WECC 1993 IOW Tour and Awards Evening

Slideshow of photographs from WECC's inaugural cricket tour to the Isle of Wight AND a few from the end-of-season Awards Evening that year in Chobham. (Click "More Info..." below for fuller details.) The tour took place over the last weekend of May, the Bank Holiday one which by the Tuesday had straddled into the beginnings of June. Weather fair, winds light to variable, cloud cover intermittent. Sunny spells, rain in places. Arsenal 2, West Bromwich 3. And now on BBC 3

Our party had a party staying in a Ventnor hotel run by a gent name of Frank, and the seafront offered the choice of two pubs of which the Mill Bay became our adopted "Hare & Hounds" (West End) substitute watering hole for the weekend.

Thew hotel was not untouched by our handiwork: Frank said quite frankly and to the point, of which point was that he would not allow us to darken his doorway ever again. It was arguable whether that would be possible, seeing as we'd trashed his place anyway. Only joking! But it shows how much we think we enjoyed it. If only we could remember....

Cricket - we played (IIRC) Godshill, a nice village near the heart of the island, a conglomerate called Island Bakeries whom we met on a ground in Havenstreet deep in the outskirts of Ryde and which I recall the ground was uneven with plenty of bounce, and lastly a side in the Ryde area, a game played competitively on the grounds of a private college (I think!). We came second in that one but put up a reasonable fight.

Did we win any of the others? One game maybe if I remember correctly, you could put that down to inebriation of the highest order, or perhaps we simply ought to have been put down ourselves. That second game was on an uneven pitch where we were almost bounced out of the game! Whatever the long and the short of it, the whole long weekend was a remarkable experience which everyone enjoyed so much that a follow-up was planned. That went to Somerset in 1994, photographs and some video exists and will be edited up in due course.

The 1993 Awards Evening was held at the Cricketers on the Windsor Road to the north of Chobham village. Our incarnation of WECC were on the ascendency at this time, our then President - the late John Gaisford - having inspired us to widen our scope and be ambitious. It worked - the Awards Evening and the Tour became institutions for the remainder of its existence which was no mean feat, considering the lengthy gaps in the entire history of the village cricket club, thanks to disinterested from a sizeable portion of the (still) expanding village.

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• Woking
• Chobham
• IOW
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• Ventnor