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Surrey County Cricket Dining Club History |
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The Surrey County Cricket Dining Club was established in 1996. When Mike Soper became Chairman of Surrey CCC he summoned some of his fellow members of the Harry Brind Benefit Committee to a meeting and suggested that we should try running some luncheons similar to the popular functions of that Benefit year, but not as fund raisers purely for the benefit of Surrey members, and making use of the then newly refurbished pavilion facilities. From this meeting the SCCDC was set up with Peter Vousden as Chairman, Mike Reeve as Hon. Secretary and Les Brewin as Hon. Treasurer. Invitations to join were sent out to Surrey Members with their renewals and this brought in over 100 applications. The first Luncheon was held in a sectioned off area of the Pavilion Restaurant on Friday 10th May 1996. Forty of the new members assembled to dine and listen to Mike Soper, fittingly the first guest speaker. The Dining Club was an immediate success and a further 6 Luncheons were organised for that year. As the number of attendees at the luncheons increased so the venue had to be moved to the Banqueting Suite, with the occasional function in the much preferred Long Room. The membership soon grew as word spread and guests were introduced. In the following February we held our first Annual Dinner, when Harry Scott and Geoff 'Dusty' Miller were the speakers. Since then we have held on average 9 functions a year and our list of guest speakers have been drawn from many different areas, from Prime Ministers to ex Cricketers, judges to sports commentators, club officials to professional entertainers. On the 9th September 1997 we organised our first golf day at Sutton Green Golf Club which has since become an annual event. July 1st 2005 saw our first luncheon held in the Australia Suite (later renamed The John Major Room) in the new OCS Stand and the launching of our own website. March 26th 2013 sadly our Chairman, Peter Vousden died whilst on holiday in Spain, he was succeeded by Mike Soper. Equally sadly, Les Brewin, our Hon. Treasurer passed away on February 26th 2018, he was succeeded by David Kingsmill
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