OVINGTON crowned a brilliant HPH York Vale Cricket League season by being named Club of the Year.

The Knavesmire-based side, who won the first division for the first time in 15 years in the summer, received the Scothern Construction-sponsored club award at the annual presentation evening and dinner at the Royal York Hotel.

The 200-plus audience heard how Ovington are expanding thanks to its burgeoning youth policy. The club has 100 junior members, supported by a string of qualified coaches to keep the production line moving.

Ovington has strong links with Scarcroft Road and Knavesmire Junior Schools and are doing work on Millthorpe School’s pitch in the hope an Ovington third team will be able to play Vale League cricket there next year.

The club have a five-year plan to bring the Knavesmire outfield up to scratch and the £400 prize money from the award will go on the outfield and drainage work.

Hemingbrough teenager Ben Lister was named Young Player of the Year, sponsored by Headingley-based cricket equipment firm All Rounder. He scored 427 runs, including his maiden century against Stamford Bridge, and took 15 wickets.

At the other end of the age scale, two veterans were inducted to the league’s Hall of Fame – Martin Reynolds and Geoff Deighton.

Reynolds, 49, has played with fantastic consistency for Ben Johnson for more than 30 years. He topped the division one bowling averages three years in succession from 1984. And in 1991, 1992 and 1994 led both batting and bowling averages, adding another bowling award in 1995.

A hard-hitting batsman, he scored a century in the 1990s at Elvington which contained an astonishing 16 sixes.

At 78, Deighton must be one of the oldest cricketers in this country still playing. He’s played in the Vale League for 60 years, spending many years at Askham Bryan before a spell at Copmanthorpe and now, Bishopthorpe.

The inaugural Cricket Tea of the Year award went to North Duffield, whose tea lady Jackie Hatfield was presented with Sainsbury’s vouchers by Neil Bartram, manager of the Foss Islands store.

As part of the award, sponsored by Jelf Insurance Partnership, she also won afternoon tea for four at the Royal York, whose food service manager Jeet Chauhan assisted with the presentation.