Stoke D’Abernon CC 2xi vs HWRCC 2xi
HWRCC won the toss and decided to bat
HWRCC 207 all out
Stoke D’Abernon 208-8
Stoke won by two wickets
Members of a sensitive nature should change channels.
Ah me, ah my. Wickman returned to competitive league cricket on Saturday following injury and eye surgery. It’s a good job he’d been to see his optometrist on Thursday and been given a clean bill of ocular health. Otherwise he might now be thinking that his eyes had deceived him and that our fielding performance was some sort of painful side effect. It was not a sight for sore eyes and may even have cost us a match we almost did enough to win.
Stoke’s ground is a good one, right in the heart of the village. There’s plenty of greenery surrounding it, good nets, a tidy pavilion and, pride of place, a sparkling new electronic scoreboard to replace the old school board with metal numbers they used to have. Short boundaries straight at both ends are pleasing to the batsman’s eye but probably don’t fill the bowlers with much enthusiasm. Stoke are a friendly lot who we’ve had some good games with in the past so this was keenly anticipated by your correspondent.
A couple of years ago at this venue a 2s side managed to self destruct with the bat prompting this reporter to liken the performance to that bit in a circus act where the clown car falls to pieces. We’ve managed successfully to put the wheels back on the car in subsequent seasons but here, in the field, we were back to our worst form conceding boundary after boundary on what was a hard dry outfield but no worse than our own.
Skipper Fudge won a toss on a broiling afternoon and had no hesitation in batting. This was partly to avoid having to field in 30 degree heat but mostly to do with us having only seven players at the ground with only three more on the way. The deck looked good as well. Wickman has fond memories in previous years of watching such luminaries as MS, Sisso and Amooray blaze big fifties and on standing back to Whinney and seeing great pace, consistency of bounce and carry.
However – since then there’s been a change of groundsman at Stoke and this was a really difficult surface. From ball one the top of the pitch was disturbed by great puffs of dust and to say that the bounce was inconsistent at one end would be a statement akin to “The Titanic – that was a bit of a rum do, eh”? The ball turned square too. On hearing that Stoke had got a new groundsman and all of a sudden their wicket had started to deteriorate and it was prone to shooting along the deck at one end a shadow of a thought did cross Wickman’s mind… but it would have been a coincidence surely? Wickman didn’t ask the question.
Fudge and Cole opened for The Wick and Fudge proceeded with so much due care and attention that he was comprehensively outscored by Cole. A risk free approach to Mills’ opening spell in particular meant that we only picked up 2 an over up until drinks. Mills probably only conceded 8 runs in that time and probed away around a good length. This was a good length for him but not for the batsmen as time and again the ball stuck in the surface, slowing up or bounced higher than Wickman’s eyes thought was quite right.
The period after drinks saw some acceleration and despite some playing and missing to Mills, Cole moved his personal account along to forty-some before trying to pull a ball that was probably slower out of the hand and then trampolined over an enthusiastic pull shot before coming down onto the stumps. Comprehensively bowled. Cole was replaced by Joe Hirsch who gave an extremely good account of himself during a ferocious straight down the ground assault. Belying his youthful demeanour he drilled a number of textbook off drives through the V and rattled along to 27.
In the meantime Fudgey perished playing almost his first truly aggressive shot against the impressive offspin of Raimondo. The ball bit, turned and spat to take the top edge of Fudgey’s attempted cut and ‘keeper Watson clung on to a good one. A two hour plus vigil showed what could be done in the circumstances but perhaps 41 was not good reward for such powers of concentration.
AJ joined Hirschy in the middle and looked solid and, for a moment or two, commanding. Unfortunately he was not able to marshall Joe who played one shot too many and danced down the wicket to be bowled all ends up, yorked by his own footwork. This brought a slightly hesitant Clark to the wicket who took one amidships from Harkett while trying to get used to the two paced (slow and very slow) nature of the pitch. Perhaps affronted by this assault on his sausage and eggs or the just loud enough to hear insults aimed at his natty eyewear he soon located the cover boundary off the back foot to get off the mark and with AJ’s help located the vacant cow boundary twice in an over to get the new Stoke electronic scoreboard humming.
