March is one of my favourite months of the year. The long dark nights are behind us and more importantly the cricket season is just around the corner. The 2017 season was always going to be hard to match but the 2018 season was still a very enjoyable one. Lots of good performances, (some bad ones too), great weather, a full social calendar, lots for the club to be proud of. Unfortunately, there was one negative that came up on a regular basis. Player availability. Speaking to other clubs and reading bits on social media it’s clear that Reed is not alone in having this problem. With people’s lives increasingly busy, and cricket taking a high proportion of the day, getting players to commit is becoming increasingly difficult. Membership levels seem to have remained constant, but the number of games people are playing in a season has dropped. Poor availability affected our Third team most. Some games were forfeited and some were played with 10 players or less. So what does the future hold for Reed and the 3rd team in particular? We have a lot of good Colts coming through but most of them won’t be old enough for Open-Age (or “Adult”) cricket for a few years yet. Will there still be a 3rd team when they are old enough? I really hope so. (We all remember that we had a Fourth Team until 2 years ago and look what happened to them.) So here’s the challenge to the playing members. Please try and do everything you can to increase your availability. However many games you played last year please see if you can up it by 2 or 3 games at least. Make [...]