This year marks the 10th anniversary of the formation of the Allstars as a regularly-playing, identifiable cricket team.

Leaving aside (just for a moment) the endless debate about whether the games in Oxford in the 90s should count as “official” Allstars games, we’d like to invite all Allstars, both past and present, to look back on the last decade and share your favourite Allstars memories, both on and off the field.  It could be a classic game, a standout performance or a (printable) tour incident.  Please add them as comments to this blog.

In addition to this year’s Allstars of the Year, at February’s awards dinner we’ll also be presenting one oe more awards (number and categories to be decided) for the Allstars of the Decade.  More details will follow on this shortly.

A number of Allstars have petitioned Maxie to organise some sort of competition in the slow winter months without any cricket (we don’t count the one day series in Australia, of course).

In that spirit, we present the first Allstars Blog caption competition. The picture is below. Enter by posting your suggested caption in the comments section below. The best entry (as judged by a celebrity judging panel consisting of Michael Atherton, Shane Warne and Amanda Holden) will win a lifetime’s supply of Mount Gay rum (or other prize of equivalent or much lesser value).

The Allstars awards dinner has been re-arranged for Friday 25th February.

The venue is the Red Lion pub in Crown Passage, off Pall Mall , St. James’s, London SW1Y 6PP (click here or see below for map).

For those new to the Club, it’s the evening when we gather for a few beers and some food (about £10 a head) to mark the end of the season, and present awards to the five Allstars Of The Year for their contribution either on- or off-field.

Nominations are still open for the Allstars of the year. Awards can be given for any reason, so please email your suggestions to Maxie.

Please also email Maxie to indicate whether you will be coming and whom else you will be bringing (we need a fairly accurate indication of numbers).

See you there!

To the surprise of no-one, “Mediterranean island” has won the poll to select the destination for the Allstars’ 2011 tour. It was the runaway winner, with 66% of the votes.

Meanwhile, Maxie is organising an Allstars tour to Corfu (a Mediterranean island) in September 2011.

James Hindle said “I am gratified that democracy has carried the day” before going on about Nick Clegg for about 3 hours.

All the staff at the Allstars Blog (some of them still nursing hangovers from the staff party) would like to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas.  We hope that you all have a restful holiday, so that you will be raring to start winter nets early in the new year.

The offices of the Allstars Blog will be closed over the festive season, and will reopen in January.