STUART HAYTER hailed his young Wokingham side’s season as a success, despite missing out on promotion on the final day.
The Oaks lost by four wickets at Amersham, but their result proved academic due to second-placed Datchet’s promotion-sealing victory against Harefield.
Wokingham sat second in the table as recently as three weeks ago, but back-to-back losses at the end of the campaign saw them forced to settle for third, having only come up from the Thames Valley League this year.
And skipper Hayter was full of praise for his players.
“We gave it our best shot,” he told The Wokingham Paper.
“On reflection, the season as a whole, for us to come up to this league and finish third is a massive achievement for our squad, which hasn’t fundamentally changed at all from last year.
“Massive credit to the team, all those guys that have played throughout the year.
“Like we did last year in the Thames Valley League, we’ve had a year to look at it and we’ll plan to try and finish hopefully up in those promotion spots next year.
“It’s been a good year overall. We’re happy with third place.”
See the final honours board of the season
Wokingham were deducted 20 points from their tally on the opening day of the season following an administrative error and eventually missed out on promotion by 21 points.
And with 2018 being a step into the unknown following many years outside the Home Counties structure, Hayter admits they performed slightly above expectation with just four losses all campaign.
“It probably surprised us a little bit,” he said.
“But I suppose the difference is all the sides are capable of beating each other. That was very noticeable.
“It made a big difference I think.
“Amersham got bowled out for 70 last week when they were missing quite a few players. Them at full strength are an extremely different side.
“It’s a very competitive league.
“I think there were two teams in it this year that were slightly behind the rest of them, but everyone from 1-8 is capable of beating each other, which is why it’s gone to the last week.
“That has definitely made it more interesting to play in, knowing that you’ve got something on the last week is fantastic.”
Dan Housego ended the season with a superb knock of 123 at Amersham, finishing as the club’s top run scorer with 905 from 17 innings.
But a number of youngsters also stood up and took their chance with James Bird scoring 360 runs across the year while bowlers Iain Muirden and Lewis Sharp were among the best wicket-takers in the league with 38 and 31 respectively.
“All three of those guys have been excellent,” said Hayter.
“Dan’s come good in the middle to back part of the season as well, Batsey (Michael Bates) did a job for us up front. There’s been a lot of contributions.
“We’ve got a lot of youth in the 1s and 2s really. To have that competition for places has been healthy as well.
“It’s all looking good for next year.
“It’s a bit of a shame the 2s went down, but as far as the squad goes, we’re quite happy with what we’ve got.
“I’m sure there will be opportunities to add to that over the winter.”
He added: “We’re looking forward to next year already.
“I think one area that we maybe didn’t do as well as we did last year is the timed stuff. We drew a lot of games this year.
“We were very pleased with how we did overall and where we finished and we’ve got a few ideas of what we need to do for next year to maybe kick on and get up into the top league.”
