About the SOA
See below for a brief summary of the history of South Oxfordshire Amateurs Cricket Club. For a more in-depth view, there is an excellent book entitled "75 Years of the SOA" available here
There is also a video entitled "The SOA 70th Anniversary Special" available here
The Club and its Beginnings
The South Oxfordshire Amateurs has been called the best-kept secret in Oxfordshire Cricket. Although it was founded in 1933, has about three hundred members, and plays more than fifty fixtures a season, it is largely unknown in the county. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly the SOA, as it is usually known, is a wandering club: that is, it does not have a home ground, but plays its 'home games' on different grounds in the county. Almost every county has a wandering club: SOA plays against the Wiltshire Queries, Gloucestershire Gypsies, Gentleman of Worcestershire, Gentleman of Leicestershire, Berkshire Gentlemen, Somerset Stragglers and Devon Dumplings. After The Millennium Cricket Festival for Wandering Clubs, held in Oxford in August 2000, sponsored by The Cricketer and hosted by the SOA, some of wandering clubs who took part that have no county affiliation may have become better known. They include the Arabs, Cryptics, Free Foresters, Frogs, Grannies, Incogniti, Stoics, Stragglers of Asia and I Zingari.
Secondly, SOA, like the other wandering clubs, does not play in a league. As a result, their matches are not often reported in the press.
Thirdly, most SOA players play regular club cricket for a local club, and play SOA cricket occasionally as an extra. Virtually all SOA fixtures are on weekdays, so they complement weekend cricket, rather than competing with it.
Code of Membership
Among the unusual features of SOA is the fact that membership is by invitation, not application. Although members are expected to be competent cricketers, something more is looked for; the Code of Membership, first drawn up when the club was founded, contained the following passage:
…we call ourselves ‘Amateurs’ rather than ‘Gentlemen’ as implying the love of the game for its own sake and therefore being more descriptive of the spirit in which the club intends to play its cricket….. A batsman equal to Bradman or a bowler to Larwood is no good to us if he is not congenial with the spirit of the club. We want good cricketers but they must also be ‘good fellows’, and members will appreciate that the continuity of their own enjoyment depends upon the strict preservation of this principle.
Cricket is a game of eleven a side. The eleven play as a team, the game is the thing, and its Amateurs must therefore deprecate the popular failing for emphasising individual performances. For this reason no averages are included in our records…. Figures are only useful when subjected to intelligent analysis. A dozen runs made in a crisis, with one’s back to the wall, are worth fifty flogged off tired bowling when one’s side is on top.
This was written, of course, long before the advent of league cricket among southern clubs, and by keeping to these principles in a new century the SOA is keeping alive a valued cricketing tradition 'Declaration cricket' is an endangered species, but is kept alive by clubs like the SOA.
Founder of the Club
The founder of the Club, and its captain and secretary for many years, was Malcolm Elwin. He developed a love of club cricket while an undergraduate at Oxford, and when subsequently he settled in Oxfordshire, he got together a side to continue this style of club cricket. The first fixture went so well that a meeting was called at Elwin's home in North Stoke in October 1933, and the SOA was born.
The base of the club was literally South Oxfordshire, drawing especially on Bledlow and Henley, but as the club has grown the 'South' has become less relevant. It is now an Oxfordshire club. The fixture list grew both stronger and longer by the year; there were 53 fixtures on the card for 1939.
The following obituary appeared in Wisden "ELWIN, MALCOLM, who died on October 24 1973, aged 70, was in his younger days a good fast-medium for Oxfordshire and for Devon. He founded the South Oxfordshire Amateurs. He was an eminent biographer and critic and an authority on nineteenth century English literature."
Eighty years later SOA is still recognisably the same club that Malcolm Elwin founded. It has continued to thrive because it has evolved. The balance of fixtures has changed. There are not so many games against schools and, regrettably, no game against an Oxford college any more. Compensation for the latter, and a worthy replacement, is the newish fixture against the Oxford University Authentic, the OUCC 2nd XI where a student takes his first steps towards a Cricket Blue. For about the last fifty years, a match manager has been made responsible for each fixture. The social mix has probably changed too, but the principle that only lovers of the game are asked to play is pretty well intact. More or less unchanged is the Western Tour: two weeks in Devon and Somerset in late August. Several generations of cricketers have had their first taste of touring on the SOA tour - participating for anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks!
