The Year of the Snake, 2013, has been a year of achievements already for the Chiba Sharks and we are only Round One into the season. As a team we have made some siginificant advances; We are honoured to have no less than three sponsors. Kyodai Remittance join as our Major Sponsor. With their help we have already managed to reduce fees this season and make the game more accessible to a wider range of players in Japan. BuzzerBeater have come on onboard as Youth Sponsor and Pizza & Pasta Express join as a Partner. These two important sponsors have already made a big difference to the club, allowing us to subsize our youth players and give more opportunities to our more experienced players.
In addition, we have succesfully established a 2nd XI, helped in no small part by record-breaking membership. All good. Perhaps even better is the harvesting of the first crop of home-grown juniors out of Chiba. The efforts of our own Chris Thurgate and Yumi Ishimoto (formerly of Chiba Cricket) and involvement by a variety of Chiba Sharks over time has borne fruit. The massive turnout for training on April 27th included five juniors who have progressed through the ranks of the My-Ys and can hold their own against senior players. It takes a lot of guts to step into the nets with senior players and it was heartening to see these kids step up.
It was probably both exciting and scary, especially seeing balls bowled and hit back at such velocity, by very large people! A bit different from what they are used to! Rui and Madoka showed their wonderful all-round talents; Waka displayed a growing confidence with the bat and landed more than a few good deliveries when bowling; Kentaro will be an exciting bowler; and Tsubasa troubled the batsmen, capping a hardworking night by demolishing the stumps of none other than Dave Lollback! We will definitely see these cricketers – and that is what they are – represent not only the Sharks but also their country in the not too distant future. The Chiba Sharks will be right behind them. At the end of training they were presented with their Chiba Sharks caps. Welcome to the Chiba Sharks, boys. Girls also be ambitious!
