So…end of the season and time for the reckoning. My assessment of the team’s collective efforts during this year’s campaign. First and foremost, it must be said that finishing 6th (of 10) was better than anticipated. If you’d offered me that before the first ball was bowled, I would have bitten your arm off. Sure, one team dropped out of the league before then end but you could also argue that this marginally increased the chances of us being bottom (especially as we were the only side that team had beaten all year).
Anyway, on to the more tangible categories. The grade is reflective of my perception of the team’s capability and also previous season outputs.

Bowling: B-
There were 28 different bowlers during the course of 2023 for the 5s. Collectively, they conceded 1556 runs and took 92 wickets for a communal strike rate of 16 or so. Not terrible. If you discount the cancelled games, that leaves us with an average of 119 (ish) runs conceded per match. Again, not terrible. Most teams in league cricket would say that they would expect to chase down 119 runs in any given game. However, no one took a 5 wicket haul this season and on more than one occasion we lacked the rigour and focus required to finish off teams when we had made some early progress. The team only took 63% of the available wickets in the games played. Moreover, death blowing was either mismanaged by the skipper (mostly me) or lacked the penetration necessary when turning the screw. Naturally, there were some exceptions. On the plus side, only 5 of the 28 bowlers this season finished with an economy rate above 6. Tidy at this level. Next season we need to hone a couple of strike bowlers we can hang on to for most of the games (said every Captain everywhere).

Batting: C
This was more of a mixed bag (have you ever noticed this phrase is rarely applied to something inherently good?). The 5s had 50 different batsmen appear at the crease this season across 117 separate innings. Collectively we scored 1501 runs for a global average of just under 13 per innings. These figures sound like test scores in the 1980s if you ask me. There were no tons scored and only 5 x 50s. No surprise performances really unless you count some of the glorious ducks achieved by established players (some from higher up) that were being relied upon to do a job. One caveat is that in our league there are no appointed Umpires, and the tracks are only rolled in a cursory manner. But all the same, this was an underwhelming year with the bat.
To be fair to the team, conditions were not always great for building a big innings and by the time you get to numbers 6-11 in the order any sense of playing with freedom and style is out the window as either we are chasing a score, or the overs are rapidly drifting away. Partnerships were a rare thing for the 5s and as we all know this tends to be the currency of good team totals. How much of this is the captain’s responsibility and how much is the players? Hard to tell. There were pretty good turn outs for nets on Thursdays, but perhaps precious little coaching. Settled sides (i.e. not the 5s) have the luxury of establishing players in certain batting positions and surely this must help enormously.

Fielding: C+
The team did not undertake any fielding training this year and it showed. 63% of the wickets taken were down to either catches, run outs or stumpings which is slightly better than historical average. Certainly, we held more than we dropped (hardly a claim to fame), with one or two matches being exceptions to this rule. Highlights include more keeping catches than previous seasons and the Vice Captain’s safe pair of hands being the standard set on most occasions. Freakishly, the old skipper returning to assist for one game resulted in him taking just under 10% of all catches for the season himself. Nice one.
Issues remain with field placements and tactics (entirely the skipper’s remit) and the occasional ‘lazy’ attempts to field with one’s feet. What older players bring in terms of guile, they lack in flexibility. More practice next season should yield better results but orchestrating this will be the challenge.

Leadership: C+
Despite a slight variation in approach between the Captain and Vice Captain to game management, there was general alignment when it came to the philosophy of the side.
Fortunately, there were no games that required outsourcing of the match to a third party skipper and so that is a kind of success. Communication was as good as it could have been (barring some late publishing of the weekly team which is entirely out of the captain’s hands in this club). Kudos to the VI-Kings skipper who demonstrated astute ‘managing up’ skills from time to time and helped with identifying opportunities for balanced selection.
The team profile was briefly raised with a website-based blog that at least temporarily created some mild interest in the affairs of the side. Much like the weather, this tailed off rapidly in the second half of the season and there is an allegory there about being resilient and robust that might be observed.
Several new players were inducted into the 5s stable- some of them even successfully!
Staying connected to the club consciousness perhaps relied too much on personal relationships and not enough of formal structures like Captain’s meetings.
A good summary might be that in leadership terms the 5s were a composite side being led by a compromise solution. Despite the feelings of imposter syndrome, I enjoyed the gig more than I thought I would. Couldn’t have done it without the Vice Skipper’s wisdom and some old stalwarts offering ‘dynamic feedback’ as they did.

So…on these results it would be difficult to award an overall grade of more than C+, but it is also true to say that there were definite elements of better than that. If we extend the scholastic theme, you might say that while we will never be top set we can and should strive harder for better results. A shrewd teacher might well insist we sit at the front of the class next term.