbledonians who we also had a last-minute match against last year. This time we played on the Wimbledon College ground on what might best be described as a green top. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

I completed a full match report for Ripley on Sunday morning but too late to proof-read it and get it uploaded before having to leave for Raynes Park. That chore has been completed so it will have appeared at the same time as the Wimbledonians details.

The blank date on the calendar for this Sunday has been filled with a visit to Old Wimbledonians, who we played for the first time in a similarly last minute fixture in May last year. PLEASE NOTE the slightly earlier start time of one thirty and that there are two sports grounds on Coombe Lane so use the house number to identify exactly where the ground is since the postcode falls between the two. Both the Google Map with the locations of our opponents and the fixtures page have been updated accordingly.

Last Sunday saw a return to Ripley after a couple of seasons of being unable to raise a side for the slated dates and a third win on the trot for the Badgers, at something of a canter. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a skeletal statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard. Hopefully a more complete match report will follow shortly but I wanted to get this update with the fixture information for Sunday up on the web as soon as possible.

For the first time this season I have performed the periodic refresh of the personal pages, which affects the best performances and partnerships but not the averages, and both the lifetime averages page and the partnerships page continue to be updated each week. I have also been trying to keep the dynamic averages page up to date, but that is more of a chore as it requires the whole database to be refreshed from the local version (hint: the table headers tell you when the database was last updated)

Our visits to Tadworth are usually entertaining in some way or other and last Sunday’s was no exception with the Badgers short of numbers and the home side kindly lending us two players who took 50% of the wickets and scored 40% of the runs as we edged past their teammates in the final over. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a full match report, for the second week running, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

I think that I’ve finalised what I’d like the run charts on the detailed scorecards to look like and thus have generated said charts for all the seasons for which we have such cards (ie. 2014 onwards).

The Badgers finally managed to nail down their first win of the season on the Memorial Fields at Ottershaw. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a full match report, for the first time since 21st May 2017, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

The problem with the over displays on the detailed scorecards have been fixed, improving the accuracy of the fall of wickets information as well as the equivalent in the run charts, and also correcting the Innings Notes where the over number was often one higher than it ought to be.

Another exciting finish again this week and another heartbreaking loss on our first ever trip to Woodmansterne. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

My pulled hamstring has meant that I have been able to spend some of the time that I would normally spend sitting on the M25 to and from work in adding a feature to those detailed scorecards which I have been mulling over for a while whilst considering ways in which I could surface information that I have available from the scorecard checker that otherwise is hidden. The interim results of that are the addition of Manhattan and Run Worm charts to the information presented for each game. I have only generated them for the 2019 games thus far, because I’m still not entirely happy with some of the presentation aspects but I would be interested in any feedback you might have regarding this new feature. You will need scripting to be enabled via your browser for the charts to display, otherwise you’ll just see some large areas of empty space after each innings.

In testing the pop up tooltips in the new charts I have also discovered a particularly egregiious error in all of the existing detailed cards that you have all been too polite to mention. Sadly I have run out of time to fix it properly and won’t get a chance to do so now before next Monday at the earliest. Since it has been there since the new pages were first added to the site I will accept the fact that you are all sniggering about it and leave things as they are for now.

PLEASE NOTE that the last of three consecutive gaps in the fixture list has been filled in with a visit to Woodmansterne this coming Sunday, another opponent that we’ve not played against before – which is rather surprising given their geographical location. See the fixtures page for full details including map links.

Our maiden visit to Putney saw the tightest of all possible limited overs finishes, which we botched quite badly. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

Following on from Mark’s hat-trick at Dormansland and the subsequent email discussions I’ve added a new section to the Statistical Sett detailing all of the Badger hat-tricks that have either been brought to my attention or that I have tracked down in investigating them.

PLEASE NOTE that the second of three consecutive gaps in the fixture list has been filled in with a visit to Putney this coming Sunday, an opponent that we’ve not played against before. See the fixtures page for full details including map links.

Our latest visit to Stoke D’Abernon did not go well from the cricketing perspective, other than the fact that we got a game and it was uninterrupted by the elements, and our batting failed for the second week running. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

I have added the tour matches to the fixtures page including map links and a tour specific Google Map of the locations.

PLEASE NOTE that the first of three consecutive gaps in the fixture list has been filled in with a visit to Stoke D’Abernon this coming Sunday, who we have played at this time of year for the past couple of decades, in recent times between the Ham and Dormansland fixtures rather than after them. See the fixtures page for full details including map links.

Our regular visit to long-time opponents Dormansland for the 60th match between the two clubs resulted in a much less batsman-friendly affair than last week, with Mark going so far as to record a hat-trick. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

After a week’s hiatus the Badgers returned to action on Ham Common in weather far more conducive to a game of cricket than the previous outing and the two teams served up more than 400 runs in a game to suit the modern palate. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

The new season kicked off with a visit to Beechwood, who have been our regular curtain-raiser – weather permitting – for the past decade or so. As it often is at the end of April it was bitterly cold (and no hot water for the showers) but we had a pleasant game of cricket nonetheless. The usual summarised details of the game can be found on the results page along with a statistical notes only match report, the traditional pertinent elements from the scorecard and the new-fangled full fat scorecard.

The 2019 season is just around the corner and the site update that I started working on immediately after the dinner is still incomplete (and to some degree in pieces scattered around the workroom floor) so please forgive the mess.

I have found time to update the fixtures page, including map links and the now standard Google map with the locations of our 2019 opposition. I have also updated the historical cup winners and club officers as well as the current club officers page.

Last November’s awards dinner saw sundry Badgers and many of their partners gather to celebrate the season just passed and to hand out the usual pots (and for those who have not won a particular trophy previously/recently, a memento of the occasion). For the record the following received awards: