And so, here we are. Sunday, May 6th, 2018. John Innes Recreation Ground, Wimbledon Chase. 2pm. After a long, cold winter permeated with a smattering of post-Easter warm weather bookended by snow and Arctic temperatures, summer has finally arrived in the guise of spotless blue skies and a baking sun...and so has the start of my club's cricket season.
This is the start of my eighth season with Merton Cricket Club, a wonderful club in south London/ Surrey (depending on how rough or posh you are) that is, as I write, 128 years old. It's my fourth year as a captain of one of our Sunday teams, which explains why my bald head is even balder and greyer than it was four years ago, but as a club we're bucking the trend and riding the crest of a player recruitment wave. Cricket clubs like ours, that play at weekends only and play mostly friendly games, have been a bit like British pubs of late; numbers dwindling, some having to fold, not enough young, enthusiastic players coming through to replace us grizzled old 'uns (I'm still in my forties, mind). Four years ago, after a traumatic couple of years when internal politics saw a ton of good people leave the club, we ran two League teams on a Saturday (and were lucky to be doing that), and just one friendly team on a Sunday. Now, it's still two on Saturday but the captains are having the luxury of more available players than places in the teams, and three teams on a Sunday - again, sometimes oversubscribed. We've more than doubled our membership in two years. There may even be a third team running occasionally on Saturdays soon; nobody old enough at the club can ever recall such a scenario. I only wish every other local club were in the same boat: as the lotto ad goes, "nicer problems to have". If every club's putting out loads of teams for fun, cricket is the winner, whether we win or not.
The winter nets are all finished; the fixtures were finalised ages ago. My team, the Boars, is a proper Sunday third eleven - dads and lads, although we're probably only a couple of masculine carnal thrusts away from being dads, lads and granddads - and so we face opposition teams of a similar strength. There are some clubs we've been playing for a very long time and we're good friends with them, and our first opposition for 2018 - Hook and Southborough are just such a club. They play the game in the right spirit, and stay for a drink, a chat and to tell stories that have everyone laughing as the sun lowers over the houses on Cannon Hill Lane. With this in mind, everybody was looking forward to this opening game of the season. They arrived well before time, set up the ground, and watched as I proceeded to lose the toss; a habit I picked up a couple of years ago and I'm proud to say I'm consistently brilliant at it. Still, to give all my bowlers a bowl and my team a good game for their match fee, I always like to field first - so when Adnan, the Hook skipper, called correctly and chose to bat, I wasn't disappointed.
In fact, when he said that John - who I rate as their best batsman - wasn't playing, I had a bit of a spring in my step. Then I discovered that David, who always opens their bowling and has a tendency to cause batsmen trouble, wasn't playing either due to injury. Hmm, I thought - we've got a chance here. Adnan asked if his bowlers could bowl ten overs apiece instead of the usual eight; I was more than happy to oblige. In my eight years here I've never played for a Merton team that had beaten Hook, and with the bowling attack I had I was extremely confident of breaking that particular unwanted run. Yes, we play for fun, but it is nice to win sometimes...
Kaleem took the opening over. He only played a couple of times last year but has returned on a mission to play all season, and bowls nagging left-arm medium-ish in-swing. Keith and Roly opened for Hook, two batsmen who have scored fifties against us in the past and so not to be taken lightly. After a bye got Hook off the mark, Kaleem shaped a couple into Keith's pads before the fourth ball of the season swerved in from off-stump to clatter into middle-stump. The Boars were cock-a-hoop; what a start - and it got better just a couple of overs later. Kaleem - "Special K" to us - bowled an even better in-swinger that took out off-stump to leave Hook 13-2. That brought Adnan to the crease, and despite his usual attacking instincts the score was kept in check by Kaleem and young Sam - making his Boars debut - at the other end, not to mention some determined fielding from a vocal, enthusiastic Boars. Dave, a fellow debutant, was throwing himself around the gully areas with gusto and pulling off great stops each time.
