Another successful season for The Two Counties Seniors Family. 53 games were arranged, a record, with just a few cancelled because of the weather; the results summary is as follows:

Over 50s P24, W9, L11, D2, T1, A1, with 1 cancelled – includes the tour games,

Over 60s P12, W6, L6, with 5 cancelled,

Over 70s P8, W6, L2, with 3 cancelled.

Availability was very good again both with existing players and new ones. There were some excellent team performances, with centuries for John Stuck, Karl Storey, Rob Collett and Jim Keys and six wickets in an innings for Derrick Messent with five for Trevor Money, Martin Southwell and John Stonehouse, together with many other fine individual performances.

There were a number of highlights this year. The Over 50s won the T20 Tournament at Ipswich, The President’s Day game at Elmstead finished in a tie with the last wicket falling off the last ball of the 40 overs, The Tour was a great success after a gap of two years and we now have two Golf Days, by popular request.

We owe special thanks to the Captains, Pat Patel, Nick Meakin and Bruce Tompkins for all their hard work with team selection and arrangements for the games and for introducing several new players, this is especially important for the future of The Seniors. We also thank Eric, Kevin and Richard who were always willing to stand in for them when required. We also thank Charles Revell who organised the umpires and scorers and those umpires and scorers who stood in our games. We also thank Stuart Carpenter for his work as Social Manager, John Stuck for organising the Golf Days, and Rick Jones and Steve Isaac for the match reports and other information about the Seniors on the league web site.

We received a great welcome from the clubs who host our games, Bayford and Nondescripts, Billericay, Chadacre Hall, Chippenham Park, Copdock & Old Ipswichians, Copford, Eight Ash Green, Elmstead, Frinton, Halstead, Hockerill, Ipswich, Kelvedon, Melton St Audreys, Mistley, Nacton, Old Buckenham, Sprowston, Stock, Twinstead, Witham, Wivenhoe, and Worlingworth. We hope to be able to return to all of these in 2023.

We are grateful for the press coverage this year although we did not produce reports for all our games.

We did lose John McNally, Mark Sergeant, Alan Burt and Badger Ball this year, all great supporters of the Seniors over many years. One of the comments that we receive frequently is that everybody enjoys our games. They are played very competitively but at the same time it is important that the enjoyment aspect is to the forefront as well. Since the very first game in 1987, The Seniors have played 960 games; it is expected that the 1,000th game will be played towards the end of next season.

Everybody connected with the Seniors, be it as player, official or supporter, is a volunteer but if we all continue to join in with the same spirit and all participate and make our contribution, the playing and volunteering becomes even more enjoyable and rewarding. So, another successful season for The Two Counties Seniors Family, looking forward to more of the same next year.

John Gallant

For the full results, click here