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It is the middle of winter

Nobody has picked up a bat since March.

The Annual General Meeting is upstairs at the bowling club, twenty-two people in a room set for sixty, and the Treasurer is a long way into the accounts before it becomes clear the president is not coming back. Nominations are called for. Nobody moves.

Then somebody says your name. Somebody else seconds it before you have worked out who.

Carried. You have a club at the bottom of Division 8, three sides to field by October, and a committee who will spend the next six months finding out what you are like.

Where the club is

Pick the country first: Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies or the United States. Each has its own clubs, districts and names on the teamsheet. In England, teas are a serious matter. In the United States a league game can be three hours in the car, and the pitch might be matting.

Name the club, the grounds and the colours, then decide who you were before the vote: a former 1st XI captain with two hundred games the club remembers, a local businessman with three hardware stores and a view, a stalwart with thirty years of canteen rosters behind them, or an outsider who ran a Division 3 club. It ended badly, and people read about it.

Every week

Three sides take the field on your first weekend — 1st Grade, 2nd Grade and the U19s — and all three want the best eleven players.

You call the selection meeting, hear the captains out, take the Chairman of Selectors' recommendation or overrule it, and have the sides settled before the Friday. The league alternates one-dayers and two-dayers. The mid-week T20 is a knockout cup for all eighty clubs, and from the bottom of Division 8 winning it takes seven ties.

Field placings, declarations and coaching are not on you.

The room

A captain who counts the times you overruled him starts voicing his opinion. A Chairman of Selectors with a bias you did not choose: he might take the club man ahead of the better player, or blood a junior who is not ready.

Agreeing with one of them is refusing another. Both remember.



You get one call a week, to one committee member. Level with them, back them publicly or ask what they would do, and somebody else on the committee hears whose number you rang. Stay on good terms with someone who is good at the job and they start doing things for the club. One Facilities Officer keeps the upkeep down until she has not called a tradesman in three years.

Some of them are family. The Treasurer's son might be in your 2nd Grade side. Drop him and she notices, and she may ask for him back: "I will not pretend I am neutral about this." Let him go to another club and she does not forgive it. When one of a married couple on the committee turns against you at the AGM, the other usually goes too.

The vote

At the end of the season the club votes on whether you stay: the players, the committee, the staff and the volunteers.

Before the vote you get to your feet and make up to two promises: "bring the registration fee down", "put another tier into the ground", "get everyone training twice a week". Next winter they hold you to every one. You can promise nothing at all. Nobody is owed anything next year, and nobody is grateful this year either.

Everyone on the committee judges you on something different: the Treasurer on the bank balance, the Facilities Officer on what you built this season. Below fifty per cent and the run ends — no relegation needed, no final lost. Say no to one of them often enough and they may stand against you, and a broken promise gives them something to campaign on.

What the club actually costs

Kit suppliers bring their own designs and prices, and the one you like is rarely the best deal. Registration pays for it, and the players notice what you charge them.

Sponsors start with a logo on the training kit and go up to naming rights, where the ground takes the sponsor's name. The biggest only talks to a club with a following. A good Treasurer who gets on with you leans over before you go in and tells you what they can afford. "Not a dollar more." Now and then a local firm backs one player, and pays only while he is in 1st Grade.

The cricket, if you choose not to sleep in on the Saturday

Then Saturday morning happens. Somebody texts at 7:43: "can't make it today mate, bit of a situation." No further detail. Somebody tweaked his back getting out of the car. Somebody has food poisoning, and he was fine at the pub last night. Run short enough and you field a ring-in. His file reads: "Watching from the car park. Seemed keen. We were desperate."

Any match can be watched ball by ball: both innings, real bowling figures, a field that mirrors for a left-hander, and every shot drawn from the middle of the ground. Or skip to the result and hear about it on Sunday. Every card comes with a wagon wheel, a Manhattan and a worm, and the side gives its three votes for the Players' Player.

