If success is measured by on the field results in matches – and that, I am led to believe, is the usual way in competitive sport – 2012 would have to be seen as being successful beyond our wildest imagination. Our club was formed in January 2010 with only one regular cricket player and many of whom had only watched cricket on the television. Fast forward 32 months and our club had enjoyed its second successive promotion within the East of Scotland League and the club had won it’s second competition of the year. I can only thank the many, many people who have helped us get to this point. These include family and friends for supporting us, sponsors (Scott Glynn and Adnan Ali) for believing in us, Edinburgh Leisure for allowing us to use their facilities, various members of the ESCA Management Committee for offering us guidance and most importantly the players of Tranent Cricket Club who have given up their time to play for us, attend meetings for us and spend hours of their time promoting us.
We have had a fantastic journey over the last year but if we want the journey to continue we need to continue positively selling our vision of a community based cricket club. We need to remember that what we have achieved is incredibly rare as successful new clubs are as rare as hen’s teeth. The reason for this is success and growth are very rare commodities in Scottish Sport and we need push on in the coming years to offer greater opportunities to all. I’m sure you will all look back on this period as being special in cricket terms but if you want this period to continue I would urge you to play more, socialise more, commit more and dream more.
The Summer of 2012 was hailed by the media and press of being the “Golden Summer of British Sport” but if that is true it is also equally true for Tranent Cricket Club. As noted our playing achievements during the year were fantastic but that is only some of our achievements from 2012. Other achievements include;
- One of our players represented ESCA against Scottish Universities.
- Two of our youth players played for North Edinburgh and East Lothian Under 17’s.
- We successfully completed a season for our 2nd XI and have now made a successful application for them to join ESCA 9 in 2013.
- We made a second successful application to the lottery for funding for our 2nd XI and our youth section.
- We successfully launched the Tranent Titans with the training sessions being well attended by Tranent children.
- We completed numerous after school taster sessions and we also completed a 6 week cricket development block in one of the town’s 3 Primary Schools.
- We gained agreement from The Tranent & District Community Sports Club and East Lothian Council to support us in finding a home ground in or near Tranent.
- We competed in the inaugural ESCA indoor 6’s and the Legget & Coe Indoor 6’s.
- We entered and competed in our first National Competition reaching the Quarter Finals.
- We continue to lead the way in promoting cricket through Social Media. Our following on Twitter and Facebook rival any other club in Scotland, including the Cricket Scotland League clubs.
Finally I would like to thank you all for supporting me during my reign as President. Like Dave Cribbes, my predecessor, I still maintain the ambition for the club and have a great deal of pride in our achievements. I now hand the reigns over to Mark, who although young in years, has much to offer the club as I know his ambitions for the club are incredibly ambitious.
Yours in Cricket
Fiona