#Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of Bath University Venturers Cricket Club, 2022.#

The AGM of Bath Venturers Cricket Club took place online, because that was the only way we were going to get decent attendance, at 19:30 on Thursday 29th September 2022.

The meeting began with an apologetic email from the Secretary saying that he had got an error message from Zoom and hoped to get things started shortly.

The Treasurer suggested that Teams might be better.

The Secretary said that it would be worse, especially as he was not on a Windows machine.

The Zoom call actually started at 17:36 and by 17:37 we were quorate, but lacking the Captain.

At 17:40 the Captain’s cat appeared on the screen.

At 17:41 the Captain persuaded the cat to move away from the camera, and appeared himself.

The meeting began at 17:43, as a couple more people joined at that point. It was recorded, but only to help with the compilation of these minutes.

Present were Gregory, Dan, Krish, Rob, Jaideep, Bruce, Bhargab, Dinesh, Imran, Simon and his cat, Alex C.

1. Captain’s report.

   The indoor league will resume, after a tryout in the form of a few friendlies last winter. The long-serving organisers have retired and a group from the Star are taking over. We believe that they will also run it well. We were offered the chance to be promoted to Division A but declined, so we will play in Division B when the league starts in October.

   In the main season we experienced a return to normality in that for the first time since 2019 there were one-year graduate students around, who wanted to play.

   Thirty matches were scheduled (not all of those were scheduled at the start of the season) and twenty-one of them actually got played. Overall we won eight, lost ten, drew two and tied one. Nine were cancelled, including a replacement for a match that had itself been cancelled. Midweek, we played fourteen: of those we won four, tied one and lost nine. Two were cancelled, one early in the season because of rain and one in August because of players not being available. Otherwise we had little difficulty raising teams. This was mostly because of Krish who not only played regularly himself but was very good at recruiting others. Bhargab, Yash, Harsh, Saad, two Varuns and Steve Andrews all played regularly and effectively.

   We started with a wicket from the first ball at Bradford, and went on to win the game in the dark: they were worried about the light but Bhargab was batting and there wasn’t any way of stopping him. The other wins were against Bathford, Southstoke and the Ram. The Ram match was closer than it looked as Farooq had left, taking three other players with him. Had another wicket fallen we would have been relying on Bruce and Gregory.

   Gregory objected that he hadn’t actually played against the Ram. In fact, he was in Athens and if he had had to bat he would have missed the ball by approximately 1500 miles, which is a lot, even for him.

   More memorable than any win was perhaps the tie against the Star. We were competitive in the matches we lost (the captain mentioned Combe Down as a possible exception, but that was closer than the final margin suggests) and there were no fixtures we would not wish to repeat. Playing on Lansdown, against BaNES, again was pleasant.

   Fourteen Sunday games were arranged, two after the season had started, but only seven took place. We won four, drew two and lost one. The draws were the first and last matches (both 70 overs in total) and we won four consecutive matches against Hillesley, Evergreens, Bratton and Langley Burrell before losing a very high-scoring match at Broughton Gifford. The Langley Burrell match, played in extreme heat, was a rare display of competence as well as of the Captain choosing to bat first, because of certain threats issued by the bowlers.

   Five hundreds were scored this year for us: four by Bhargab and one by Jaideep. Bhargab also contributed three other 50s (one of them a 99) and Jaideep another: Farooq (twice), Charlie and Saad also reached 50. The best bowling figures were Gregory’s 5-15 against Southstoke and Yash’s 4-9 against Langley Burrell.

   However, in August we suddenly ran out of players. Three Sunday matches were cancelled before August, two because of rain and one because of roadworks, a new reason. Perhaps some or even all of these games could have gone ahead. Evergreens have promised a free tea next year after cancelling too late to forestall our travel. Between 7th August and 4th September, however, we failed to raise teams to play Allsorts (who were also short), Bradford Town, Bristol Venturers (rescheduled after the roadworks) and St John’s, and Keevil failed to raise a team to play us, when we were also struggling for numbers.

   As well as Krish, Bhargab and the other one-year students, the long-term regulars were still there (Bruce and Gregory were mentioned) and we have some longer-term recruits too for next year.

2. Treasurer’s report.

   We have made a loss of £140. HSBC are less than helpful and for this reason among others it is not possible to be more precise but the actual loss is probably slightly less than that. HSBC now charge us £60 a year, which could be said to account for most of it. On the other hand we bought no new kit during the year. Two things underlie the deficit. One is the ground fees at Sulis, which have risen sharply over the last few years. The other is that because of our policy of not charging newcomers for their first three matches, and the welcome return of one-year players, we have had a lot of players not paying a fee. The indoor league is close to being revenue-neutral.

   There was a discussion about the rule for newcomers, and it was agreed to trial a system whereby only the first game is free. Some flexibility should be allowed, for instance if a new player ends up taking little part in their first match, as happened to Dinesh. The captain and the treasurer in any case may waive a match fee if appropriate, for instance if someone has stood in at the last minute, although this rarely happens. We decided not to change the fees.

3. Fixtures

   There is not much to be said. We may need to persuade Langley Burrell that we aren’t usually that good at cricket and they can safely play us again. Keevil should be tried again (nice ground). Bristol Venturers is a fixture we would like to keep even though we let them down this year. They have no ground, so we have to play an afternoon game at Sulis, which we otherwise do only for touring teams. St John’s gets cancelled every year but for a different reason each time.

   There was some demand for cricket in September. The difficulties are that one-year students have mostly left so raising teams gets more difficult, and that many grounds (including Sulis) get turned over to football, rugby or hockey after August Bank Holiday. We could look to return to Kilmington and Hinton Charterhouse, and perhaps Norton St Philip, where we were supposed to go in May 2020. Other possibilities are Kingswood and Monkton Combe for evenings, and Rode, which has reappeared after a gap of several years.

