A Silver Lining

 

A milestone that slipped under the radar last season was that the 2024 marked the 25th anniversary of our under 11s team. Above is a picture taken from the Bolton News in that initial 2000 season which was taken at Little Hulton. Amongst those pictured are James and Anthony Cregan, Nick Sanders, Nathan & Matthew Moore (went on to play at A&T), Peter Ellis, Simon Rashleigh, Chris Whitehead and Matthew Ault. 

Junior cricket at Lostock was something of a difficult mix in the days when the club was predominently the factory based British Aerospace and it was to be 1968 before we had our first junior side as the under 18s took to the field for the first time. The experiment lasted for 3 full seasons but lack of numbers saw it fold one game into the 1971 season, and it was to be another 5 years before it was revived thanks mainly to the efforts of Bob Leeming in 1976. We ran just the one junior side until Dave Fairbrother offered to set up an under 13 side in 1985 which was soon rewarded with the under 13 league title two years later. The following year, 1986, saw Dave Fox offer to run an under 15 side and so it remained until the turn of the century when Pete Rutherford offered to start up an under 11 team. 

2000 was therefore the start of the under 11 side, and also the catalyst for my involvement with Lostock Cricket Club. Two of my boys were eligible to play under 11 cricket and Pete asked me along to bring down the boys and help out with running the team. Inevitably the first season was a difficult one as most of the other clubs had been involved for a few years and were a lot more streetwise than we were. Add in the fact that many of our squad were under 9s rather than under 11s, and inevitably we had a difficult season. Just the one win came all season and that was in a cup game that Blackrod conceded!

The second season saw a gradual improvement and a still very young squad gradually started to improve and gain in confidence and ability. Then in 2002 what was still pretty much the hard core of the original squad finished 3rd in the league feeling a little cheated by some bad luck with the weather and runners up in the cup. 2002 also saw a remarkable sequence of matches where first Anthony Cregan took 4 wickets in 5 balls v Blackrod (denied 5 in 5 by a still contentious piece of umpiring), then the following week saw a hat trick for Simon Rashleigh v Darcy Lever and, the week after that Ant finally got his hat trick in a game v Clifton where he picked up 4 wickets to complete a 3 game spree of 11 wkts for 14 runs!

Dave Fox took over the reins in 2003 and immediately reaped the rewards of Pete's hard work as they stormed through an unbeaten season to take the league title for the first and so far only time. Quite  remarkably four of that title winning team had played in the initial season 4 years earlier - Andy Cafferky, Anthony Cregan, Simon Rashleigh and Tom Sheen were all by now veterans and Simon was to be still eligible the following year. Ant led the way with 120 runs and 14 wickets but it was very much a team effort to claim the trophy. A happy team are seen here at Adlington having just collected the John Rossall Shield from BDCA Secretary John Charlson.

Inevitably with age group cricket the fortunes of a side ebb and flow as juniors transition from one group to another and so some seasons end up seeing stronger squads than others and results follow that trend. I always enjoyed my years with this age group as they take their first steps on the hard ball cricket journey, and indeed it is often the seasons with a so called weaker group that end up giving you the most pleasure as a coach/manager. I well remember one season where we battled away without success until pretty much the end of the season and then, when we finally got that first the unconfined joy on their faces was to me more rewarding than a title win. 

Returning to our story as I mentioned above our fortunes at under 11 fluctuated from season to season and the years in limbo with the ground probably didn't help as some of our stronger players were enticed away to other clubs. The facilities at Bolton School were excellent but its just not the same as having your own home ground. Still we battled on and throughout our nomadic years a determined group of us kept four junior sides going against all the odds - indeed several so called better clubs were unable to match that and looked on our junior section with envy. 

 The title defence in 2004 saw a creditable 3rd place behind runaway winners Clifton but it was not until 2009 that we once again threatened to win silverware as we finished runners up to an unbeaten Atherton side. After falling away a little in the league in 2010 but reaching the semi final of the cup we then bounced back in 2011 with Dave Fox once again at the helm to finish runners up to Atherton (again) in the league, but also reach the final of the Standish Trophy where we would meet our nemesis Atherton on their home ground. A pulsating game went right down to the final over which was brilliantly bowled by Ben Sykes and secured a very narrow win with our nett score of 245 proving to be 8 too many for our rivals. The successful team is pictured to the left and comprised George Morgan, Henry Gore-Ward, Andrew Mattison, David Threadgold, Dan Southworth, Tom Ferrier, Jacob Hunter, Nat Price Ben Sykes and Ben Lyons with a pleased as punch Foxy proudly guarding his fledglings.

Since then we have seen several different formats in the under 11 competition and have tended to finish around mid table with just a semi final appearance in the 2018 cup threatening to bring home some silverware. But, and I have always maintained this, it's all about getting youngsters to fall in love with the game and want to progress through the age groups and into senior cricket. And in my opinion we have been pretty successful in that respect. No scorecards are available for the first couple of seasons unfortunately but by my reckoning roughly 175 juniors have played under 11 cricket for us since 2000 and of those 26 have progressed as far as playing for the 1stXI, and probably around a couple of dozen more have played 2ndXI cricket, so a strike rate of 1 in 3 reaching senior cricket is a pretty good effort for little old Lostock, and the hours put in by so many coaches over the years.

For the record at the end of last season the under 11s had played 380 matches winning 142 and losing 155 with 83 no results. 

The addition of an under 9 team in 2016 means that we have now fielded teams in all 5 age groups, although these days we use the 3rdXI as a development side for juniors over the age of 15 rather than the under 18s which can be a little hit or miss. In total, our junior sides had played the grand total of 2254 games to the end of last season winning 751 of them and losing 1083.