The season is now well and truly over as the nights draw in and the temperature is getting noticeably colder. The cricket played in 2008 by Rosaneri was very enjoyable and we definitely moved a big step closer to competing with established club sides.
The early exchanges of 2008 saw Rosaneri get off to a brilliant start with a well balanced draw at Nazeing Common, followed by a winning draw at Lincoln Road against a strong Enfield team. The first victory only had to wait until the 3rd game of the season when Botany Bay were comprehensively thrashed. Two more victories against Tendring and Mayfield saw Rosaneri in the unbelievable position of being unbeaten in 5 and having tucked away 3 victories.
Could this brilliant start been attributable to hard work in the winter nets ?
But unfortunately, that was as good as it got.
Only 2 more victories were recorded throughout the entire season, and they were both against non club sides.
As the season progressed we did seem to get worse ! The batting at the start of the season was dependable, but by the end we were struggling to get near a 100, never mind rely on our batting to give us a chance of competing.
The loss that hurt most though was the day we were turned over in The Cotswolds. Not only because we threw away a winning position, but the fact that it was against our oldest rivals made it 10 times worse.
On the whole, we did make excellent progress and the bowling and fielding is now nearing a genuine club standard. The batting is better than last season, even though our collective form dipped dramatically in the last quarter of the season.
Highlights in defeat though included the Farnham game as we were totally blown away early on against a brilliant team, but then battled our way back to actually make a game of it. We bowled magnificently as a team against Hoddesdon, who were loaded with 1st XI batsmen looking for form, and we also bowled superbly against Church Langley and Enfield.
The last match of the season however was a massive let down for a number of reasons. We didn’t get anywhere near competing and were totally outclassed. But what made this game really disappointing was the poor availability. It was the last game of the season, the weather was predicted as perfect and we had to offer people deals in order to play ! Ok, we had a couple of genuine injuries amongst regulars, but this was a genuine low spot which was not the ideal way to end a good season of progress.
We will take a closer look at how individuals got on this season in the coming weeks.