Banchory Cricket Club were back at outside training this week for the first time in nearly a year, near oblivious to the rain which swept Burnett Park.
The players from the 166-year-old club donned their new sponsored shirts which carry the individual registration number of each first team player.
The Grade 3 club came up with the quirky idea thanks to the superb administrative skills of veteran player Tim Wilkinson, who has faithfully recorded each and every player who has ever turned out for the club, a total of nearly 600.
Wilkinson’s devotion to duty got its just reward when club captain Mark Herbert saw the potential of the numbers game, using his powers of persuasion to convince the Leys Group, a Banchory-based business to sponsor shirts with not only the company logo on them, but the number of each individual player.
Herbert said: “Tim is a legend at the club, having first played for us in 1967, during which time he scored over 10,000 runs, occupied key positions at the club, and is also our historian, but most of all he has played a major part in making Banchory a family club in the community, and for the community. He will wear the number 265 with great pride as I will wear my much higher one of 465.”
The family element was reflected in the turnout in training, as eight players came from three families, including the Abbott family, led by father Neil and sons Chad, Dean, and Shane. The other two families of Gordon and Daniel Brown, and Graeme and Magnus Nixon helped make the organisation of the first night back at training much easier, as explained by Herbert.
He said: “Under the rules laid down by Cricket Scotland only up to five households can attend training sessions with three families making up eight of the 15, it made for easy organisation, while confirming our commitment to being a family club.”