Huyton hope for some luck

May 16 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

THESE are the toughest of times at Huyton CC. The club’s first team, relegated by a distance from the Business Assistance Liverpool Competition’s Premier League in 2007, has yet to win a match this year and is bottom of the First Division table by 22 points.

In total, over five completed games the scoreboard reads 334 runs scored for 50 wickets lost. Three matches have resulted in 10-wicket defeats.

If this sort of run carries on much longer, the Merseyside and Southport Cricket Alliance will not so much beckon, as demand, Huyton’s presence.

“It’s been very tough,” admits the club chairman and new first-team captain Dave Platt. “We’ve had some awful, awful results but we’re not as bad as that. There may be a lack of application at times or it may be bad luck, but it seems that every ball that can possibly take a wicket does so.

“We bowled well against Liverpool and we dismissed Sefton Park for 118 and lost by only 18 runs. I feel we can improve, it’s just a case of it happening sooner rather than later. Confidence is quite low at the moment.”

Platt took over when Mark Wilkie stepped down due to work commitments nearly three weeks ago and his players will aim to begin an upturn in their fortunes against Orrell Red Triangle tomorrow, but even if it doesn’t happen, Platt is unlikely to be adopting the hair-dryer approach to leadership.

“There’s lads at the club who have stayed loyal when others haven’t,” he said. “No one’s dipping out and there’s no bad attitude here, so there’s no point bashing heads together.”

But the troubles at Huyton are not confined to the playing front. The club’s facilities have caused great concern to league officials over the last couple of years and Platt has yet to be informed of the results of a recent ground inspection.

“The facilities here are not the best,” he acknowledges. “But I do think that in recent years when we did well on the field in Premier League cricket and had a lot of paid players, the infrastructure was neglected. In committee meetings, we are having to accept that as a community or social club, Huyton is at Year Zero.”

On a more practical level, Huyton still has to get Clubmark – soon to be a compul-sory requirement for members of the Liverpool Competition – and having worked on the square and outfield, Platt’s next priority is the pavilion. The work goes on.

From a broader perspective, to see a founder member of the Liverpool Competition and a club due to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2010 having to battle so hard to preserve its future will probably be a cause of concern to cricket supporters far beyond Huyton Lane.

Platt can understand people thinking his club is “in a tailspin”, but he takes comfort from new revenue streams and the recent union with the Merseyside Commonwealth team.