How It All Began
From the moment a drunk 19 year old man sat with legs proudly astride an inflatable miniature pirate ship and declared bridge to be a more popular pastime with the youth of today than the consumption of gin, the creation of a cricket team was an obvious inevitability. The assembled inebriates entered into a bet of the highest stakes, with the winner claiming immortality in the glamorous social pages of Warwick University and the loser consigned to be a mere footnote in this tale of sporting, and alcoholic, heroics.(1) Eventually Saunders & Co. were successful in their attempts to establish Warwick University's first, and only, Gin & Tonic Appreciation Society, and the Bridge Society was overrun. Even after unnecessarily costly and heavily protracted legal proceedings, the outcome was settled and James Hewlett found little consolation in the litre of gin he was forced to consume as a result.
As time went by the horizons of the society's ever broadening ambitions fell on the sporting arena, and they dived headlong into a venture for which they were both woefully under-prepared and entirely unsuited to. A series of ill-fitting cricketing garments were purchased using the Gin Society's inexplicably full coffers and a willing opposition was found in the University's Christian Union. The first incarnation of the Hendrick's XI was comprised of a ragtag assortment of close friends, casual acquaintances and unfortunately placed bystanders who were hastily press-ganged in to service. Despite a decidedly bumpy début season involving gut-churning emotional tension, Machiavellian internal politics and ultimately very mixed (ranging from poor to ferociously incompetent) results, the team persists, and indeed flourishes, to this day, with a considerably expanded member base and noticeably slimmer chequebook.
New applicants need only apply.(2)
(1) This man was James Hewlett.
(2) Subject to a lengthy and tediously bureaucratic vetting process.
As time went by the horizons of the society's ever broadening ambitions fell on the sporting arena, and they dived headlong into a venture for which they were both woefully under-prepared and entirely unsuited to. A series of ill-fitting cricketing garments were purchased using the Gin Society's inexplicably full coffers and a willing opposition was found in the University's Christian Union. The first incarnation of the Hendrick's XI was comprised of a ragtag assortment of close friends, casual acquaintances and unfortunately placed bystanders who were hastily press-ganged in to service. Despite a decidedly bumpy début season involving gut-churning emotional tension, Machiavellian internal politics and ultimately very mixed (ranging from poor to ferociously incompetent) results, the team persists, and indeed flourishes, to this day, with a considerably expanded member base and noticeably slimmer chequebook.
New applicants need only apply.(2)
(1) This man was James Hewlett.
(2) Subject to a lengthy and tediously bureaucratic vetting process.