Hi everyone

Happy New Year or should I say happy new lockdown not that there’s much to be happy about either way! Anyway I hope my latest update finds you all safe and well pursuing hobbies you have more time for now or helping the kids with home schooling if not a bit of both.

From the Clubs perspective your committee have continued to be busy up to and over the festive period and remain hopeful of both a full and successful season ahead of us. Early December saw the delayed AGM take place via ‘Teams’ and was very well attended which was encouraging to see. A copy of the Chairman’s and Treasurer’s AGM Reports along with the Club’s Constitution, changes to which were voted on and accepted, are now available to read via our Club Website for those who could not attend.

The following club officers were elected on the night:-

Chairman Jullian Marshall-James
Vice Chairman Mark Downing
Hon. Secretary Betty Rowlands
Hon. Treasurer Linda Retter

And then post the AGM at the 1st meeting of the Executive Committee the following members were co-opted into the following committee positions:-

Club President Mike Back
Chairman of Youth Pascal Szczepanski (Interim)
Cricket Manager Rick Hyett
Fixtures Secretary Darren Taylor
Committee Member Duncan Ireland
Welfare Officer Amanda Downing
Head Groundsman Tom Parkman

In addition to this and in line with the new constitution the following team captains have now been appointed for the coming season:-

1st XI Sam Rowswell
2nd XI George Johnson
3rd XI George Preston
Sunday XI Mark Oppe

My thanks to all those that volunteered to continue to support the Club this coming season by undertaking these roles.

Maintaining the playing theme as I said in my AGM report we have a very talented group of players and we must trust and invest in them to get the best from them. To that end I am pleased to confirm that discussions are now well advanced with two ECB Coaches who are both well known to us, Matt Pardoe and Andrew Draper, to support both the senior and youth sections respectively with their ongoing player development. Likewise we continue to pursue a quality Pro-Player who will add balance and quality to our 1st XI and I hope to be in a position to update you further on that next month.

Away from the playing side here are a few other updates:-

• Ground Force - as you’d expect our fantastic facilities need continual care and attention too so our thanks goes out to the following members who spared their time to support this over the last month or so – Mark, Mike, Phil M, Pascal, Duncan, Bob and Barry. We rely heavily on our volunteers to support the success of our club and are always actively seeking additional volunteers to do little jobs or even take up a Committee position as appropriate. We know our Members and their families have a lot of skills or contacts that the Club would really benefit from. Please let me, Mark or any of the Committee know if you’d like to get involved as we do need your help. Mark will continue to post any future ‘ground force’ activities via SPOND so please look out for these once lockdown finishes. As they say…..”many hands make light work!”

• All Weather Training Facility – sadly we continue be held up somewhat here due to Covid19 restrictions delaying access to some funding but this should be resolved by the end of January. As a Committee we remain committed and determined that we should provide the best facility we can and that this will be ready to use well before the start of the 2021 season.

I hope you find this update useful in keeping you up to date with all things NPCC and as I have previously mentioned, for NPCC Members, the SPOND app is another good way to do this. If you are not currently a member of our NPCC SPOND Group and you’d like to be then please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we’ll send out instructions to help you do this.

I will update you all again next month with our progress but in the meantime stay safe.

Jules

Jullian Marshall-James
Chairman