Michael Vaughan

Wickman thinks its a crying shame that Mickey V has retired today. By far Wickman's most favourite England Captain since Mike Brearley and the most elegant England bat since Gooch and Stewart Snr killed David Gower off in the 1990s, Vaughany was part of the most successful England set up in Wickman's cricketing lifetime.

That cover drive was simply the most beautiful thing you could get to see on a cricket pitch. And you got to watch it when England were winning! That he managed to get the best out of Harmison, Flintoff and Pietersen tells you that he was a player of some stature. To manage those egos and to lead them to a momentary pinnacle of dominance over one of the finest teams ever to play the game took captaincy to its limits.

The England side has moved on and he was right to call it a day. He can't buy a ton at the moment and Stuart Clark would have destroyed him this summer. It's the right time. Hopefully this will give Bopara the confidence to lead the batting for the next two months and give us the stability in the top order that we've lacked since... well... Vaughany started getting injured.

CLUB DAY 2009

THE HWRCC CLUB DAY - SPONSORED BY CORONA*

SUNDAY 2ND AUGUST 2009

FANCY DRESS 6 A-SIDE COMPETITION

BBQ BREAKFAST & LUNCH

LIVE DJ ALL DAY

SLOW RACE

HOT TUB

FLAGS CHAMPIONSHIP

PIMMS BAR

& MUCH, MUCH MORE

Team Captains to be announced shortly - Please let me know your availability & keep the date free to take part in the greatest social day of the year!!

WICK

*Please note that the event may not be sponsored by Corona , but we will still fill our boots.

Wick Travelling Circus Returns to Stoke D’Ab - Match Report by Wickman

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]

Getting Wick with... Keith Nicholls

This time around it's time to Get Wick with Chairman Keith Nicholls. Keith is a modern Wick legend. But who is the man behind the prodigious drinking ability and fanatical devotion to the best club in the World? Read on...

1 Nickname(s): Nipples Chief Basil
2 Highest Score for HWRCC: 85 v Wallingham
3 Best Bowling for HWRCC: 7 - 50 odd v Ashford
4 Favourite Away Ground: Finchampstead
5 Favourite Food: Chinese Duck
6 Favourite Singer/Band: The Who, Neil Young, REM
7 Favourite Movie: Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, Volver, The lives of Others, The Killing Fields
8 Favourite Book: Star of The Sea (Joseph O’Connor) The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini), Snow (Orhan Pamuk) Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell)
9 Favourite Pub/Club: Adelaide (Teddington) Chequers (Steyning, Sussex) White Horse (Shere)
10 Favourite Crisps: Cheese & Onion
11 Favourite DBW Sandwich: Egg Mayo & Onion
12 Favourite Quote: Marriage is an institution but who wants to live in an institution (Groucho Marx)
13 Childhood Sports Hero: John Snow (Sussex & England bowler not newsreader)
14 Best Wick Moment: Being elected Chairman of the club
15 Worst Wick Moment: Being elected Chairman of the club. Dropping 4 catches in a 3rd X1 match. The rest of the team reckoned it was 5 and it cost me a jug
16 Invite 3 People to Dinner (Dead or Alive) Fidel Castro, Stephen Fry, Marilyn Monroe

Tuesday Nets

Wickman hasn't been to nets for a while. A combination of a life threatening thigh muscle injury and laser eye treatment last week has meant that his cricket has been limited to howling maniacally at poor England performances and a couple of liveners on the balcony with the President and other injured Wick members.

What Wickman has seen and heard is that finally the standard of cricket we're getting to play is what we wanted when we joined the Surrey system. The 2s have not had it their own way this season for the first year in three. The 3s are coming up against some strong clubs in their league too. In fact it's not surprising is it?

Most weeks we are now coming across clubs that field a minimum of three xis, who pay players, who train and who are just as professional in their attitudes to club cricket as we are. Any thought that promoted teams were on some sort of procession to the higher leagues should be firmly filed away.

But this is good surely for individuals and for the club? The progress in recent years has been marked. The recruitment of many new players. The successful creation of a league 3xi. The four promotions in three years including one championship. But this was all about being organised and well drilled. The next step - improving the club again and rising up another level - will be more challenging and should actually be more stimulating than turning up and annihilating some village side who can't get 22 out on a Saturday.

Which is why nets were encouraging last night. There was a very strong group of 1xi players down there to more than adequately test Wickman's new laser enhanced vision. If, as he padded up, he was slightly concerned about a bit of blurriness, Wickman's esyesight was good enough to get an edge on Tongy's phenomenal leg cutter and Immers' brisk away swing. The 1xi skipper ran individual coaching sessions in the far cage. Chris P, Vaider, Kashuypa and others were holding a spin clinic. A colt we haven't seen before, George, bowled with real rhythma and good line and length. There was real encouragement out there and a sense of cameraderie.

