Game Day #11 - Sutton Challengers: Cops, Capers, Convoys and Comebacks

 An unwanted turn of fate brought our Boars “away” game against Sutton Challengers closer to home than originally planned; the venue for this game was meant to be the neutral Colets Leisure Centre in Surbiton, home of the sadly-departed Surbiton Imperial Cricket Club, a team we had many eventful tussles with but one that has become a victim of an all-too familiar malady: the chronic player shortage. I hope we see them resurrected, Phoenix-like, at some point in the future. The turn of fate was us, as a club, suddenly losing the availabilities of almost twenty players in a week; three games became untenable and, for a few hours, even two teams was looking a tall order. The Sunday captains decided to shelve the Sutton Challengers game and concentrate on a home game versus SW United (who the Rhinos had beaten away the previous Sunday) and a “home” game at one of our satellite grounds, Abbey Recreation Ground, against London Fields. In a classic example of Sunday cricket timing, once I’d informed Sutton Challengers that our game was off, London Fields then pulled out – which now meant our original fixture was back on, but half a mile away from our home ground instead of a thirty-minute drive to Surbiton. Happy days.

The day’s tea lady would be me, and I ensured that the players would be well-fed and offered loads of variety by hitting Lidl like a hammer. I know my shortcomings, though; the ladies that do our teas on Sundays offer levels of care and attention I can only dream of owning, and so my sandwiches reflected my Midlands upbringing: no frills. My ham sandwiches had nothing in them but ham: you want cous cous and rocket salad with that? Waitrose is a mile away; jog on down there, mate. The only reason I put any pickle in the cheese sandwiches was because my first batch were so crumbly the sandwiches were barely staying together. The second batch needed some binding. I had visions of players tucking into my cheese sandwiches, only for them to watch as the cheese tumbled from between the slices of bread and fall all over their trousers, like clouds of dandruff from an itchy man’s scratched head.

Needless to say, most of my sandwiches went uneaten.

Friday’s forecast thunderstorm didn’t arrive, and so this part of the world was still plugged into a heatwave that meant you started sweating at 10am and didn’t stop until 11pm. Game day was sultry and hot from the moment the daughters and I clambered into an Uber to take all the tea stuff to the ground, which was by now bleached white by the relentless heat in certain parts along the boundary. The only water being used on the ground was to water the square, and that now looked like a green postage stamp stuck on a manila envelope, such was the lack of greenery around the rest of the ground. The sandwiches were done, and the other players had arrived to take all the equipment we needed, convoy-like, down to Abbey Rec: tables, chairs, scoreboard and stumps etc, all the water I’d bought, and of course the tea. It was twelve o’clock, we were an hour away from the first ball of our game being bowled, and we were ahead of schedule.

Then came one of those incidents that can either define your day or destroy it. If you’ve followed this blog from day one, you’ll know I’m a single parent, and my two daughters come with me to cricket every week – much to their often-disguised ‘delight’. Sometimes, when you’re rushing around with a thousand things on the go, it’s easy to leave one ‘I’ undotted and one ‘t’ uncrossed…and that’s what brought me my one and only brush (to date) with the law. I’d asked daughter #1 to take a stack of chairs to Joe’s car, but she misheard and brought them to Kaleem’s instead, which is where I was with daughter #2 and Kaleem.  I took the chairs to where they should originally have gone…not knowing that daughter #1 had followed me. Kaleem, meanwhile, had let daughter #2 in his car and made sure she was seatbelted in…then he followed me too. Minutes later, when I got back to Kaleem’s car, I was confronted with the sight of daughter #2 crying and upset and being spoken to by an irate-looking lady who soon made a beeline for me. Her vitriol was off the scale as she demanded to know what kind of father I was for locking my daughter in a hot car, berating my lack of proper parenting skills, and generally heralding my existence as the biggest, dirtiest turd she’d ever laid eyes on. Every one of her machine-gun sentences started with “How dare you”. When she then hectoringly demanded that I give my daughter a hug, forty-five minutes of preparing enough egg mayo, tuna and ham sandwiches to feed a small army followed by readying tables and chairs for convoy led me to boil over and snap back at her. After berating her in turn for her lecturing, holier-than-thou, busybody attitude, she then told me – despite daughter #2 telling her I was just around the corner, which I literally was – that she’d called the police. Kaleem was extremely apologetic but I wasn’t having any of that;I’d got caught in such a rush and he’d done what he thought was the right thing to do. Perhaps the Busybody would have been happier if he’d just left daughter #2 standing on the street corner where she could have come to some real harm.

After fifteen minutes of waiting for the police with my back turned to the Busybody and fantasising about finding where she lived, defecating in my hand and smearing it all over her windows, I left my details with her to give to the Police and we headed off to join the rest of the team at Abbey Rec. Daughter #2, incidentally, was absolutely fine, but the Busybody – who was by now very quiet indeed, especially as her own kids were demanding to know why they were being held up from playing with the other snowflakes in the park – was only interested in her own sense of self-righteousness. I imagined her to be the kind of person who’d shout at a Muslim for not wearing their burkha properly.

Finally, we got to Abbey Rec to meet the rest of the team bar Andrew ‘Suggs’ Suggitt. Two years ago he’d played here and ended up waiting for ages on the front pitch while the rest of the team were on the back pitch, wondering where he was…surely the same thing couldn’t have happened, only with the pitches the other way round? Oh yes, it could! We all looked over to the top of the Rec, to where a sturdy metal fence separated the two pitches, to see Suggs waving at us, and wondering how he was going to get to where we were. In the meantime, and to the disbelief of some, the Police arrived. I welcomed them and volunteered my statement, only to be met by one officer’s first sentence of “Have you been arrested before, Mr Simpson?”…I calmed replied in the negative despite my brain asking “Am I about to be arrested now?”. The third officer – yes, it took three of them to come down and see what kind of tooled-up monster they’d been told about, while somewhere someone was probably becoming the victim of an actual crime – took daughter #2 to one side and spoke to her, and after a five-minute discussion that took in my side of things, I was told I’d passed the “Attitude Test” and there’d be no action taken. I felt sorry for Kaleem, who couldn’t have done right for doing wrong, as he was given a stern lecture about the perils of locking someone else’s child in his car whilst going to pick up a bag of stumps and bails for a game of cricket.

Right, shall we get on with the cricket?

Hang on, not yet; as the police exited the Rec car park, I turned to see Suggs now inexplicably hopping from garden to garden of the houses on the other side of the bushes from where we were, looking like a burglar (albeit a well-spoken one) trying to find an escape route. God only knows how he'd got there, and I was just waiting for the police to come and arrest him for trespass to top off an eventful morning. He finally managed to join us, but I wondered if the day’s quota of bizarreness had been fulfilled before a ball had even been bowled…

Mahesh, the Sutton Challengers captain, and I went out to toss, having  been advised to bowl first by my senior players if I won. Well, if I won, it’d be ten won tosses in a row – La Decima; the pitch was, like all the others in the Surrey county, a dustbowl covered in a thin verdant layer of grass. Mahesh called correctly and my run was over; he decided that the Challengers would bat first.

The team had a good balance to it; we welcomed Matty Holmes to the fold, one of the finest batsmen at the club, and someone I’d wanted in the Boars for a couple of weeks. Him only playing Sundays this year, when he is usually a high-standard League cricketer, was Saturday’s loss and our gain. Kaleem and Rob returned to Boars colours too, to complement a bowling attack that retained Joe Gun, Ian “Treadstone” Bawn, and the Sams Wyld and Egan. And so, after rebutting the Challengers’ attempts to have leg-side wides as part of the game – no thanks, I said, I don’t fancy being here at nine o’clock at night having racked up a hundred wides in the day – we took the field. The heat of the day wasn’t going anywhere, but we did have a sudden, welcoming breeze descend upon the ground as I handed the new ball to Rob and Kaleem. Thulasi and Sai were the openers, and they found life very hard going against some excellent bowling; Rob had not long returned from the hamstring injury he’d suffered at Old Wimbledonians, but his run-up was smooth, his pace was good and he was looking sharp. It was Rob who made the breakthrough; with only a few runs on the board, and with Sai looking to hit big, he bowled a straight one that Sai tried to hit into Wimbledon and had his middle stump rocked back instead.

