English team finally end their 35 year winless drought

Cricket is a game that is marked as one of the most popular team sports in the world. Pretty much like every team sport, there has to be a winner and a loser. Not often does one end on the losing side. However, for the team name Ash Tree Cricket Club, losing had become a habit. They finally ended their losing streak that lasted for over 35 years recently, and that too, in bizarre circumstances.

Ash Tree Cricket Club was formed in 1975 by a group of friends who often played 30-over games against the other local village teams. They started touring the other villages back in 1983. The away wins deserted them. In the year 1988, they decided to tour on foreign soil in search of the elusive win. They toured Portugal but the opposition team did not turn up.

“The opposition didn’t turn up so there was actually no game played,” current captain Jon Smart told talkSPORT. However, the players were happy that they had a good outing and a vacation. “The availability of alcohol was probably good for everyone that went,” he added. Since then, the team kept losing every game that they played. The Club Chairman also conceded that they told the opposition team about their losing streaks but nobody ever believed their story. They even toured Barbados and performed very badly.

“We used to share our record with the team we were playing but they never believed us and thought it was a ploy,” Ash Tree Cricket Club chairman Mark Crook quoted. “We went to Barbados two years ago and there was guys in the opposition team there who had been vying to get into the Barbados national team. When they were 1-179 after 12 overs, I think they realised then that we were as poor as we say we are,” Smart added.

On narrow defeats

Now, they finally broke their losing streak when they beat the William Hoste Cricket Club by 2 runs after posting a total of 217/9 in the first innings. However, they lost the very next game and that brought things to normalcy for them. Crook further added that they have been plain unlucky on occasions. They got very close to victories but ended up losing narrowly.

“I think the main reason for not winning was a lack of skill, but we’ve also been a bit unlucky. We came very close a few times, and only lost by one run last year in France. In Vis we didn’t expect to win with our track record, so it was amazing when it happened. We couldn’t believe it.”