A matter of life and death.

Perhaps some players take their cricket a bit too seriously, sometimes the family takes second place. It must be love if your wife really wants to hear about your 1-37 off 4 overs and your 7 singles before being run out (again).

Evergreens player wins the lottery.

Bunny won a tidy sum in the lottery and decided to impress his team-mates by having "my man to drop me off at the wicket".
I said it was a little ostentatious, but skip said "It was a Rolls Royce".

Tactics

One of the "grudge" games of the season must be against RYDE 49ers, who can turn out an XI just as old, sorry, just as experienced as the Evergreens.

As can be seen, they will try any ploy to get at our batsmen to produce a wicket.

Practice makes ....

During the season, Steve Palmer can be found on Sandown beach getting in that extra practice that helps make him the club's 15th best fielder.

SKIP QUIP at a recent game after the sixth catching chance went begging "Dropping the ball is catching".

Oh no it isn't!

An experienced squad.

Skip Andy Morris can look at the squad and only admire the combined experience of hundreds of years that the players possess. The soon to be produced

"EVERGREENS ACHIEVEMENT BOARD"

should include:
John Grace: 1000 cans of Guinness after evening matches.

Andy Morris: 1500 cheese and pickle sandwiches eaten (inc. crusts).

Dave Griffiths: 100 turned down lbw appeals.

Glen Morley: 500 ""That was never lbw" comments to umpires"

Roger Merry: 50 run outs of team mates.

Bob Freer: 100 excuses (different) for being out.

The hero.

All grounds need a groundsman, regularly blamed by both captains in turn if the result doesn't turn out as they would have liked. Knowledge of the weather, an A level in husbandry, knowledge of the inner most workings of a lawn mower, when to put on/take off the covers are all necessary skills for the groundsman.

My question? How do they know where to plant the light green grass seeds and dark green grass seeds to get that striped effect?

SKIP QUIP after one defeat "The pitch was a great leveller, shame the groundsman wasn't."

Evergreens circa 2030

The word "retirement" doesn't come into the mind of most Evergreen players, we are sure that John Grace (see action picture)^^^ will be around for ever.

Work and play

Can you hold the line a moment Most Evergreen players are "retired", in other words, not in paid employment. Roger Merry still works and seems to spend a great deal of time in court, he can be found fielding in the deep waiting for the ball or even for a 'phone call.

Coaching

Colin Nigh (my middle name is perfection) says he learnt all his cricket skills from his enthusiastic headmaster (Mr Whackwell) at Burchmore Secondary Modern.
SKIP QUIP "Were you away the day they did the off drive?"

Colin claims the occasion caning "d.d.did m.me n.no h.h.harm at all"

Traditions.

It is an age old tradition that any player scoring 50 or more should buy a jug of beer so that team mates can celebrate his success. Sadly, a few players have found ways around this. Just recently, two unnamed openers put on a wonderful 110 for the first wicket (which itself had Charlie Brown scouring the record books). One decided to run himself out on 46, and his partner (in cricketing terms) stayed on 47 and went as far as blocking the last few deliveries of our 20 overs.

SKIP!!! Disciplinary action needs to be taken.

Close season.

It may not appear obvious, but during the close season, most Evergreen players make sure that they practice regularly. Jeff Geoff Read Reid would always offer to take his grand daughter out in the pram for "target practice". Well done! The practice has certainly paid off this season.

Evergreens' fielding.

Most of the Evergreens' squad have seen better days in the field (mainly in years starting with 196-). However, all players are adept at utilising their vast array of skills to stop/slow down/ (and even) catch the ball. Here we see ex-footballer, Ralph Abbott, using skills honed at Wroxall to help catch a member of the opposition.