What TFC Means

2xi vs Mitcham

Goulborn, Crowther, High, Jackson, Wright, Soppitt, Hibberd, Copeland+, Clark, Webster, Unsworth

HWRCC 260-3 Goulborn 101, Jackson 103*, High 41 (cor!)
Mitcham 237ish Ranatunga / Fat Boy (oppo nicknames) 50, Oppo ‘keeper 50.

Playing golf you don’t have much time to consider your mortality. Nor much reason. From 1 to 18 you are involved in the game. Regretting the last stroke, planning the next, evaluating risk, thinking about club selection, reaching for a hydrating drink or refreshing Marlboro, sledging someone nearby, annoyed at players in other groups who interfere with your round (Hello Julian). It’s a busy game. Owing to the handicapping system the unfit 41 year old can play alongside the 20 year old single figure handicapper with some degree of competition and four hours later you are in the bar anyway.

There’s no TFC in golf. Even if you have an absolute stinker and go round in 100+ you’ll have hit one good shot. Or rattled in a putt. Or a chip had some backspin on it (probably by accident). Or a hooked drive curved perfectly enough for it to be considered a draw. Or you just enjoyed the sight of a blue, blue sky as you hit a perfect wedge. There just isn’t a TFC. Even if you lose, lose, lose you’ve played 18 holes, lost a few balls, missed a six inch putt and hooked or sliced every drive (sometimes both) you’ve still been there and enjoyed every second. Even the bad bits.

Cricket is not quite the same. When you play two sports in a day you get to compare. In the morning you shoot a relatively respectable net 74 (three over the stick) and most of what you do works reasonably well. There are a few moments when you need to dig yourself out of a hole and mostly it doesn’t go catastrophically wrong. In the afternoon you answer the call to help out the 2s (both MS and Charlie Browning turned down the spot before this correspondent was even asked) and it’s a different kettle of fish.

For those of you who foolishly picked Clark as part of your fantasy team, look away now. Eight or so games into the season he plays his first game, bats 8 in a game where only 7 or 8 wickets fell in a day, doesn’t keep as there is a younger, more able, keeper in the side and the skipper doesn’t think his right arm over trundlers are the key to victory on a track so flat that it is rumoured the next world land speed record would be attempted on it. In fact those people running the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah would be seriously concerned if the Wick track was about 10 miles in length. As it would have been perfect to attempt to break land speed records on Saturday.

Luckily for the good folk of Bonneville the flat bit at the Wick is only 22 yards long (actually the only flat bit is more like 16 yards but let’s keep the numbers and explanation simple) and you would need (starting at the Kingston end) to be able to accelerate to 764 miles per hour in between the postern rail and the crease. Which is about 100 metres. You would need about four jet engines and probably wheels made out of tungsten or something. With big spikes in. Or something.

That the pitch is not a mile long is critical as even if you did manage to reach 764 mph you wouldn’t get the record as you would have to average that speed over the mile distance. On top of that you would need shit hot breaks or brilliant reactions to avoid the sightscreen at the Millennium Wood end to get down from 764 to 0 in the available space. Wickman is guessing you would die as the postern rail at the wood end decapitated you. If not you would be mangled in the Millennium Wood’s trees anyway. That’s if you didn’t hit a deer. If you hit a deer at pace you will take its legs out and the body will crash into the cockpit. Even if you had decelerated your car to 200mph you would still end up with 100+ kg of raw venison in your lap at a force of something like 400 Newtons (don’t bother to work it out, I haven’t and I don’t care) and Wickman is guessing that it would hurt, even if you hit a female deer without horns. Because no brakes in the world would stop you on the July outfield at the Wick. Glass? It was like facking diamond.

Erm. Back to the report.

Webster, standing in for skipper Fudge, lost the toss to Mitcham, and they chose to insert (despite only having 10 men in 30 degree heat) as they didn’t want to lose the game by batting first and not getting enough runs.

Crowther and Goulborn opened up and saw off the shiny bit where the ball would do anything. Pinball looked good but found a way to get out, while Goulborn played one of those Golby innings where the late cut, the straight drive with much wristage, the three pace down the track defensive shot with raised left calf muscle, the cover drive and the extravagant miss of the leg side ball were much in evidence. He bided his time, was watchful and didn’t give a single chance that this correspondent noticed in between staring off into the middle distance and remembering how beautiful the Wick was.

Jackson at the other end was slightly more brisk in his approach (although he runs like Ed Moses used to run the 400 metre hurdles but without any pace [all bounce and no impetus] – the resemblance to the lemonade icon Fido Dido chilling in all but coolness). Where Goulborn was all Goulborn, Jackson has somewhere discovered some balance. Instead of trying to play every drive by leaning back, he seemed to arrive a moment earlier to the pitch and time it more sweetly than this correspondent has seen before. Some extremely authentic shots went with his poor running and he found the boundary enough in his first fifty to turn many of his threes into twos without much damage to the run rate.

Both bats went to fifty within a ball which must have upset the oppo no end. They then progressed relatively serenely (the occasional unconfirmed LBW aside) (and perhaps the occasional dropped edge) through the 80s and 90s until Golby (who suddenly outstripped Jackson) earned a well deserved ton first. Golby then got out (LBW to a full toss or similar) before Jackson also progressed to three figures to leave everyone wondering when it was that two tons were scored by Wick bats in one league game.