The dressing room

Every player at the club has mates in it, and a few of them have somebody they cannot stand. Put two friends in the same side and both are happier for it. Brothers count, and when one leaves the club the other feels it. Put two men who do not get on in the same eleven and it sours them both. The club has a culture too, somewhere between a social club and a serious one, and it decides how many men come back each winter. At one end of it: "Men turn up because their mates play here."

Every player wants something from the club and does not say what. The Senior Rep hears things, or you can ask. "He is not in the ones, and it is eating at him."

Mates form cliques. When a clique turns against the club there is talk in the rooms, and if the man at the centre goes, the rest may follow.

Some players have an archetype:

• The Grinder, who gets an extra chance to improve every winter, whatever his age
  
• The Leader, who keeps his captain's spirits up
  
• The Showboat, who loves a big day and goes missing in the quiet weeks
  
• The Mercenary, who notices he has no contract
  
• The Hothead, who is worth it right up until he is not

Somebody will dispute an umpire's decision for eleven minutes and forty-three seconds, timed by the scorer, and the association bans him for a week. Somebody will tell a fourteen-year-old to harden up after a blow on the helmet. That one is yours to deal with: a warning, a fine, a ban, or the sack.

In the winter rival clubs bid for your best players. Take the money, or turn it down: "He knows, and so does the dressing room."

And the men who leave do not disappear. A player you release, or one who walks out, can turn up at a rival club with his record under his arm. When you meet, tempers are shorter and the umpire has a word. A man you sign from a rival brings the same history the other way.

Who follows the club?

Nobody, at first. The club page has about fifty followers and most of them are somebody's parents.

Hire a media manager and the club page starts posting. After a 1st Grade loss the Hype Merchant writes "Chin up. The 1st Grade will front up again." The Controversialist writes "Another one gone in the 1st Grade. At some point this stops being bad luck." You know which kind you are getting before they sign. How good they are, you find out later.

The players post regardless. Somebody who has been in the reserves since October posts something sour. A few weeks later he hands in his boots, and he may turn up at another club. You had the warning if you were reading.

Who you hire

Advertise a coaching job for $200 and the applicants turn up the next week, each with a qualification, a coaching style and a goal they want to be judged on, which is not always the one the job needs. At the end of the season they are held to that goal, and you keep them or advertise again. The best coaches have careers of their own, and some will not take a call from Division 8.

Players come looking too. Put up a free-agent notice. In the winter, men at rival clubs who want a higher grade ask to come across. Pay the ones worth keeping a wage, with bonuses for fifties, hundreds and five-fors, inside a budget the board sets. An overseas agent will sell you a man you have never seen bat: "Underrated. Didn't get the opportunities he deserved back home."

Going up

Eight divisions of ten clubs, and you start at the bottom of the eighth. Finish in the top two and the association inspects your main ground. If it is not up to the standard of the division above, the club that finished third goes up in your place.

Every winter the association meets to set the rules for the division you are going into: umpires, overseas players, fees, covers. You stake the club's reputation on the motions you care about. "Nobody may pay more than four players. The clubs with a benefactor call it levelling; the clubs without call it Tuesday." Your Vice President sounds out the other clubs first. One who wants your job may call it line-ball when it is not.

Six facilities, each built up tier by tier, each charging upkeep from the day it opens. Nobody coaches bowling at a club without proper nets. A better ground loses fewer Saturdays to the weather. "It will not save you from a downpour."

And then the winter

Nine rounds, finals, the division's Awards Night, and then an offseason of nineteen screens, with decisions that come back in October whether you remember making them or not:

• which sponsors you keep
  
• what to charge in registration, and who makes the kit
  
• which of twenty-two trialists you sign, and which boys too old for the U19s you retain
  
• whether to rent a ground to a winter football or rugby club, and play the first three rounds on it a tier worse
  
• which guest coaches to bring in, one of them "Grade cricket legend in his suburb. Slightly too confident about it."
  
• how many nights a week everyone trains
  
• who is released, and who captains which side, if he will take it
  
• which clubs you play in the preseason friendlies

And then you go around again.

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