The Club Cricket Conference Yearbook 2020

diminished status in the UK. It is up to us to promote and publicise our role in the community and each club can do so. If you don’t know how contact the office! Finally, many thanks to Keir Hopley who has come to the end of his Presidential year. Ever present and still able to give sage advice at Board meetings we wish him a wonderful future. Despite some health scares, Stan and Donna have kept the home fires burning and we wish them a healthy year. Have a wonderful 2020 Robbie Book CCC Chairman, March 2020 - 19 - continued over... Test Cricket China won the toss and decided to bat. At the toss Captain Johnson shook hands with his counterpart, a gesture he was later to regret. He was somewhat put out as he was used to getting things his own way and so consulted his senior players as to what would be a good score to restrict them to. The consensus was that anything under 20,000 was gettable. He then suggested that he needed to have someone to blame if things went wrong. He said that he normally blames the Groundsman but, on this occasion, decided to call in senior members of the Bowling Academy. He said: “If I keep saying that I consulted them no-one can blame me for making the wrong bowling changes and field placings. I will also make them come onto the field of play in between overs so that everyone can see that it is not me making bad decisions.” However, Johnson’s team seemingly did everything wrong. Tactics adopted by most successful international teams such as Germany and South Korea were ignored. Left arm bowlers bowled right-handed, spinners opened the bowling and there were some bizarre field placings. The score started mounting alarmingly. Nevertheless, at every drinks interval the senior players explained that everything was going to plan and that the Bowling Academy had advised at every stage of the proceedings. The bowlers continued to serve up half-volleys saying that was what they had been told to do. Nevertheless, the score didn't seem to be mounting as some had expected and the scorers were asked if all the runs scored had been included. They explained that they had been instructed not to include those scored by the senior players since they did not count towards the first-class averages. At lunch one of the Bowling Academy whispered in the Captain’s ear that something called Herd Immunity would overcome the flow of runs and so for a while all the players wandered around the field saying “Herd Immunity” although none of them knew what it meant. At the tea break an independent expert was interviewed in the Commentary Box and he