#Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of Bath University Venturers Cricket Club, 2020.#

The Annual General Meeting of Bath University Venturers Cricket Club took place online at 20:30 on Wednesday 14th October 2020

Matt arrived promptly. Gregory logged in with the wrong account, so that there was no host, logged out again quickly and logged back in after a couple of minutes. Bruce, Alex and, after a short interval, Jaideep arrived. The quorum, however, is six. Gregory, conscious of the 40-minute Zoom countdown, emailed the mailing list frantically. At 20:43 Imran appeared, allowing the meeting to begin legitimately. We started to consider who should chair the meeting in the absence of Simon, but at this point Simon also joined and we got down to business.

1. Welcome and grumbling

   We were welcomed. Some unofficial grumbling had already been done, but we regrumbled for a minute or two about the weather, the unavailability of Sulis and our own ineptness. We didn’t even bother to grumble about covid demolishing more than half the season. It seemed hardly necessary.

2. Treasurer’s report.

   We have a balance of £1620.12, approximately £270 up on last year. We had very few outgoings: the only thing we paid was £75 to opponents as contributions to pitch charges, usually having to insist. As Sulis was unavailable we never had to pay any pitch charges of our own. Fees were a flat £5 as no teas were ever provided. We are going to incur some expenditure soon: a decent bat, another helmet and a replacement first-aid kit are needed.

3. Match fees.

   These are required to be set by the AGM. We agreed to continue with a flat £5 fee, to be increased to £8 for matches where tea is provided, should that ever happen. The captain on the day, and the Treasurer, have discretion to waive fees for any or all players if appropriate: this was done once this year.

4. Election of officers.

   We elected ourselves to the committee. This was less of a coup than it might sound, as the effect was to replace Jamie, who has resigned, with Jaideep. We added Ritvij, without directly consulting him, in recognition of the fact that we wouldn’t have had a team, let alone a competent team, if it hadn’t been for him and his friends turning out for us. Simon is captain, even though he did not play this year; Gregory is secretary; Bruce is treasurer. It is important not to change treasurer more often than necessary, as it takes two years for the new treasurer to get control of the bank account. Alex is webmaster and Matt is publicity officer, but we did not appoint a vice-captain at this stage. The immediate job of the committee will be to work out how and where to play any cricket at all next season, amid many uncertainties. We expect that a further General Meeting may be necessary once the shape of the 2021 season becomes apparent, to allow a wider discussion of what the club can and should do.

5. AOB.

   There was none, but Zoom had awarded us another forty minutes and we used about fifteen of them in a discussion about the name of the club, about possible opponents (we should write to them even if we cannot discuss dates yet) and possible venues, and about how to acknowledge the contributions of regular players who have left. The secretary had left the meeting by this point, but the meeting must have closed by 21:50 because Zoom wouldn’t give us a second extension.