[door Areeb Shoaib] 2020 hasn't been the best year in many aspects. Bush fires in Australia, the death of Kobe Briant and obviously the Corona virus that put the whole world upside down. People had to work from home, school lessons were online and almost all outgoing activities were closed for a long time. It also looked like we would have no cricket this summer and after the KNCB announced that there would be no promotion or relegation in the Dutch league most of us thought that that was it...
But then we got the news that we were allowed to train outside and have internal games within the club. This was a great opportunity for many of the guys to expierence working with the new head Coach of ACC, our very own Taku ....
With many new faces the first and second team started to play practice games every weekend and train twice a week in May and June. This was how we expected the competition to be for 2020 but then we got the message! We were going to have half a competition!!!
Many of the first team were excited, because of many new faces and opportunities and this was a complete different ACC 1 side then that we had seen over the last couple of years. The aim was, among other things to give as many people as possible a chance at the highest level and build a bit of a new team culture as well. This was all a build up to ACC's 100th year of existence in 2021.
On Thursday the 10th of september we all came together to reflect on our season and start talking about next season allready. The night started off with voting for our most improved player and the best batsmen, bowler and player of the season. After the votes were done and the winners were decided everybody went inside to listen to the management of the first team.
Firstly Mark started his speech. He discussed all the values that a cricket team should have and what it takes to be a good cricket team as a collective. He explained to us that there is more to cricket than just batting and bowling. Because it was such a long speech (while everybody was hungry, thanks for that Mark), not everything can be discussed here but a few things should be highlited. Firstly that we should work hard as a team and shouldnt focus too much on individual performances. Furthermore we should not be afraid to fail, but rather learn from our failiures and become better as a team. And also that we should enjoy our team members succes, as if it was our own succes.
After Mark was finished we moved on to EP who started talking to us about the values and the history of ACC and why we are so lucky to be playing in this shirt. It was an inspiration to many players and especially with our 100 year aniversary coming up.
Taku finished off the talk and then we moved on to our awards. Mees, our young 16 year old, who doesnt know anything else but ACC won our most improved player off the season!
Ram Kumar, our newest addition of this season won the best batsmen off the season and Devanshu Arya, the smartest, calmest, nicest cricketer and fan favourite won the bowler off the season.
And player off the season went to Shreyas Potdar, another youth product of ACC. He has been fantastic this season really showing immence strides from last season and hopefully he will be able to keep up these performances next season as well.
We ended the night with a meal and talking about what the future holds.
Goodbye for now and we all look forward to seeing you everybody next season!!!
