2025 Awards Evening

2025 Awards Evening

On the 25th October 2025, over 35 men, women and children gathered at the White Horse restaurant and pub, Abingdon for an evening of food, fun and award presentations, superbly organised and hosted by our chairman, Kevin Stacey.

With 15 trophies and awards to be handed out, many were to go home empty handed but filled with collective joy and pride at a season that must be considered a success on all fronts.

The First XI not only won most of their matches this year, but secured promotion at the first time of asking. This was due in no small part to captain Pete Whinfrey, but with consistent performances from key players this season: Sunny Singh on debut, son Rhys Whinfrey, Adam Duffield - the demon bowler. But more than these performances were those who supported them by applying pressure in the field, keeping bowling tight and adding crucial runs. There players (to name but a few) were Jon Waugh, Richard (Prof) Smith, Ranjot Singh and wicket keeper Gareth Piaggesi.

For the winners & pictures - see the First Team page.

Despite being one of the stronger teams in their league, the Second XI narrowly missed out on promotion this season, finishing fourth. After many, many years of skippering the team, Andrew Barrett moved to focus on his game allowing Hari Perumal to step in. The new approach was embraced by new players in their debut season: Charry Singh who started with a couple of 70+ scores and Ankuj Arora who picked up a 5-wicket haul in his first match for the club!

Notable supporting roles to the success this season were Richard 'Prof' Smith who bounced between the firsts and seconds, Jon Smith (no relation!) with the bat; Ollie Gamble's glove work was sound behind the stumps taking 5 catches in a single game and the steady and effective bowling of Sanjay Kumar, Iain Kyffin, Ethan Garrard and the retiring Simon Steer who has now been put out to pasture in the wilds of Scotland.

But special shout outs must go to our top allrounder Andrew Claydon, the ever-youthful Thomas Libu and newcomer Ritik Midha.

For the winners & pictures - see the Second Team page.

The most exciting of all awards were for those awarded to Jay Kapadia who broke into adult cricket with tremendous effect - not only scoring half-centuries, but also taking wickets. Equally, it's tremendously rewarding to see players coming through the year groups and Jon Waugh is a real gem. His bowling is becoming consistently penetrative and this season saw him score a half century in the cup too!

But the biggest and most special award was the one that was actually meant for Andy Howe (having collected several on behalf of non-attendees). Andy is the spearhead for driving the plans forwards on the new pavilion design, all of which needs money to fuel - so his 24 Hours of Cricket event, coupled with the inaugural Villagers Game are likely to become an annual event going forwards - great legacy, Andy!