The Twelfth Man 2020

Register A rranging a programme of events in the winter will always be a risky business but the last season of speaker meetings was quite excep- tional. From Phil DeFreitas who had to cancel within three hours of the meeting’s start time, we then had to contend with bad weather on almost every occasion. Deciding what to do in these situations relies on taking ac- count of not just the local situation for members but also the journey being faced by the guest speaker both to the meeting and getting home again late in the day. And all this before we get to the dreaded virus and lock- down measures. A key element in dealing with these uncertainties is the modern-day ability to communicate what is happening to our members. I know that many people appreciat- ed the email updates sent out on the day before or on the day itself. So I make no apology for returning to my pet theme, rather like a stuck record, of asking all members to ensure we have an email address for you. From previous appeals I now have a distribution list of some 130 address- es but this is a long way short of our 300-plus membership level. We know there will be people who don’t have, and probably don’t want, a computer but still I find it hard to accept this is the only reason why we have no con- tact details for some 170 of our mem- bers. Therefore I ask again that if you have an email address you contact me via secwcls@outlook.com with it. And if you don’t have email, perhaps you know someone who does and could ask them to pass on any urgent messages from the Society. Unfortu- nately it is not feasible for us to make contact urgently by other means, apart from word of mouth. Even our website is not under our direct con- trol so we cannot post changes there in a hurry. So, please send me your details now, as you read this report. In my second year as Secretary I have been struck by the huge goodwill and generosity people show towards the Society. It has been my pleasure to deal with two donors of new awards for young cricketers in memory of their loved ones, now sadly departed. You will find details of the Roger & Do- reen Sorby and the Brian Workman Awards elsewhere in the magazine; we are very grateful to these families for their ongoing support to the Wom- bwell. Also, the generosity of those who quietly sponsor the costs of our meeting venues is much appreciated. This year we also received a dona- tion from a gentleman who remains anonymous which means that our increased costs from greater use of the Holiday Inn has been offset mag- nificently. On top of this, I have dealt with a myriad of other queries and issues both within and from outside the Society. All of this work is quite fascinating and enjoyable. Earlier in the year I was pleased to help facili- tate setting up the archive of Twelfth Man back copies that you can find de- tails about in the Register section. My thanks go to Mick Pope who was ever helpful in lending his complete collec- tion of back issues to be digitised for the archive. Another pleasure was to be able to take up an offer from Pitch Publishers for their series of virtual cricket talks during the lockdown and I hope members who have taken part derived pleasure and interest from them. One area where we have not made as progress as I had hoped, due to the lockdown, is the strategic review of the future direction of the Society. We started with a membership survey at this time last year and the results of this are contained in your member- ship pack. These results give us much valuable information for the first time about our members and their pref- erences. Unfortunately, during the lockdown, whilst the committee was able to meet for essential business by video link, it did not enable us to give the much deeper consideration the results deserved, so many impor- tant decisions about the future must remain on hold for now. But one is- sue we did address is the increasingly urgent matter of the balance between Monday afternoon and Thursday evening meetings. I will not steal the thunder of our Chairman in announc- ing the future direction of our meet- ings, so please refer to his report. As well as our longer term future be- ing on hold, we also face some im- mediate issues in how to address the challenges of living with the coronavi- rus pandemic during months to come. We have to take account of many fac- tors, not least the high age profile of our members. Suffice to say that we have thought long and hard, agonised even, about how best to deal with the challenges and I hope everyone will accept we have made our decisions with the best interests of the Soci- ety uppermost in mind. Also, at the time of writing it is unclear the extent to which we can offer members the chance to have their say at an Annual General Meeting, so in respect of our 2020-21 programme and the AGM Secretary’s Report Challenging times Chris Barron