The Perfect Storm
By San Gore
Kensington CC plays friendly social cricket at a decent level. There are many talented cricketers, young and old, in the club. We play to win but always mindful to provide opportunities for every player, and to enjoy the camaraderie.
Covid-19, though, continued to wreak havoc on our daily lives throughout 2021. Having had Christmas cancelled in the previous year and a winter lockdown imposed, we looked forward in April to the promise of a full season of cricket with plenty of runs and wickets, mixed with fun and laughter. Just like the old days.
But buffeted by the winds of Covid uncertainties, flooded by a spate of injuries, and lashed by rain through the season we were caught in the middle of the perfect storm...Read more..
KCC Match Management Musings
By Saurav Sen
“What’s the worst thing about being a match manager with Kensington?”, I am often asked. I can never think of anything. 
Let’s start with Tuesday afternoons, when the team sheet normally gets sent out. It has an air of certainty about it. Everyone of course replies almost immediately. There are no last minute drop-outs. Lifts are never asked for at the eleventh hour. Everyone consults the map and/or enters the right address in their sat-navs. Come hell, high water, traffic on the M4 or extended breakfasts, the entire team arrives at least 30 minutes ahead of the start time. …Read more…
KCC v Covid-19 – Match Report 2020
19 April – 11 July Covid-19 Lost by 18 wkts fixtures
They 300/0 in 12 weeks (Corona 143*, Lockdown 131*, N.Vector 0/110)
We 50/18 (Nayar 22, T.Keleher 15, B.Johnson 5/15, Hancock 4/28)
2020, hitherto known as the shortest format of the game (not counting KCC collapses), unleashed a sinister alter ego onto unsuspecting cricket lovers at the start of the season. An unexpected fixture was forced upon us. Covid-19, an opponent who no one had heard of until February, was decimating cricket at all levels and was determined to intrude on our bucolic calendar…Read more…
KCC – A great Club with great Opponents
By Chris Ledger
As a wandering cricket club without a home ground or clubhouse, you could say we really depend on just three things, each helping to make KCC the fantastic club that we all love… Firstly our members, and even if we have to say it ourselves, what a great bunch we are! Secondly the club ethos, hard to define in words, but understood and treasured by all. And last but certainly not least, the clubs we play against, who generously host us each week…Read more…
2018 Newsletter from KCC India
By Rahul Sengupta
There are four seasons in most parts of the world. Summer, winter, fall and spring. There are only two in India. Hoo-haa and Ho-hum. At least for the 60 and counting lot that we are, who play for KCC India. …Read more…
A Valediction
By San Gore
“The time has come”, I said, unstrapping my pads in the pavilion after a streaky innings on the Devon tour. Jamie stood there, unbelieving. But I knew. Every cricketer knows, although too many continue in the hope it is just a lack of form and that a hundred (or even a fifty) is around the next corner. The love of the game, the banter in the dressing room, the camaraderie on the field, all contribute to delaying the inevitable decision to hang up one’s boots.…Read more…
2017 Newsletter from KCC India
By Prahlad Tanwar
Everyone in India grows up playing ‘gully’ cricket, with a rubber or tennis ball, makeshift stumps and bat. A privileged few play the real game. Every young man believes he would make it to a first class cricket team if he wasn’t pushed into a career in medicine or engineering. But all are armed with fanatic passion, questionable understanding of the rules, and constant exposure to the sport, making cricket the one great love that won’t go away.
When Deepak ‘the drama chandra’ came back in 2016, with a British passport and plans to relive his passion for cricket in Mumbai, the KCC India flag was bound to fly there.…Read more…
What Kind of Club is This?
By Saurav Sen
“It’s not that kind of club”, said my friend Unmish quietly when I turned up 30 minutes before the start of my first ever game for KCC and asked what warm-ups we would be doing. With that, I was in. This was going to be my kind of club….Read more...
My Time in London and the Formation of KCC India
By Deepak Ramachandra
The highlight of my thirteen-year stay in London has got to be playing cricket in the English summer. Not just any cricket, but for Kensington Cricket Club, undoubtedly the high point of my life in England… Read more…
Kensington’s Monastic Values
By Oscar Jefferson
The order of the day for these pieces seems to be, if the work of my esteemed predecessor is anything to go by, a strange analogy that illustrates the values of Kensington. In that vein, an historical comparison might help get to grips with the subtly distinguished entity that is Kensington Cricket Club.
In a time before Blumberg, as St. Benedict was writing his strict code of conduct for monastic life, Sunil and San were …Read more…
Down Memory Lane – The first Tour to Rome – 1987
A reminiscence by Ian McLean
After a long, hard season of English cricket it is only natural that come the last day of September the true Kensingtonian turns his back on the autumnal twilight and seeks yet more cricket in more comfortable climes – such as Rome. This trip was hosted by two now long-term friends, Alphonsus (Alfonso) Jayarajah and Massimo (Max) Da Costa, of the Capannelle Cricket Club. … Read more…
19 April – 11 July Covid-19 Lost by 18 wkts fixtures
They 300/0 in 12 weeks (Corona 143*, Lockdown 131*, N.Vector 0/110)
We 50/18 (Nayar 22, T.Keleher 15, B.Johnson 5/15, Hancock 4/28)
2020, hitherto known as the shortest format of the game (not counting KCC collapses), unleashed a sinister alter ego onto unsuspecting cricket lovers at the start of the season. An unexpected fixture was forced upon us. Covid-19, an opponent who no one had heard of until February, was decimating cricket at all levels and was determined to intrude on our bucolic calendar.
The Kensington “Brand of Cricket”
By Mark Jefferson
Apparently, it is no longer enough to play cricket. Cricket is given to words – innuendo, jargon – which means we must now all play a “brand of cricket”. After the recent World Cup debacle for England, included in the post-mortem management speak was the assertion that England had “let themselves down and been unable to play the brand of cricket they set out to play”. I’m more in the Geoffrey Boycott camp – like their language, their cricket was just “roobbish”. Read more…
Down Memory Lane – Beer, Bavaria and a Brothel – 1991
A reminiscence by Michael Blumberg
Vinoo Nath and I met in Kensington not much past dawn and motored south to Clapham where we met Tony Brennan. Tony had not yet begun his distinguished diplomatic career and at the time drove a brand new large limousine provided by the company for whom he then worked. We were off to Bavaria and Austria to play cricket under the banner of Cricket World XI with several KCC members. We were making good progress on the autobahn when …Read more …
Like this:
Like Loading...
KENSINGTON CRICKET CLUB 