Nearly There
By Ian Clark
FOREWORD by Greg Horton
The 2008 season was an historic one for Sarisbury Athletic Cricket Club as its 1st XI finally gained promotion to the Southern Premier League. This achievement in itself made the season an unforgettable experience for all those involved with the club. And yet there was so much more besides as each Saturday forty-four Sarisbury players took to the battlefield which is Hampshire League cricket.
It is fitting that there should be an enduring testimony to this time in our lives, and Ian Clark has provided us with one. In an intensely personal and anecdotal way, Ian describes the intensity of those four long summer months.
What is particularly striking about this account is the way that Ian's personal reflections show our cricket club to be what it really is: a bunch of honest guys carrying with them all the usual human strengths and weaknesses, fortunes and foibles. Ordinary lives are played out against a backdrop of cricket.
This could not be truer than for Ian himself, for whom the cricketing achievements of the season somehow seem to mirror the rekindling of personal happiness.
I would like to pay tribute to Ian for the time, effort and narrative skill he has shown in recording this wonderful and timeless piece of cricket club and family history.
Greg Horton
November 2009