That's what you need on a beautiful Tuesday evening in the middle of June. Anyone that couldn't make it missed a great session... and the opportunity to skittle a half blind Wickman into the bargain...

Getting Wick with... Joey

The latest in an occasional series... please contact Paul Hibby Hibberd if you would like someone to be featured...

1. Nickname(s): Joey, High Tower, Knuckles, Tuffty, Jnr
2. Highest Score for HWRCC: 104* (against the wick)
3. Best Bowling for HWRCC: 8/50 odd, plus a run out off my own bowling, they were taking three as I chased to long on.
4. Favourite Away Ground: Lord's
5. Favourite Food: Pizza and Petek speacial
6. Favourite Singer/Band: Scouting for girls
7. Favourite Movie: Zodiac
8. Favourite Book: Where's Wally?!!!
9. Favourite Pub/Club: The Turf Pub (Totnes, Devon)
11. Favourite DBW Sandwich: Butter with some grated cheddar and tomato!
12. Favourite Quote: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" ANON
13. Best Wick Moment: Too many; hitting Flux's car with whilst batting (his wife was in there!), 118-118 Club day 2005.
14. Worst Wick Moment: Foot and Mouth
15. Invite 3 People to Dinner (Dead or Alive): Jonny Wilkinson, Shane Warne and Jesus.

This 2020 malarkey

Wickman likes a bit of thrash and giggle. He's been trying to get in touch with Max Mosley for months to compare notes in fact. Boom boom...

2020 turns out to have changed dramatically in the space of three years. On the subject of boom boom, if you will recall, when it first burst into the professional firmament, 2020 was all about big hitting openers crashing the ball into the bleachers and bowlers were considered powereless cannon fodder. Those big heavy bats were destroying the game (blah blah blah), art of spin bowling dying out (etc etc) and muscle bound freaks like Graham Napier were going to be the future of the game.

And yet the biggest score in this tournament was actually only 210. Which is extraordinary considering the minnow sides who were supposed to get a good long handling and be skittled by the bigger nations. Most of the totals seemed to be in the 160-170 region. And the most astonishing individual performance was not from a batter but from Umer Gul who took so many wickets for so few runs against the Kiwis that everyone thought he must be cheating. There were only a very few "big overs" after the very much out of sorts Brett Lee left the competition and in 27 games no one made a ton and there was probably only one individual score in the 90s.

It has turned into a bowler's game. Don't get Wickman wrong - there were still some poor unfortunates who spent time staring straight up watching 5+ ounces of cork and leather disappearing "100 metres" into the crowd. Try smashing Ajantha Mendis out of the park though. Shahid "Boom Boom" Afridi did a bit of booming in the semi against South Africa and made a sedate 50 under no pressure in the final but did you see what he did to Gibbs and de Villiers with the ball to really win the first Pak / SA encounter? There were almost 33% fewer sixes hit in this tournament and the overall run rate went down too. Spinners (remember that 2020 cricket was going to finish them off) took more wickets at a better economy than their pacey cousins.

Now Chris Gayle and fatty Singh would probably laugh at this conclusion. When Gayle was clubbing Lee and Co out of the Oval into Archbishop Tennison's back garden at the beginning of the tourney and Yoovy looked like he was going to do to Swanny's head what the director did to that poor little girl in the Exorcist, Wickman was still expecting someone to come up with one of those Napier like contributions and turn in a 130+ tournament defining innings. It just never happened. Because there are now too many bowlers out there who know how NOT to bowl.

And actually it all got rather boring. Seeing Jacques Kallis tied in knots at Trent Bridge. Watching Albie Morkel get 24 yorkers (it might have been) in a row in the same game. 130 in the final from Sri Lanka. England going hours without a boundary against the Windies. Watching the Aussies self destruct to Mendis (actually scrub that, that was quite funny) and on and on. If 2020 is going to end up being a game where most teams score at 8 an over or less and the trend continues with bowlers on top and the number of sixes hit falling by 33% tournament on tournament in about 10 years they will have to invent Onetyone. The final will be won by the side batting first who manage to defend a score of 5 by bowling six yorkers to a field where only third man and fine leg are on the boundary and everyone else is within 10 yards.

Fantasy Cricket week 6

Captain's night - Saturday 20th June

Fantasy Cricket week 5

fantasy cricket week 4

Very tight at the top with only 1 point in it...

we have had 1 team pull out of the competition due to complaints (this team was top of the league by 70 points but the manager happened to be in charge of the competition. Latvian)

Kammy is now averaging 114 points a game...

Fantasy cricket - up to week 3