Tours and Touring Sides
One development of recent years is the inclusion on the fixture list, almost every season, of a touring side from abroad - from Australia, South Africa and Holland. SOA even has an Australian scion, the XXIX Club in Melbourne, founded by Ian MacDonald, a doctor who played for the club while studying in Oxford in the 1950s.
In 1997 SOA made its first overseas tour, to South Africa; two weeks of cricket included SOA v Western Province at Newlands. Then, in February 2004, a 17-Day tour of Australia was undertaken. The highlights were games against the Cricket Club of New South Wales (CCNSW) in Sydney in the first week and against the XXIX Club in Melbourne in the second week. In the memorable Ashes summer of 2005, both of these sides had arranged UK Tours and SOA played each of them in a return fixture (the XXIX club can be seen below at Abingdon). Matching the National Side, we came out on top getting the better of a draw in one game and winning the other! The third tour, in 2009, was to South Africa again. Many fixtures were against the same opponents that we played in 1997, with memorable games against Western Province CC, Cape Town Wombats, Groot Drakenstein Games Club and Stellenbosch Farmers - the latter game being one of our two wins!
Club Colours, Memorabilia and the Administrative Side
Blazers, ties, shirts (+ logo), and sweaters are available to members in the Club colours of black, purple and gold. Caps these days come in two styles, the traditional cloth cap in hooped black, purple and gold and the modern-style baseball cap in distinctive purple.
Not least remarkable is the way in which the club funstions with virtually no bureaucracy: one or two committee meetings a year and one mailing to members is more or less the sum. The purpose of the Club is to play and enjoy cricket, not to pore over agendas, minutes and averages.
Match Managers
At the annual committee meeting, held in January, a manager is appointed for each fixture, and that manager's name appears in the fixture card, together with mobile phone number and e-address. These details are provided to make it very easy for members to apply for games.
The manager is expected to field a well-balanced side composed of members or ‘prospective members.’ If this proves difficult he may bring in guest players. It is the manager's duty to provide umpire and scorer, oversee the finances and (if necessary) the transport of players, and to see that the game is played according to the spirit of the Club's traditions. In addition he is required to supply a financial report for the treasurer, a complete score-sheet for the Secretary, and to furnish an account of the game, describing the outstanding incidents. The duties of a match manager are given freely, and members will appreciate that they should assist and support especially by not dropping out at the last moment, and by abiding by his judgement the day of the match.
The Annual Report
Each of the match manager's report, referred to above, are collated by the Reports Editor, Tony Lurcock, to form an Annual Report, which is circulated to all members the following April. It is accompanied by a Spring Newsletter and the new season's fixture card - the arrival of the package on each member's doormat prompts thought of the summer to come.
The Annual Dinner
The annual dinner was originally instituted as a means of entertaining representatives of opposing clubs, and has grown to be an occasion when all members can meet together, when the present playing generation may meet older members of the club. It is held in October, and in recent times has been hosted by the incumbent President. It is his pleasant task to invite a guest speaker, usually known in the local or wider cricket world, whose brief is to ‘stick to cricket’.
The President of the Club
Although prior to the mid 1980s a President of the Club could occasionally serve for a period of two years, since that time a President has served for just one year. Famous cricketers and enthusiastic followers of the game adorn our list of Past Presidents in the period 1933/63, such as C B Fry, Sir Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner, R C Robertson Glasgow, FR ‘Freddie’ Brown and S C Griffith. Nowadays, the position is usually held by someone who has given outstanding service to the Club as an Executive Officer or in another capacity. By tradition, it is in the gift of the incumbent President for him to name his successor and he does so at the conclusion of the Annual Dinner. In the handover ceremony, a striped Club Blazer dating from the 1930s is passed by the old to the new President, who dons it and makes a short speech of acceptance.