Bank of England
The Bank of England were the very first opposition for the Carib Beer XI back in the inaugural season of 2005. Note that by the Bank of England it is by no means an official Bank of England team, as they would be far too good to take on the likes of the Caribs.
Instead the connection to the Carib is that three of the original Carib members (Cordey, Rogerson and Willis) were working at the Bank at the time in the Technology department (some of them are still there and may never leave).
So, the BoE opposition tends to be a bunch of techie types from the IT department there who are persuaded to trek down to a London cricket pitch with the promise of a few drinks either during or after the game.
The Caribs have taken advantage of this by recording quite a few victories and on the occasion where the BoE do win the Caribs quickly poach their best players to turn out for the Caribs, seemingly making the BoE the Carib cricketing academy.
So in addition to the three original BoE Carib members there have been quite a few more Caribs join up since - Bowen, Bailey (since retired), Worthy, Moss, Nag, Holmes and Kant have all swelled the Carib ranks.
This does also perhaps explain why the matches have not always been able to take place as long suffering BoE skipper James Lamyman can struggle to raise a team when all of his players have been stolen for the Carib team.
The BoE have also provided many memorable ringers down the years from the very successful who have won matches for us to the less successful (see James Gray from match in 2011).
Due to the long history of matches against the BoE team it is now referred to by our captain and chairman Mr Haigh as one of the Carib Heritage fixtures.
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AEAT / AEAT Old Boys / AEAT+Shell / AEAT Delta Rail / Delta Rail Old Boys
This team is the most oft played opposition of the Caribs, probably due to our mainly positive record against them, but also the strong links with the original team which persist to this day. They are the successor organisation to the British Rail Operational Research ("Rail OR") team.
After privatisation, the group was owned by one transport consultancy after another. TCI, AEAT, Delta Rail. But the cricket carried on! The cricket pre-dated Mr Haigh, he took over their team when he joined back in in 1991.
Several Rail Old Boys are founder Carib members: Mr Haigh, Mr Weave, Mr Cordey (Rail OR's IT man), Mr Harris. Sadly, once Mr Haigh left them their cricket team died out (in fact the very first Carib cricket kit was inherited from them).
Their only regular fixture now being the annual match vs the Carib.
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Shell
The link to the Shell team was through Mr Haigh, but primarily through Carib member Steve Turner (currently on long term sabattical in Qatar). The Caribs played them for each of their first four seasons, but with Steve being posted abroad
and many other Shell staff also moving around the fixture sadly died out.
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Audit Commission
One of the historical opposition teams for the old Rail OR that the Caribs mananged to inherit in our early seasons. Mr Haigh has memories of them existing prior to 1991 when he first joined the Rail OR. The matches against the Carib died out after the
early seasons following 3 defeats out of 3 and the realisation that they were too much of a "proper" team for the Caribs to be taking on.
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Treasury
A similar story to the Audit Commission, we believe we inherited them as opposition from the old Rail OR, but stopped playing them when we realised our teams were a little mis-matched.
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Network Rail /ATOC / Adhoc
Again another railway connection. Several Rail OR old boys either work with chaps in Network Rail or ATOC, or are Rail OR old boys themselves. Since then, their team evolved and became less associated with the railways and hence their current name of the Adhoc XI.
The Carib record against them is not great, with one lone victory, back in 2009. So given the disparity in the abilities of the teams this is likely to be another fixture which slips out of the schedule.
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Metronet / Metronet Alliance
Yet another railway connection, this time set up through our contacts within the Carib team and/or the Old Boys.
We only played them twice, both being heavy defeats, so again another fixture which was quickly consigned to Carib history.
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Dodgers
Back in the heady days of 2008 the Caribs were on the lookout for more opposition to expand our range of our opponents (it was thought we can't just play railway based opposition and the BoE every year).
So someone had heard of this team the Dodgers who, similar to the Caribs don't play in a proper league and instead just play the same kind of one-off friendly matches the Caribs are.
However that is where the similarlity with the Caribs ends. They are clearly a much better, highly skilled outfit, which has been shown by the fact that the Caribs have lost every game we have ever played against them, going all
the way back to 2008, the only reprieval being the years when the game was mercifully rained off.
We have stuck with playing them mainly because they are a very friendly bunch and well organised (always a plus point for the fixtures secretary) and they even agreed to try and ease off a bit when playing us by mixing up their batters and bowlers and drinking more.
However it remains to be seen how much longer the Carib rank and file will be able to sustain the regular thrashings at their hands.
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RSSB
Another railway connection. Caribs Lee and Cordey still regularly play 5-a-side football with RSSB to this day. The early years of this fixture were competitive with wins for both sides. However the Caribs have not won this fixture since 2012 as RSSB, inspired by antipodean
skipper Glen have had the upper hand in this fixture since then.
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IBM
IBM were a new team for the Caribs to compete against back in 2009. The connection to the Caribs was through Nick Read who is a regular for the Old Boys who then moved to IBM and somehow managed to persuade his IBM colleagues to cobble a team together.
Even though Nick has now departed IBM he has left behind the legacy of the IBM cricket team who still manage to throw a team together each year.
As is the case with some other teams the fact that the IBM team together is cobbled together with whoever can be found in the office that week and the promise of a trip tp the pub later makes them ideal opposition for the Caribs.
The games are often closely matched as was seen in the famous tied match of 2015.
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Newman House Cardinals
The Newman House team were suggested as oppostion by one-time Carib member Uttam. He was at Imperial College with some of the Newman House team and suggested we could play a match.
