Rowledge Ladies awards winnners 2011
Katie Forward, Helen Cooper, Katy Robinson, Annie Smith, Angharad Nicholas-Podger
| Helen Cooper | - for sponsoring us this year and providing training and playing kit |
| Neil Gregory | - for coaching us this year |
| Helen Kinal | - who trained as an umpire for us this year (but still has yet to collect her bottle of wine) |
| Angharad Nicholas-Podger | - the bowling award for some outstanding performances |
| Katy Robinson | - the batting award for the third year in a row |
| Annie Smith | - the Most Improved award for "putting her body on the line", with some great batting and fielding (and even bowling) with dodgy knees |
| Katie Forward | - a special sponsor's award for "Going the extra mile", without whom it would have been impossible to field a team, yet alone feed a team. She did a lot of work behind the scenes organising the team, doing teas, playing every week, and nagging everyone to play by sending annoying E-mails about availability. |
Rowledge Ladies had a disappointing season in Southern League Division 2 in 2011, finishing 6th in the league, having had high hopes at the start of the year for a successful season. The full list of 2011 fixtures and results is available here, with the final league tables here.
Our bowling was very good this year, with several excellent performances. Angharad Nicholas-Podger was our star performer, being the joint-highest wicket-taker with the best average, including 4/7 at Radlett, 4/15 against St Lawrence, and 3/15 at Purley Redoubtables. Other notable performances (by players who were only able to play for us once this year) were Laura's 4/6 against Shepperton and Becky Rowe's 3/12 against Radlett.
Angharad 11 wickets @ 4.7 runs/wicket
Katie Forward 11 wickets @ 15.5
Katy Robinson 8 wickets @ 16.5
Our batting has again let us down - in fact we seemed to bat worse this year than when we were in Division1 last year. The only player to score a half-century this year was our skipper Shareen Gradwell, with 58 not out at Hayes. The other best performances were Sophie Cooper's 47 against Radlett, Laura's 46 not out against Shepperton, and Katy Robinson's 41 at Hayes. Katie Forward overtook Katy Robinson in the last match of the season to finish as the highest run-scorer, although Shareen had the best average.
Katie F 139 runs total @ 15.4 average, Highest Score 37
Katy R 135 runs total @ 19.3, HS 41
Shareen 102 runs @ 25.5, HS 58 n.o.
Sophie 101 runs @ 16.8, HS 47
(these figures include runs scored in our rain-abandoned match at Shepperton).
A couple of players deserve a special mention for perseverance. Sarah Tehan played for us with a broken finger, keeping wicket in Jackie's absence. Annie Smith played all season with a dicky knee, fielding and batting valiantly, and even having a go at bowling until she broke down at Radlett, and deservedly won the Most Improved award.
We did have a few team performances which were satisfying. Sophie Cooper (as vice-captain for this year) captained in a couple of matches where we had a very strong team available, and which we won easily (Radlett and Shepperton at home). We also did well at home to bowl high-flying St Lawrence out for 118, and were unlucky not to have scored enough runs to win. Our match at league winners Hayes was also encouraging, as we restricted them to 205 whereas they quite often scored 260+ against other teams; in fact they told us afterwards that they thought our bowling and fielding was very good.
From our division, Hayes and St Lawrence will be promoted, and Brighton 2 will be relegated, although there is an ongoing ECB competitions review which could result in changes to the organisation of the league for next year.