The Club Cricket Conference Yearbook 2020

Editorial In 2020 a miniscule creature, invisible to the naked eye and previously unknown, succeeded where Hitler and all his legions and bombers failed: it halted the production of the Club Cricket Conference Yearbook. Since you obviously have access to the internet you can see that for the first and, I sincerely hope, only time the book is published electronically. What can one say? Only ten months ago, as the dust settled on the 2019 Lunch, I began to plan the 2020 Yearbook full of hope and enthusiasm for the future and now here we are; the summer is almost over, half the league season was been wiped out, all the major cup competitions were furloughed and we’ve all been locked down for the past six months. A special feature article in this publication hails all the way from Oz. An old friend of the CCC, Mike Langford of Northern District CC in Sydney, has written a piece about the amazing generosity and support of the State Government for the redevelopment of the club. When people wonder why Australia, with a third of our population, consistently (too consistently, some might argue) best us, they should think on this. Remember, they are only one of many clubs throughout the country. As I originally wrote these words, the pony express brought the welcome news that club cricket was able to restart from July 11th. You can keep abreast of developments by subscribing to the Club Cricket Conference Newsletter. If you are not already in receipt of this, or if you know of others who would be interested, please drop Donna Black an email on donna.black@club-cricket.co.uk . The office has been closed these many months and Stan, Gulfraz and Donna have been struggling manfully from home to keep the show on the road – our grateful thanks to all of them. Early last year I happened to be at Lord’s and ran into Tom Harrison, the ECB’s CEO; unfortunately for him, I saw him before he saw me! He asked how life was with the CCC and I bleated out my usual tales of woe about the cost of producing the Yearbook whereupon Tom offered to pay for the 2019 edition! My grateful thanks to him for his generosity. Anyway, in the meantime back to the TV set to watch the umpteenth re-run of the Wizard of Oz! Charlie Puckett Editor - 11 -