The day itself started on a positive note. The previous day had seen no less than four centuries scored across the three Saturday teams - unprecedented in Merton Cricket Club's recent history, and possibly its full history - and the Sunday buzz was livelier than usual. The weather was glorious; nice and sunny with a cooling breeze, and the pitch once again looked like a 'bat first' jobbie. After the drama of the previous week's last-ball, one-wicket defeat against Flying Ducksmen, confidence was brimming through what was a much-changed Boars team, and I was determined to bat first if the toss fell favourably for me once again. Atul had been initially picked but became unavailable on the Saturday morning, and so in stepped Peter Morcombe, the "Muscles" of Merton (it's a Uni nickname, he says). The batting had been bolstered and the bowling hadn't been weakened at all, so although sad to lose Atul I was still pleased with the make-up of the team.
Southfields players began to arrive; their contact, Sohaib, plays League cricket for us and so is always a friendly face. His team had been described as "Sohaib and the mates he nicked from Kingstonian"; yes, said somebody else, the League-playing mates he'd nicked from Kingstonian. Oh, dear. I knew it would be a harder game than the Ducksmen, and had said so in my team email during the week - certainly, their approach to batting would be markedly different - but it suddenly dawned on me that it would be a much harder task than originally planned for. Omar turned up to watch the game, I thought; he's another of the guys that plays League cricket for us, and is a great batsman. Only he hadn't come to watch - he'd come to play. For them. Oh, dear.
I duly won the toss to make it five out of five for the season, and opted to bat first. Then we received an offer to mix up the two teams to make a more competitive match; I respectfully turned the offer down as I wanted my team to embrace the challenge, however daunting it now looked to be. And so Andrew Suggitt and I padded up and went out to bat as the clock struck one-thirty, and I took the first over. The bowler, Naqash, started from the Clubhouse End and was quick but getting no movement, so I gratefully drove one through backward-square for the first boundary of the match. Raja, a left-armer from the Kingston Road End, bowled the first over of what proved to be a miserly spell and conceded no runs; then a straight drive off Naqash brought the first of several mini-delays that blighted the first hour or so. The ball nestled under one of the covers, and it took several minutes and several players looking for it to find it; maybe I can blame the delay for what happened next ball. I'd told myself to brace for a bouncer and it duly came, but it bounced so high that Chewbacca would have had trouble getting a bat to it. Nevertheless, I recklessly swung at it as it looped about five feet above my head and top-edged it to square leg. I stomped off, fuming; it's my duty as captain and opener to not play irresponsible shots like that, and I felt I'd let the team down. Alex B, "The Grenadier", was next in and manage to break his bat without even facing a ball; delay #2 came as his replacement bat had to be retrieved from the changing rooms. "I hope he doesn't get out first ball now", said somebody - thankfully, he didn't. He blocked his first one, then belted his next one for four. After exchanging more boundaries with Suggs - which brought about delay #3 as the ball went in the bushes and no less than four fielders didn't want to go in and fetch it - delay #4 came when AB decided he didn't need his helmet any more and asked for one of us to come and get it! By now, it was half past two and we'd had just eleven overs of action. The Southfields fielders were getting frustrated at the slowness of the game, as was the Tea-Meister Christine, but their frustrations were then eased when Suggs was trapped leg before with the score on 40 to Raja. 40-2 became 40-3 as AB was bowled having a swing at Ahmed, which brought Muscles and Aleem together. We'd been well and truly bogged down again, a weekly habit we seem to have picked up; in the space of six overs we'd scored just two runs, and one of them had been a no-ball. But Muscles and Aleem were instantly in the runs, swapping singles and hitting some cracking boundaries - Aleem's pull-shot to the long boundary was one for the memory, and Muscles was lofting and driving fours with class and ease.
Drinks came, and the guys had pulled us up to four an over which meant we were on for something very defendable when it came to our turn to bowl. That hinged on Muscles and Aleem staying around for at least another ten overs, but disaster struck with fourteen overs left. Aleem feathered away an innocuous ball, only for it to roll onto the stumps and disturb the off-bail. It proved to be the turning point. Aleem was disgusted with himself but had no need to be; it was a fluke, and he'd put on 68 great runs with Muscles to pull the Boars back to the mark. Eleven runs later, Muscles was adjudged lbw for a well-made and entertaining 44, including nine boundaries, and the collapse was on: 119-5 became 119-7. Oddly enough, the quicker bowlers were now into the attack, and bouncers were flying at John Smither's head. "Killer" took great offence at this and charged at the bowler's next ball; again, it was short of a length, but Killer managed only to slap it straight down the fielder's throat at cover point. Naqash then cleaned up Sam Wyld for his third wicket, and after 108-3 and 119-4 we'd been hustled out for 128. Several "what if's" permeated our innings; it didn't take a genius to work out that we were well short of runs. Still, we ate well at the tea break; another fantastic spread was consumed with loads left over for the post-match wind-down.