This was a fine performance by both. Watchful. Determined. Patient. Fluent. All good words. To describe batting that had panache (Jackson) and delicacy (Goulborn). Perhaps the innings of the day though was played by Charlie High at 3 who absolutely destroyed the opposition for 41 of the most brisk and powerfully hit runs you will see at the Wick. Absolutely murdered them like a recently released prisoner from gaol, leaving an ex girlfriend mutilated in the hall, her new lover dead on the front lawn, and when the Police came round, he’d already left. Nice. Now that’s saying something when two other batsmen made tons. All three deserve MOM in different ways.

Tea was tea. Rather like various historians who have chosen to, from time to time, try to rehabilitate folk like Hitler (great leader and pedagogue, slightly dodgy attitudes to Jews) or Stalin (beloved by his people whom he regularly sacrificed in their millions for the greater good) there have been match reports this correspondent has seen which have attempted to put Dave Bartle-Wilson on a par with the culinary giants of our generation. Blumenthal. Adria. Roux. Larousse etc etc.

Freed from sampling his work on a two week cycle this writer is keen on Dave’s teas. Perhaps he has become like David Irving momentarily. Untethered. Unable to locate his moral compass. But Dave is doing good things in that serving hatch. 7 this week. Without a doubt. A good solid 7. Nothing new but no ethnic minorities murdered. Which is good.

And so the field. The batsmen recorded, despite wanting us to know that their 100s were well earned, that the deck was doing very little. We had assembled 260 -3 in 51. It was up to us to try to take wickets early, or give them enough of a sniff late on to presage a collapse.

In the event both Webster and Unsworth bowled with creditable pace and hostility. But despite some rather edgy play from both Mitcham openers, no breakthrough was forthcoming. Try as they might, only Unsworth produced a chance (high to first slip) and both were unable to provide a breakthrough. The stand in skipper called on Soppitt after the drinks break and he secured the breakthrough eventually after chances were spurned, bowling one of the openers with a perfectly positioned Yorker.

Sopppitt gave a very good account, varying pace and flight and was unlucky to only snag three in a long spell. The ground fielding was largely exemplary. But five catches were declined in all although none could be described as sitters or dollies. The best of the opposition batting came from their ‘keeper who made a very brisk 50.

The spirit in the outfield was well marshalled by Crowther who was electric all afternoon. Jackson took a steepler at midwicket, and Crowther another at Extra. The skipper had the field just about right and there was little danger that we would concede once it became clear that Mitcham’s caution early on had left them too much to do. But the Wick would not win because the wicket did not have result written all over it.

Which takes us back to the beginning of the piece. In a game of cricket, unlike golf, there is plenty of time to think about the passage of time. The ball can come nowhere near you for periods of 15 minutes at a time. With no hope of being tossed the cherry there is ample opportunity to massage the thighs, adjust your cap against the glare of the setting sun and think about whether, when the ball does come to you, your muscles will behave as you remember they used to. Far enough away from the action, you may occasionally bellow some encouragement or other. You may pass another fielder between overs. Mostly there is time to consider you role in the side and decide that the passage of time has rendered you TFC – thanks for coming. You’ve plugged a gap. Cut off maybe ten runs. Put the game in the balance by employing the long barrier perhaps. But with no runs and without bowling a single ball, you are surplus to the action. Unable to dictate the fate of the game.

Is cricket then a charmless game? Can you enjoy it if largely unemployed? If your role is already played, does the time you spend ruminating on your lack of impact just wasted moments that can never been regained? Does its simple rhythms give you time to re-confirm your decision to play golf instead?

An outside edge hurtles down towards you at third man via vacant slip. You see their ‘keeper haring off on a rapid first (Jackson, please note). As the ball gets to you and you gather it without a fumble, peripherally you see the keeper stretch his bat and ground it at the far end and turn, calling his partner through for a second. He thinks there’s no risk from the fattish contemplater by the boundary. And suddenly you are alive in a way that golf can’t provide. Your arm goes back in a seamless movement and you realise you have the ball in your fingers, not the palm.

You see the keeper mostly and the three sticks and you let go the flattest, hardest throw you can. As you realise the arc of your throw will hit your keeper’s gloves within a yard of the bails you clock the oppo keeper sprinting back and you can see him starting to really push and stretch. You scream “take them off” (probably upsetting a nearby female jogger) and you bounce twice on the balls of your feet as first Harry catches your throw and then breaks the stumps. It takes another second to process the obvious delight of all around when everyone knows it’s out. And the surge of pride and elation when you realise you have avoided the TFC is immense.

A good game of cricket all in all. 100 overs fails to separate the sides. A classic for the purists perhaps. MOM somewhere between Golby and Jackson. Points marginally to HWRCC. And cricket ever so slightly ahead of golf in the standings, if not for The President whose 65 secures him the July medal and the day’s bragging rights on the balcony. TFC means turning up, doing your best and drinking a couple of really cold ones on the balcony at the end of the day and enjoying excellent company. TFC is WICK.