Hands in pockets & standing still

It's about time we rounded off the season's statistics with the often overlooked (by me definitely - I was supposed to do this last week...) topic of fielding. And a brief look at how the teams performed in general.

Let's begin behind the stumps with the wicket keepers, a curious breed who like to fling themselves in the direction of a rapidly moving hard projectile for fun. We had several volunteers for the role between the two teams this year - I'm sure they had their reasons. Below is the table of their impact.

Player Catches/Stumpings

Jamie Fullwood 13

Steven McGarry 10

Steve Bailey 5

Mohammed Mansha 2

Aftab Khan 1

Howard Packer 1

At least one person is missing from this list - he may not have taken any wickets but Bob Morrisroe spent at least one afternoon using all his limbs to stop the ball. Apologies if I've missed anyone else who took a turn.

Catches win matches they say. Early in the season this may explain the poor start the 2nd team had! Fortunately things improved later on to a degree, but still... Here's the top catchers in the club this year.

Player Catches

Aftab Khan 7

Naveed Hussain 7

Zahid Mahmood 6

Shehryar Hussain 6

Then on 5 catches each we have Dale Pinkerton, Goher Ayoub, Mohammad Shahnawaz and Danny Kernan.

And then there's the art of hitting the stumps from a distance (could be the edge of the field, may be a foot away - they're both distances) whilst the unfortunate batsman plots revenge on his idiot colleague who just ran him out.

I'd love to put up the chart of top run-out masters, but there's only one person with more than one to his name - step forward Dale Pinkerton with three victims.

There's a further nine players with one run out to their name, they know who they are so well done to you all - I'm not typing them all in here!

And to finish off the season, we'll just take a look at the win/loss position for each team overall in what was a very challenging season due mostly to the events of Boxing Day.

Team Played Won Lost Abandoned League position

1st 24 7 11 6 10th (Div 1)

2nd 23 6 14 3 9th (Div 3)

So there you have it. Plenty of raw statistics which don't tell the tale of each game week on week in any way, but as is the nature of cricket are now in the records for eternity, and provide a legacy for every player who hit a run, took a wicket, caught a catch, or even just stood on the field.

Well done to all of you and from me personally, thank you - I've had a marvellous summer watching you play every week and I very much look forward to doing it all again next year!