News spread via WhatsApp that Matty Holmes had spanked the weekend's fifth century, for the Sunday Rhinos down at Mitcham, in what was his first match of the season. They were in the box-seat, and the Sunday Wolves had posted a competitive total somewhere in Croydon. This is where my plans came in. I'd known all week that Southfields would be hitters; I also knew we didn't have the pace to bowl back of a length as the stock ball to pin their batsmen in the crease and use the full ball as the shock ball, so we were going to pitch it up, wicket to wicket, let them swing at everything, and have men on the boundary right from ball one to take the inevitable catching chances that were going to come our way.
We took to the field, the players were given their positions, and Sam Wyld was given the new ball. The first two balls were dots: then, the third ball. Sam dropped it short, Sohaib leant back and pulled it straight to the midwicket boundary...straight to where the fielder had been positioned. We watched as the trajectory dipped, the fielder's hands were set, and the ball went straight in. I jumped in celebration, as did Aleem the wicket-keeper, and whooped with joy. The plan had worked brilliantly; Sohaib had fallen for it, and paid for it with his wicket.
Two seconds later, an unidentified voice piped up from square leg: "He's dropped it."
I nearly sank to my haunches, in a way that would make a man with sciatica scream out in pain. It was the sort of catching chance that only paid and highly-trained professionals take; it hit the fielder's hands at probably the same speed it left Sohaib's bat, and in the end it was a brilliant effort to take the catch. I certainly wouldn't have backed myself to catch it. But boy, did Sohaib make the most of his extra life. He hit the ball harder than anyone we've faced this season; anything that left his bat wasn't worth chasing if it had found a gap. He hit it through long-off, long-on, and pulled sixes that threatened the woodwork and glasswork of the houses on Cannon Hill Lane. From the other end, Rob was bowling really well and getting the batters to play and miss in amongst the flurry of violent hitting, and it was he that made the breakthrough in the eight over, getting one to move off the seam and rock back off and middle stump. Sohaib was out, but not after he'd completed his fifty. Ian Bawn came on from the Kingston Road End and nullified the hitting with his cutters, but the batters were simply going after the bowling at the other end and showing zero mercy: Sujanan, Killer and Muscles all had a go but Southfields were swinging at everything, like Pete Townshend during a Who concert.
The end came in the 20th over; the target had been reached with just the one wicket lost. We were beaten and slightly chastened, but not humiliated. Tyson Fury had had his comeback fight the previous night, nineteen stones and a fat stomach against a fifteen-stone former light-heavyweight, and from all accounts it was four rounds of showboating before the fighting started and the mismatch was brought to a stop. Well, our match was of a similar vein - there'd been a little showboating from them towards the end, when they decided to walk a single, stop in the middle, have a chat and a laugh before changing their minds, to which I verbally objected my displeasure - and, earlier in the day when Sam Wyld had been bowled, the bowler decided to laugh loudly about it. Such things make it easier to bring out the red pen when sorting out the fixtures for the next season, but for now it was time to close the ground down, have a drink and a laugh, lick our wounds and look forward to matches to come. Today had been frustrating because I'd hoped that we'd seen off these kinds of mismatched fixtures from the calendar, and it had been down to me and my lack of patience that it crept in. We don't have any more fixtures like this in 2018, or so I hope - we've said that before. It was, also, just as well we'd batted first; if we'd bowled first, seeing how they went about trying to hit the skin off every ball they faced, we'd have easily conceded between 300-400.
Next week, we're off up the road to Raynes Park, and Old Wimbledonians are hosting us. Personally, it'll be my first visit there since an "eventful" match in 2015, and I've been itching to get back there ever since. It's also Father's Day, and what better present than a win - besides a "My Dad Loves 1970's Cock/Mock Rock" double CD collection - could there possibly be?
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