The centenary of the start of league cricket in Leinster is fast approaching. This coming season will be the 100th season of continuous Senior League Cricket and the centenary will be celebrated the following year. One of the main projects to be undertaken in preparation for this important event is the digitisation of the Leinster Senior averages.
At this stage most people will know that over many years the late Derek Scott meticulously compiled the records of every cricketer who took the field in senior cricket since the competition started in 1919. It was his life work and Cricket Leinster is immensely fortunate to have been left the notebooks, journals, scorecards and scrapbooks from his estate when he passed away. While nothing can replace the physical records, written in Derek’s beautiful script, Cricket Leinster is committed to making these records accessible for anyone to view.
The first task, however, is to upload all the data from the records onto spreadsheets. At this point, the individual player records have all been scanned (according to club) and a start made on putting together the digital record. Work on the Merrion, Malahide, Pembroke and The Hills records are well advanced but it is now time to get more clubs involved.
What we are hoping is that there is a volunteer (or a team of volunteers) in each club who will work on the scanned records for their club and fill in the details on a spreadsheet that will be provided to them.
There is quite an amount of work involved and from experience it took about 30 hours to complete the records for a club like Merrion. But over the winter, and with a number of people involved, it should be manageable.
What is the purpose? For the club there will be a complete record of every player, broken down by year, who has ever competed at senior level. It will be possible from the details to create player biographies, update club playing statistics and enhance the sense of history for individual clubs.
For Cricket Leinster, this is an important part of the centenary celebrations and it is the intention that the full records will be published on the Cricket Leinster website and will provide the basis for a series of articles on the history of cricket in the Province to be published over the next 18 months. And finally, it is to acknowledge the work of Derek Scott in putting together a magnificent record of club sport that is exceptional, if not unique, not just in Ireland but anywhere in the world.
So what can you do? Anyone interested in helping out should contact cricketleinster@gmail.com or philip.smith@cricketleinster.ie.
Of course, also let your club know that you are interested in doing this - in case there are a few people willing to help out.
This project is part of the preparatory work for the centenary in 2019. Cricket Leinster is also hoping to compile a pictorial record of individuals, teams and clubs. Most clubs (or individual members) have pictures of teams that won competitions down the years. We would like to collect as many of these as possible, scan them and make them available on the website.
To start this process we would ask clubs and individuals to let us know what pictures that they have that could be used and plans can be made to scan them. This applies to all grades of cricket - not just senior competitions.
Thanks in advance for your help with this.