A few years ago you will recall that any aerial straight drive at one end of the Stoke ground only yielded a miserly four runs. This was to discourage the agriculturally inclined from striking the ball into a row of gardens behind a very tall keep net and row of trees. Fudgey forgot to enquire at the toss whether the ruling was still in place and only when Clarky marmalised the returning Gottschalk (supplying the only real pace all day – and this from an offy) out of the ground to the accompaniment of craned necks and the distant sound of broken tiles / windows did we discover that this was no longer the case. Pleased with himself, Clarky then turned another ball of his legs for four behind square and made sure he was up the other end to renew hostilities with Harkett.
This enthusiasm to keep the scoreboard moving was Clark’s undoing. Seeing one in the slot he got through it too early and could only reach long on who held a competent catch. This proved the signal for the rest of the Wick batting to fall to pieces like a Flake you’ve forgotten about in your back pocket and the team was bowled out on the last ball of the 55th over, Harkett profiting to the tune of six wickets as people strolled down the wicket helping Watson to stumpings or fielders to catches. 207 was enough if Stoke chose to pursue the win. But only just enough. We were 30 runs short and a more mature performance from the middle order might have delivered that on another day.
Tea was curiously lacklustre. As someone close to your correspondent remarked, it had all the appearance of a children’s birthday party tea – right down to the M&S cake for pud. It wasn’t baaad as much as underwhelming. Someone reminded us of the time that tea in some Norf Lahndan shitehole in the Middlesex league had been locked in the kitchen and had to be substituted with two slices of pizza and a blazin’ chick’n wing. We shuddered, counted our blessings and stopped whingeing but this was surely only a 5.
The skipper deployed an “old ball” strategy at the beginning of the Stoke innings and unfortunately our early endeavours were almost literally to bowl any old ball. Only Coley brought a modicum of control to proceedings and Tid was unable to get much response out of the pitch. In a last throw of the old ball dice, two overs of change spin were mostly full tosses (eight from twelve balls) and we had given the initiative to the Stoke openers who rushed to eighty with few alarms apart from a couple of interesting LBW shouts.
During this time the ground fielding was of the poorest quality imaginable. Wickman was reminded of this anecdote about Fred Trueman. Raman Subba Row dropped a catch off Fiery Fred’s bowling and the ball went for four. RSR commented it would be better if he had kept his legs together. Trueman replied “Aye, it's a pity your mother didn't!” It is probably not an exaggeration to say that as many as ten boundaries were conceded in this period by individuals forgetting the basic fielding techniques and the opposition umpire was right in his assessment that this cost us the game. It also cost us a healthy dose of morale and it became the subject of heated debate until we got a breakthrough when Tom Austin bowled the very useful looking Parrett with a big inducker for 39.
At the other end McMillan played an exceptional innings for the wicket, getting regularly onto the front foot and driving confidently on the off side and pulling away and short pitched tosh of which there was some. He was LBW eventually when Tommy D kept one straight enough and low enough to convince the adjudicator. He had seen Raimondo come and go for a brisk twenty something. The only thing not brisk about Raimondo’s innings was his leaving of it. His decision to tarry awhile to force his colleague to give him when the ball had quite clearly smacked into both of his batting gloves on the way through to Old Iron Gloves occasioned some chuntering from the field. Tommy D was again the successful bowler.
Stoke then decided to make a game of it by finding ingenious ways to get out. A horrible run out with about four batsmen at one end, a top edge from a Cole straight ball, a steepler taken at long off by Del off Coley again and an ungainly heave at another Donnelly straight one from Gottschalk suddenly gave the Wick an unlikely sniff of victory. However it was the scent of defeat we were really smelling and Watson and Harkett steered Stoke to parity before Watson decided to stitch his partner up with a poor call giving us an eighth wicket at the death. Finally a young man who had worn a golf cap in the field and had done little more than umpire turned his first ball into the leg side and Stoke completed a deserved victory.
In summary Wickman will not look back on this game with as much fondness as the early season encounter at our place. A lacklustre and low key performance wasn’t really up to scratch and Stoke were perhaps fortunate to find us in some disarray here. Congratulations to them for playing the better cricket – particularly to Mills for another stingy spell, to Harkett for his wickets and to McMillan and Parett for a decisive opening partnership which set the tone for the Stoke reply. With only results going in our favour keeping us from the relegation slots its time to pull our fingers out and get stuck in. No one wants to see the club take a backward step this year. Back to nets for the Wick boys and time for some fielding drills….
[Here's a picture of someone doing what we didn't in the field - Ed]
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