This year's Remnants annual dinner was held on Friday, November 14, at the Burleigh Arms pub on Newmarket Road, as it was last year. And, also just like last year, we had a great turn-out, with some thirty Remnants players, partners, supporters and legends (yes, legends) filling the pub's function room.
The formalities began with the annual quiz:
(To see the answers simply highlight the region below the questions with your mouse by dragging the cursor across the screen with the left button held down.)
Quick singles (one run each)
Faruk Kara, playing for Romsey Town.
Ferdi Rex, also playing for Romsey Town.
Naveen Chouksey.
The unfortunate John Moore.
Presumably several players who hadn't played much for us previously, but the intended answer was Richard Rex, who finally cleared the ropes in his 81st innings for the club.
Daniel Mortlock, who finished the season with 289 Remnants wickets, 7 ahead of Paul but a massive 76 behind Tony Malik.
Coming back for two (two runs each)
Jacob Pockney and Matt Samson.
Sophia Pearson, in the mid-season Remnants vs. Remnants match.
Olly Rex.
Faruk Kara, playing for us this time.
Andy Owen.
Alec Armstrong, who'd started his spell with two wickets off full tosses.
Twelve an over (two runs each)
Felix Serby.
Dave Green.
Dave Williams, who finished the season with 5713 runs, 176 ahead of Clarke Brunt but some 2853 short of - yes, you guessed it - Tony Malik.
Mihir Chandraker.
Sam Serby . . .
. . . who scored 87* against the Academicals, an innings that received remarkable praise from report-writer Michael McCann (despite suffering from "pad rash").
Two sixed wanted (six runs each)
Matt Samson, who decided to atone for fumbling his take by going for a run out, with the result that there were four overthrows to go with the two byes already run.
Regular Remnants opponents the St Radegund went on a tour to the Vatican this year, playing against the St Peter's XI.
Andy Owen (and family) romped home with 37 out of a possible 42, meaning that the St Peter's Organic Ale made its way back to Brampton Road, some two doors down from where Geoff had been storing it in his place.
The Champagine Moment Award went to Faruk Kara for his above-mentioned five-for.
The Les Collings pickled egg award went to John Moore for his run of LBWS - and not for inadvertently and unnecesarily inviting the entire club to the dinner this morning.
Andy Owen, holder of the Phil Watson memorial grotesque, baffled the assembled throng with an allegedly logical deduction of why the thing had to be presented to a decidedly reluctant Paul Jordan.
The most improved player, Grant Kennedy, was algorithmically destined to acquire the memorial Hart-McLeod silver salver once he i) played much more than he did last year and ii) batted brilliantly all year. (Grant also received a one-off award for having the pinkest shirt of the year - Toyah's Iyea LP, for reasons that are made clear by the below photo.)
That should have been that, but Les Collings had brought along a copy of the classic old cricket book The Captain as a raffle prize. This was duly acquired by Colin Anderson, whose winning bid of £25 (narrowly beating out Louisa Ellwood's £20) will go to club funds.
After the longest ever awards ceremony in club history - just as well there wasn't an award for that - there was just about time to try and finish our enormous deserts.