What Uttam neglected to tell us was that the Newman House team regularly play in the Last Man Stands league at Regents Park - they of the coloured clothin who regularly hit huge sixes from neighbouring pitches that end up rolling onto the middle of our pitch from 100 yards away. So not surprisingly we again only played them a couple of times before the matches were no longer scheduled. Carib Willis was particularly keen to have these matches stopped, probably because he was worried about trying to protect his little fingers from flying cricket balls. However we have stayed in touch with some of the Newman House team, with some of their players being ringers for the Caribs. This link also led to our games against G-Research - see below.
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Battersea Badgers
Battersea Badgers are a team that the Caribs played only once. According to the match report from the time "we'd got the game through the friend of someone who once used to know a friend of someone else who went church someone who played them once".
So given the vague connection and the fact that they thrashed the Caribs by 8 wickets in that match they have not been played since as the Caribs have sought out more closely matched opposition or at least opposition with some kind of connection back to the Caribs.
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Northern Trust
Northern Trust were new opposition back in 2010. They are the work team of Carib Rayner (Goochie) providing the link to the Carib membership. It is only because of this link and the fact that they
are a friendly bunch that the Caribs have continued to play them, as they tend to thrash us every season despite the fact they each drink about 4 cans of lager during a match. The rare exception to this was the miraculous Carib victory of 2015.
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ORR (Office of Rail Regulation)
ORR are yet another one of the railway based organisations that has a link to the Caribs. Back in 2011 when we first played them this was where our relentlessly correct Official Umpire Michael Lee was working at the time and he managed to find a willing victim to organise a team.
The first match saw ORR able to muster up 7 players, which was still enough for a close match which the Caribs won. Unfortunately for the Caribs ORR were unable to raise a team the following season and were dropped from the fixtures rota due to being a team we couldn't rely on
to field a team, not unlike some railway companies....
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DFT Greensox
DFT were a new team back in 2012. The original connection back to the Caribs is again a little vague, the DFT skipper Howe was able to obtain our details from somewhere and approached us for a match. In the hope that they would be of a similar ability to the Caribs we agreed to
play them and we were delighted to discover that we were able to beat them in that first match. However the following year DFT exacted some revenge with a comprehensive victory of their own. So since then DFT have been kept on the back burner as a team that has no real
connection to the Carib and also a bit too good for us.
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GHD
GHD were another new team for the Caribs from 2012. Similarly to IBM the connection to the Caribs is through one of the Old Boys - Steve Curtis who was working for GHD at the time. Steve managed to persuade his colleagues
that a cricket match against the Caribs would be a good way to spend an evening and a new regular fixture was born. The matches since then have usually been close with victories for both teams. So given the closeness of the fixture and the link to Steve the fixture has continued.
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Superstars
The Superstars should have been another new team from 2012. However the fixture was abandoned due to the Caribs not being able to field a side. We had only heard of the Superstars through the Dodgers, and given the Dodgers ability to regularly thrash us, it has been thought
that approaching the Superstars again for another fixture would likely lead to a similar result. So with no direct connection to the Caribs as well, we have not seen sight of them since.
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Marauders
A new team for 2013 were the Marauders. They approached us for a game, having heard about us through the Dodgers. Apparently the Dodgers normally beat them too, so it was thought that the Marauders would be a closer match.
However since then the Marauders have regularly beaten us, albeit in a friendly, sporting manner. The games are a little bit closer than the Dodgers matches, and they seem keen to keep playing us too, so the fixtures are still on the agenda for upcoming seasons for the moment.
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G-Research
New opposition for 2014 were the G-Research team. The connection to the Caribs being through Dave Houseman, occassional ringer for the Caribs and former captain of the Newman House Cardinals team.
However, unlike Newman House, the G-Research team are a work colleague based team (like IBM and GHD) and therefore are a better match for the Caribs being made up of a few "proper" cricketers and a few others there to supplement the ranks. This has led to some close games
with the Caribs unbeaten in our first 3 matches against them, making them popular opposition for future seasons.
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St Martin-in-the-Fields
New opposition for the 2016 season are the St Martin-in-the-Fields team. The connection to the Carib is through our esteemed chairman, captain and best batter Mr Haigh.
Mr Haigh being a member of the St Martin's church community.
However it seems the church team is made up of a number of sub-continent almost semi-professional cricketers, so they could prove to be stiff opposition for the Carib which was shown in the 2016 fixture, which was only relatively close due to St Martins lending
the Carib some of these players.
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St Peters Dad
Due to regular tonkings from the ATOC/Adhoc team we sought out new opposition for the 2017 season. The Adhoc team kindly recommended the St Peters Dad team who we thought might be more closely matched to us. The Dads as the name hints are a bunch of dads whose children
at one point or another shared a school in the South London area and who clubbed together to form a cricket team, so being a mixture of the odd proper cricketer and a few others they are more of a match for the Caribs. This proved to be the case in our first match in 2017, so we look forward to playing them in the future.
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UKGI
Continuing the theme of 2017, we have stopped playing the Dodgers team due to our record of zero wins from seven matches. However Mike Dollin of the Dodgers was keen to keep a match going against us and has organised a work based team of himself and colleagues from the UKGI (UK Government Investments). Our first match was a very close affair, so enjoyable that the UKGI team were happy to step in and play us again when the increasingly flaky BoE All Stars team were unable to field a side. Unfortunately for the Carib we lost both matches, but this was not helped by being severely depleted in numbers on both occasions. So we look forward to playing them again in the future.
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