HWRCC 2nd xi vs Long Ditton CC 2nd xi (h)
Sayce, Fudge*, GingangGoldyGoldyGoldyGoldywhat’supginggangGold?, Hibberd, Clark+, High, Soppitt, Cameron, Greenwood, Hill, Lown
Long Ditton won the toss and decided to field
HWRCC 229-8 47.5 overs. Fudge 100, Hibberd 30
Long Ditton 132-9 48 overs Greenwood 5-25 They say fortune favours the brave. HWRCC were all bluster with the bat on Saturday but couldn’t quite boss the game with ball in hand. In the event a declaration that arrived at the right time technically was a wasteful indulgence on a day when the “margin of draw” was 97 runs. Credit is due to Long Ditton who are the first team to get a draw against the 2s without the assistance of the rain. Heck this is the first 95 over game the 2s have played this year. That Long Ditton didn’t even get close to the winning draw, and only picked up four points in total, shows the relative inequity in the performances and suggests that the rules are wrong somewhere. There’s no value at all to Long Ditton’s valiant rearguard action. The rules don’t reward them for hanging on. The Wick’s reward was only 2 points for dominating the match and 8 bonus points for doing everything except take that final wicket, absurdly imbued with 10 points all of its own. Ten points to winkle out a batsman with enough technique to realise that all he has to do is to not do anything aggressive and his team won’t have been beaten… All the risk is piled on to the skipper who wants to win. For the skipper who can’t win because he does not have the resources, there’s no thought of batting first because if his side isn’t up to it, he doesn’t have to attack at any point in the game. He just sits back and preys on the need of the oppo skipper to win the game. Plus its more embarrassing to get dicked out for 132 looking for runs than it is to grind out 132 batting second blocking it out and squeezing boundaries off edges. With respect to Long Ditton’s young team and skipper Knight who did so much to give us a good game, 230 runs were far too many. This is a strange time of year though. Teams that have done very little during the season to date are suddenly racking up 250+ and reducing teams to less than 100. Not very dignified to top the table and get taken apart. Elsewhere teams that have flirted with the top of the league are suffering mid-season wobbles which would make a Weightwatcher blanch. Guildford City declared after 40 overs yesterday desperate to keep their hopes of promotion alive and had 250+ overhauled… However a bit more bravado might have given us another five overs to do the job. In the warm light of Saturday afternoon 229 didn’t look toooo indulgent… Our innings was a thing of great beauty. Skipper Fudge decided he would pinch hit. But once out there discovered young Colt Cheema in good form and with a slingy action. At the other end, Morton, a seasoned campaigner, bowled 15 overs of miserly medium away swingers in the almost Mississippi-like swamp heat. Neither Fudge nor Sayce found runs flowing. Both had to knuckle down. And once Fudge had banished a tendency to plant his pad on off stump and whip the ball around it to long leg, he looked the real deal. Sayce, as ever, played with technical aplomb and guided and urged the ball around the park while Fudge played as authentically but with muscle and slightly tighter technique than usual. Gone were the trademark flourishes and the extra waggles of a Garcia with the yips to be replaced with bludgeoning efficiency. This was good stuff. There’s that bit in the Dambusters movie where, when the dams are broken, the director has spliced in dodgy footage of water spurting through a breach in the Eder. If you’ve seen the film you’ll remember it. The special effects genius of the time (early 1950s) has almost drawn the water on to the film. Still, it’s an impressive gush. Something like Old Faithful blowing in Yellowstone. Something like this happened to the usually even tempered Sayce with the opening stand in the late 70s. Suddenly the Sayce head received a rush of blood so stupendous that there was nothing he could do apart from slog a left armer up into the air and into the hands of one of Ditton’s youngsters. The obdurate Sayce was replaced by the equally obdurate Goulborn. As Goldy held up the end that Saycey had been holding up, Fudge continued to make merry, dragging the Wick through the 100 barrier and into the batting points. Gold almost partnered Fudge to his personal milestone but perished to bring Hibberd to the wicket who was in a mood much like Toad of Toad Hall on receiving a new motor car. This coincided with a odd bit of captaincy from Knight. With Fudge clearly flagging a few short of the milestone, the Wick in search of quick runs with Hibberd looking like forty agitated ferrets tied up in a pillow case, he brought on a youngster who served up 31 runs in two overs, most of which went to Hibberd and helped