4. Elections

   No changes were made to the committee. It is in any case very difficult to change Treasurer, and changing Secretary would probably be difficult too. Bruce and Gregory were reelected to those roles, Simon as Captain, Imran as Vice-Captain (the Constitution specifies a Team Manager but that is the Captain by default), Alex as Webmaster (another one that would be hard to change) and Matt as Publicity Officer. Jaideep is also on the committee.

   Imran has been quite successful as a captain, and is more willing to bat first than Simon is. Some people present felt that what Simon really needs to do is bat himself. Krish functioned as a de facto committee member this year and it is quite likely that someone will be similarly active next year (we hope so): if so, it is always open to us to co-opt them onto the committee, although that has little practical effect. There was brief mention of Krish’s setting up of a WhatsApp group, but we don’t want to do that formally. Bruce objects to the technology and Gregory objects to giving data to Meta. Imran gave a view of the season as he saw it, which was reassuringly close to the way most people saw it.

5. Winter, kit and recruitment.

   The Captain was restrained from moving straight on to the Awards item by having the agenda read to him by the Secretary.

   There was general agreement that nets in the spring would be a good idea. We had the usual discussion about recruitment. We are clearly missing some people: George, for example, would have played for us more if he had known about us. We can target certain departments with large cohorts of graduate students (Mech Eng, Management, perhaps Mathematics as we have many regulars there). Bruce uses examples from cricket in his courses but people don’t seem to take the hint. Various suggestions were made but nothing definite was decided: in any case, the Publicity Officer was not present. It was pointed out that we are not trying to recruit undergraduates: that’s not what we are for. Undergraduates are not forbidden (nor is anybody else) but we are a staff and graduate students team: anyway, the undergraduates usually leave in early June.

   We should perhaps get some Venturers shirts done, and also try to acquire a collection of usable whites to be lent to people who haven’t any, so that we look a bit more like a cricket team. Other kit is stable, but we probably need another bat and another helmet.

6. Awards

   • Best bat: We have struggled for reliable batting in the past but this year Jaideep, Farooq and Krish (who made exactly 300 runs but never got past 44) were all solid. However, Bhargab’s four hundreds and 821 runs at an average of 164 made it uncontroversial to give him this award.

     There was a short digression here about Bhargab’s 99, caught one-handed by Steve Dent.

   • Best bowler: Bruce did his death-bowling thing (a BaNES batsman, walking off at the end of their innings after failing to accelerate against Bruce and Yash, was heard to say “those guys are tricky), and Krish was reliable. Yash was less reliable but sometimes effective, and Saad and both Varuns contributed very usefully. Gregory won, having got ten more wickets than anybody else and also the only five-wicket haul of the season.

   • Best all-rounder: Krish noted that we did not have such an award, so Simon created one and awarded it to him. Contrary to what was stated at the meeting, this is not the first such award, but a search of the minutes is necessary to find the last one, in 2009.

   • Best fielder: there was some competition but George edged it.

   • Most improved: Jaideep, for general reliability as well as the hundred he made.

   • Best catch: despite some good ones by Bhargab in particular, nothing came close to Tilakraj’s one-handed effort against Southstoke early in the season.

   • Champagne moment: The tie against the Star was mentioned, but we had actually expected to win two balls earlier (though not ten balls earlier). The wicket from the first ball of the season was also mentioned, but Jaideep’s hundred at Bratton won.

   • Best dressed: Saad won this several times over, with some questionable choices early in the season and some much better ones later.

   • Duck of the Year: Farooq had nominated himself, and Yash had an impressive one at Broughton Gifford (so did several other people), but Bruce won by not only getting a fine duck at Broughton Gifford but actually scoring no runs at all in the entire season. His 0* at Hillesley was vital, though.

   • Most IPL-like: Yash’s deep conviction that anything down leg is a wide, brought on by watching too much IPL, led him to dance out of the way of anything he thought might possibly be outside leg stump and won him this award. Why didn’t he just hit them? And in one game he did that to something that wasn’t going down leg and was remorselessly (and correctly) given out LBW playing no shot to a straight ball directed at leg stump.

   • Best remark in a match report: Only Gregory writes these. The Oxford comma put in to annoy the Health Secretary, was commended, as well as the description of Harjeet’s many roles for the Star, but the winner was the description of the various dances that Yash performed while trying to avoid anything near leg stump (see above): the Charleston, Moonwalk, Kathakali (Dinesh explained what this is) and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.

   And finally the highly prized

   • A.J. Wolstenholme Prize for Running Between the Wickets: This caused some ructions. Rob had nominated Simon for a massive confusion against Broughton Gifford and Simon had disqualified the nomination on the grounds that the event had occurred last year and indeed had won the Wolstenholme Prize in 2021. Rob objected, insisting that there had been a runout involving Simon against Broughton Gifford at Sulis this year. Simon insisted that there hadn’t. Rob left, telling Simon that it was his decision but that he, Rob, thought that Simon should win.

     The scorebook shows that Simon did not play the home match against Broughton Gifford at all, and while he did play at Broughton Gifford and was dismissed (in fact, for the only time this year) he was out caught.

     Simon therefore ignored Rob and gave the award to Bhargab for running himself out against Allsorts by not putting his bat down – that is, he was carrying it at chest height – or hurrying at all. The mixup with Jaideep was somewhat complex but the root cause was probably that Bhargab was expecting the throw to go to Jaideep’s end and was completely surprised by the direct hit at his end that actually happened.

7. AOB.

   There was a short discussion about the best way to pay match fees. It was felt that for a largely irregular team such as we have, cash remains best.

The meeting closed at 21:15.