Alan Towe - A Look Back In Time - 1st September 2005
It’s simply just not cricket!!!
The Small Heath League are always looking to lead the way with new ideas in their fixture card. Something to keep their current members interested and at the same time attract new clubs to their league. I believe they have certainly done that. They have shown you do not have to have dry sunny weather or even a perfectly mown grass area on which to play cricket as they have introduced into their itinerary a new “Darts Cricket Knockout”. Their new competition has proved to be a huge success with it’s league members, something quite different and very imaginative.
The basic rules are that a toss of a coin decides whether a team bowl or bat first. Once that is decided the bowlers first player throws first. He / she throws for the bull or outer bull area. A bullseye is two wickets, an outer bull one wicket. A batsman throws after each bowler. To record runs a batsman must score more than 40, ie a score of forty nine gives a batsman nine runs. This practise continues until all batsmen have been bowled out. Each team have three innings, an innings consisting of eleven wickets. The winning team is the team to have scored the most amount of runs.
Winning their way through to the semi finals are Trevor Frost, Brenden Lysaght, Clive Austin and John Burdet (Mitre Gang - Mitre), Alan Wilcocks, Ian McLean, Darren Brown, and Paul Webster (Big Al’s All Stars - Custard House), Terry Webster, Dan Dodd, Warren Rudd and Sally Hudson (Blanks - Gunmakers Arms) plus Michael Byrne, Trevor Cattell, Clive Sadler and Lee Macken (The Outsiders - Ward End Ex Service Club).
In addition to their cricket knockout, the league has also been engaged in their Mixed Doubles Competition, with Innisfree duo Gloria Lightwood and John McCaffrey taking the honours. Runners up were the Mitre pairing of Helen Davies and Trevor Frost, while losing out in the last four were Jean Forde / Arthur Forde (Innisfree) and Sue Hanlon / Terry Webster (Gunmakers Arms).
On the league front the Custard House, who were in pole position for part of the season have not only lost the league title to the Mitre, but also the race for the runners up spot. In their final game against Ward End Ex Service Club they went down 7-2 and Victoria 301 Club, who with a similar 7-2 margin defeated Innisfree to claim the second position.
The Tigers completed a perfect season in the G.U.L.P. Charity League rounding off an unbeaten campaign with a tremendous 7-0 whitewash over Red Lion. Malt Shovel missed out on the runners up spot after losing 4-3 to Red
Devils, who ended the campaign as the shadow league champions. With a win over Victoria 301 Club, Hardy Spicer finished as runners up in the league.
The league has played off their mixed doubles knockout and taking the honours were Tigers representatives Colin Wyatt and Amanda Cooper, who beat team mates Martin Cooper and Gemma Stubbs in the final. Amanda hit the winning double in the deciding leg to secure a close 2-1 victory over her brother and give her partner his second doubles title of the season as he had previously won the doubles competition with his partner Paul Webster. Actually you just cannot keep Colin out of the league’s headlines as he after his double doubles title he then made it a tremendous triple by winning the Captains and League Secretaries Knockout Cup when he defeated Red Devils representative John McCaffrey 2-0 in the final. A fantastic season Colin!
It’s been all go in the Tamworth Cue Sports League as they played off their various competitions. Queens are the new Open Cup champions. They accounted for Red Lion ’A’ in the semi’s and then beat Red Lion ’B’ in the final. Globe were the other losing semi finalists. In the league’s division one singles knockout T.Stubbs became champion with his final success over M.Fowler. Reaching the semi’s were S.Latham and R.Snaith. The division two knockout saw S.Brown take the honours. Brown won the title with a last gasp victory over N.Warner. Losing out in the last four were W.Hewins and M.Trowman.
The eventual winning partnership in the doubles knockout was that of Sam Whittaker and Peter Albrighton, who in the final disposed of Chris Payne and Andy Starkey. It was Three Horse Shoes who got the verdict over Royal Oak (Kingsbury) in the finals of the Challenge Cup, while the Dolphin beat Two Gates Club in the final of the Division One Cup.
As the Brookmeadow Individual League reached the midway point of the season nothing changed at the top of the table as leader Mark Birch made it fourteen wins in fifteen games with a 3-0 success over Andy Smith and second in the table Robbie Earl beat David Elkin 3-0 to keep the margin between the two players at four points. However, as they stepped into the second half of the campaign, Mark, who for the majority of the first half of the season suddenly had to be content with sharing pole position with reigning champion Robbie Earl. The man who caused Mark’s upset was Alan Smith, who with a 2-1 scoreline inflicted on Mark his second defeat of the season. Meanwhile, Robbie Earl continued his fine winning run with a 3-0 success over Alan Smith followed by a 2-1 success against Darren Elkin to see him draw level in every respect with Birch to set up a nail biting second half to the season.
The league have also been engaged in the first round of their singles knockout. Highlights of the round saw a 180 from Mark Birch in his 3-1 win against Gareth Lomas, a 118 finish from Bill Cadby in a similar 3-1 victory over Terry Blakemore and a 114 checkout by Keith Kelly as he defeated David Elkin, once again 3-1. Other players to win through to round two are Robbie Earl, Andy Smith, Mark Showering, Paul Smith and Pete Stevens.
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