Fudge to reach a well-deserved 100 – the first for the club on Saturday this year. It was strange because Knight later brought himself on and bowled three overs of extremely serviceable off breaks which claimed High and Soppitt. Those of us inclined to cynicism wondered whether he had held himself back while the really big bullets were being fired. Those of us inclined to seek the best in human nature imagined fondly that he was trying to give all his young bowlers a game. Bennett – who caused all the bats problems – removed Fudge who had decided to begin pinch hitting only 90 minutes late. He then dispatched an out of sorts Clark who was so off his game that he forget to wear a thigh pad and perished in time honoured Wick fashion with his brains up his arse trying to pull a short ball that, surprise, surprise you’ve only seen it a thousand times, didn’t get up from the Kingsfield end. It was a horrible shot and fully deserved its £5 price tag and accompanying death rattle. Out from the moment it hit the track and inevitably sped under a horizontal bat like a tracer bullet. There was no point in any bat throwing or tantrums. Just a need for quiet reflection. High then seized his opportunity to partner Hibberd in the search for quick runs and peppered the area between Long on and Cow with boundary seeking guided missiles. A rapid 28 was good value in the circumstances. The rest of the middle order followed Clark’s lead, Soppitt, Cameron, Greenwood and Hill not reaching double figures with some achieving only slightly more than others. 229 had been assembled from 47.5. A good performance in most weeks, but far too many for a Ditton side shorn of a couple of its strong bats (looking at Play Cricket). Tea. No. Not good. Sorry. Not even quantity this week. I know I was not in the best of moods, but REALLY! 6. 48 overs should have been enough to truss up Long Ditton, bundle them into a van, drive them back over their side of the Thames, drop them in a field, phone the skipper’s mum, demand a tidy ransom, pick it up using an elaborate system of false bag drops and reveal where they were before they starved. But in the event we did not make the batsmen play enough when we bowled. It seemed that none of the usual pressure was applied and that the performance was, well, just a bit flat. Yes Doc bowled with the guile and cunning of an ancient crocodile appointed Chair of Guile at the University of the River Nile (and was well rewarded in his first spell). Yes Hill made the ball talk, first in a high falsetto and then in a rich baritone, sometimes singing like Hibby, at other times swearing like a navvy with his thumb hit by a hammer. But too much hared harmlessly down the leg side or sailed wide of the off stump. We admired the shape. We were impressed by the areas (even when they weren’t) and we congratulated those two and Lownsy on the “wheels”. At times it was too good. But in a game when we didn’t take a slip catch and the only edge behind was off a wild yahoo reminiscent of Saycey’s earlier moment, more needed to threaten the stumps. A lesson must be learned here. You need to make batsmen play. Doc deserved his five for and largely did just that. Hilly did get curl and a couple of wickets. But he also tested Clark to destruction who felt a kinship with Matt Prior that went beyond a tendency to shout a lot and slog runs. At least there wasn’t a Tendulkar to drop. Lownsy also found the right line and, agony of agonies, took the final wicket only to be told he had overstepped. In between Hibby’s fire ball was discovered to be more Nov 5 sparkler than wrecker of street fighting video game characters and Fudgey’s occasional offspin would have been meat and drink to Barry Bonds the home run record hero of last week being as it was mostly full tosses. One of them did for Knight who threatened to make a big score against us as he slapped it in the general direction of Lownsy. Lownsy pulled off a simply stunning one handed catch to a ball that looked to be past him, dropping rapidly and generally not in an arc that Dom should have been able to intercept. But he did and it brought a win sharply into focus for us. How could we fail when such a stunner had been taken? Fail we did. The last pair survived 36 balls and deserved their moment of quiet satisfaction at denying us a win. It felt like a sloppy performance. It felt like we weren’t penetrative. And maybe some quality in the pitch was missing to make Del so eminently playable on a day when there seemed to be enough turn and bounce for us to expect another 3 for 3 or similar. We drew by 97 runs which, if this were a straight overs format, would be a massacre any bit as humiliating as Custer’s last stand. But it isn’t and Knight, Bennett and Cheema amongst others can look back with some satisfaction on a job well done. And, as Forrest Gump says, “that’s all I’m gonna say about that”. Scorecard League Table
