Cricket Club President Demo

One season, and the winter after itThis is the demo. You get a full season as president of a Division 8 club — nine rounds, the finals, and the whole offseason that follows, up to the moment season 2 would begin. It is the middle of winterNobody has picked up a bat since March. The Annual General Meeting is upstairs at the bowling club, twenty-two people in a room set for sixty, and the Treasurer is a long way into the accounts before it becomes clear the president is not coming back.

Nominations are called for. Nobody moves. Then somebody says your name. Somebody else seconds it before you have worked out who. Carried. You have a club at the bottom of Division 8, three sides to field by October, and a committee who will spend the next six months finding out what you are like. Every weekThree sides take the field on your first weekend — 1st Grade, 2nd Grade and the U19s — and all three want the best eleven players.

You call the selection meeting, hear the captains out, take the Chairman of Selectors' recommendation or overrule it, and have the sides settled before the Friday. The league alternates one-dayers and two-dayers, and the mid-week T20 is a knockout cup. Field placings, declarations and coaching are not on you.…