Anyone interested in playing cricket was invited to put his or her name down on the list. Thirty people did in fact put their names down declaring their interest. Ian had played cricket in his younger days for Scotland and was an excellent squash player eventually becoming Chairman of the Swiss Squash Association. This was to take a long time! That was the first match of many subsequent matches that Basel played against Bern who became our archrivals. Needless to say we lost.
Bern batted first and scored all out. Basel were bowled out for 86 for 13 wickets. We had too many players but all were allowed to play! Our second match was against Geneva Cricket Club arguably the strongest side in Switzerland.
There were only four clubs then. Against Geneva we were thrashed. Geneva scored all out and Basel were bowled out for just 30 runs.
We only played three games in and lost all of them, and again in we played three matches and lost all of them again. But in Bob Schlumpf joined the club. He was a great cricketer and organiser. Ravi joined the club in , as did Assad Sadiq another wonderful cricketer.
The number of clubs in Switzerland was now increasing. On June 27 th , we had our first victory against Bern beating them by 7 wickets. A historic day for the club. In Benji Roberts joined the club. Benji is from Dominica and played exciting cricket and he helped us to many great scores. Jamil Chaudry and Philip Rae were extremely good players; Jamil probably was the best player in the country at that time. We played 17 matches in the season and won the Brennan Challenge Cup for the first time beating Geneva in the final in Bern by three wickets.