After ten overs, which had only yielded two boundaries, I made the first bowling changes. Rob, also a debutant, took over from Kaleem, which John the "Killer" replaced Sam. By now we'd seen the pitch was flat with variable but very low bounce; two balls on the same spot yielded one flying up at the ribs followed by a daisy-cutter. Coupled with an outfield containing grass at all sorts of different heights that looked like it had been mown in the dark, boundaries weren't happening and the scoreboard wasn't ticking over. Rory was battling away at one end, letting several of Killer's teasing seamers carry harmlessly through to keeper Rocky, but runs were now starting to flow. Adnan was lucky to escape after slashing one over me at slip, until he prodded at a ball from Rob and nicked it to Rocky...who parried the ball into the air, just in front of me, and I greedily took the catch. Given my track record at slip, all I could think of was "Christ, don't drop it!", but Rob has his first wicket - of the millenium, let alone the new season, he told us - and Hook were 41-3. Drinks came with no further wickets, but they were scoring at less than four an over. We were bang on course to keep them to a very chaseable total...
The warmer it got, the better Roly batted. Ably partnered by Phil, they took the score to 117 before Kaleem returned and cleaned up Phil with yet another inswinging jaffa. Young Johnathan, the "Steriliser", put down an awkward, steepling catch at mid-off, but no more wickets were taken. After an excellent effort in the field, we'd restricted Hook to 164-4; Kaleem was the pick with 3-17. Roly was unbeaten with a battling 73, and looked as knackered as the rest of us when we clapped him into the pavilion. In we went for our always excellent tea prepared by Christine, and then off went Paul "The Wall" and myself to confidently start the chase for just over four an over.
Confidence...hmm. What a sod that word is. We started solidly enough; Paul looked in sure touch and, given his nickname, is not an easy batsman to dislodge cheaply. I'd banged a couple of short balls for four when Paul chipped one up to Viv at short cover: the ball went in, the ball went out - twice - then he snaffled it before it hit the ground. Bugger. Paul gone, and Aleem now out to the crease; another awkward customer who sells his wicket very, very dearly. I swept their spinner Paul for two off of middle stump, then tried the trick again...only to be bowled around my legs. Oh, dear. 19-2. And, about forty minutes later, we were 30-8. The low bounce was even lower, and our batsmen were swinging more often than Pete Townshend did recording "Won't Get Fooled Again" at balls that were by now trickling along the ground. Kaleem stuck around to take the top score from me (sod), and also took us past fifty in the process. Four runs later, and it was all over. 24 overs, 54 all out. Nineteen runs fewer than Roly, but one more than the lowest Merton team score I'd ever been involved in. Worse news was to follow for me; Wolverhampton Wanderers had inexplicably been thrashed by one of the three worst teams in the country, Sunderland, and Cardiff - more of a rugby team than a football one - had pipped Fulham to the other promotion spot and would be joining Wolves in the Premier League. The EFL Championship football season was over. Oh well, that's the first six points of next season in the bag anyway.
Our other two teams, the Wolves (my suggestion, cough cough) and the Rhinos, had contrasting fortunes in their games; the Wolves shot out a very strong team for just 61 and knocked off the runs quick enough to see them play a beer match (without the beer), while the Rhinos lost by 21 runs having need 70 runs when eight wickets down. It didn't matter; we love the game win or lose. In fact, I've changed the Boars motto from "you can't win them all" to "you can't win" - it seems more fitting. The beers flowed and so did the laughter; the new guys have fitted in brilliantly, and enjoyed their day's cricket. There'll be many more to come. My daughters and I made our excuses as the hour turned ten - I'm a single parent too, so they go where I go on Sundays between May and September and yep, they just loooooooooooove cricket - and started the not-too-long journey home.
Next Sunday sees a T20 Tri-Series taking place; all three Merton Sunday teams in action. Old bones will creak, and many ribs will pop with laughter at some of our attempts to pull off IPL-style fielding. I'm looking forward to writing that one up! But I've a confident feeling that the Boars will make a good account of ourselves.
Confidence - dammit! There's that word again!
Terrific post. After this, I'm never going to try and replicate you, Mr Wordsmith, with a blog of my own.
ReplyDeleteOh there were beers in the beer match. Melwin and I made the most of the oppo's generous prices. We both umpired with beer in hand and all padded up, moments before being called in to bat.
Can't wait for next Sunday!