Calmore Sports Club has been rocked by the announcement that Shawn Johnson is to leave the club and head back to his former club, Bexhill, ahead of the 2023 season.
The 27-year-old all-rounder has been a huge hit with the club since first arriving at the club on crutches during the Covid hit season of 2020. A friend of Jono Maton’s, Shawn had moved to the area and joined the club – playing just one game at the end of the 2020 campaign before regaining his fitness in readiness for the 2021 season.
Shawn, who had played for Sussex Second XI in 2017 and also Sussex’s Development side whilst playing for his former club, made an instant impact with Calmore Sports!
In just his second game of that 2021 campaign, he would win the National Village Cup Player of the Round for his monumental 79 off 87 balls with the bat before tearing through the Paultons batting in the rain with 5-34 as the side sneaked over the line by four runs. Without his efforts in that game, the legend of our Village Cup run would have ended in match number one!
He would enjoy a purple patch in early June of 2021, scoring back to back fifties against Andover (55*) in the league and Sparsholt (70) in the Village Cup but went even better the following weekend when he blitzed Sarisbury Athletic in the SPCL T20 Cup with a 43-ball 108 – an innings which lives long in the memory of everyone that was there.
Shawn would play 50 games for the club and be one of two players to score over 1,000 runs for the 1st XI across his two seasons – the other is unsurprisingly Ben Johns – and would return an average of 30.25 and a strike rate of 91.94 – without doubt the highest in the team. He would also claim 31 wickets at 23.16, bowling either seam or his very occasional spin.
Unfortunately, Shawn has had to return back home to his family but we caught up with him after a hugely disappointing day for him at Lord’s where he looks back over his memorable couple of seasons with the ‘More.
Thank you Shawn – two seasons, two trips to Lord’s. That’s quite some legacy and in no small measure down to your performances, particularly last year at Paultons and Sparsholt. You will certainly be very much missed and welcomed back to Loperwood Park any time.