After ten overs, the Sams came into the attack and it was the Wyld one that struck immediately. Thulasi seemed to be caught in two minds over how to play his straight one and ended up turning it to square leg; Joe Gun took a couple of steps to his left and, to his utter astonishment, held onto the catch. "Oh my God, I've taken a catch!" he was heard to cry. His face was a picture, like someone who’d been paid a visit by the people in the Postcode Lottery commercials. You know how it goes, Joe: “Someone’s knocking at the door…”

We were ticking through the overs but runs were starting to flow a little easier now; edges and nicks were evading our fielders, and the outfield wasn’t helping either, the ball in danger of spinning two feet past you after landing. I prefer my cricket grounds to have some grass on them, and none of us were enjoying fielding on what amounted to a cracked concrete floor. Sam Egan then got his first wicket in classic Sam fashion. Vinayak cut outside off-stump to Sam’s sharply-rising ball and it looped just over Rob’s outstretched hands at deepish gully and ran away for four. Next ball, and Rob had moved about a foot to his right: Sam bowled the same ball, the batsman played the same shot, and this time Rob gratefully and gleefully took the catch. Sam’s trap ball had worked again: that ball plus that shot plus that field equals wicket. Almost immediately, his fiery pace cleaned up Bhasat’s stumps to leave the Challengers four down, and that became five down as Sam Wyld got Hemmant to bottom-edge one that rolled slowly onto his stumps. The bails tumbled to the ground, and as drinks were taken we were halfway through their batting with only seventy-odd runs on the board.

As has happened so often in the past, however, the drinks break seemed to sap our strength. The breeze disappeared, the mercury inched a little higher on the thermometer, and Jay and Afif tucked into our bowling. With there being bare, grassless patches at both ends of the wicket, I was confident that Joe and Ian's slow bowling would profit, but although Ian bowled a beauty of a maiden over, the pitch was suddenly flat and lifeless and gave them nothing. The backside suddenly fell out of our fielding too as fatigue took hold; one attempt to stop the ball on the boundary looked like a move (complete with jazz hands) from a “Chicago” number and the bowling figures suffered. I include myself in that category; one particular ball – a standard pick up and throw – dribbled along the ground past me, as my three bellies compressed together like an accordion and denied my hands the ability to reach the floor. Poor Joe and Kaleem, on the other side of the wicket, were running so often to beyond the boundary to fetch the ball, we wondered whether it was worth hiring a Ring & Ride van from square leg to help them on their fetching missions. 

Jay was seeing it, and hitting it, very well, and after the pair had posted a fine century-plus stand, Sam Egan came back with his leggies to finally break the partnership, bowling Afif as he tried to make room and hit to off. A couple of balls later, he got Chetan to do the same thing, and he suddenly had four wickets from five overs. Despite having eighteen balls to notch a five-for, another wicket eluded him, but the returning Kaleem finally got the reward his bowling had deserved by having Hardik trapped lbw; and, as I ran off to rip a tonne of tin foil from those sandwiches I’d lovingly sweated over, Rob took the last over and bowled Prudeep. I didn’t see it as my back was turned to the action, but I’m reliably informed it was a 110 miles an hour snorted that moved along the pitch like a racer snake, sat up, waved its middle finger at the batsman, and knocked all three stumps over like Jonah Lomu bulldozing Mike Catt all those years ago. The Challengers finished on 238-9 and Jay was 80 not out; a fantastic knock. Despite our fielding lapses and probably giving them thirty runs too many, I was pleased with the effort we’d put in. To almost bowl them out in that heat, and with two batsmen taking the game away from you, was a great comeback. As it would turn out, it wouldn’t be the last comeback of the day. Rob and Kaleem were the pick of the bowlers alongside Sam Egan and his four-for; I felt for Joe and Ian, as they’d bowled at the precise moment the pitch decided to take a holiday and turned everything they had to offer into scoring opportunities for their batters.

Tea was taken; for some reason, I didn’t feel like eating my own sandwiches. Neither did anyone else…the only attention they received was from the wasps that descended upon the tea table once all the mozzarella sticks and popcorn chicken had been scoffed. I could’ve murdered a cup of tea, but with no tea-making facilities at Abbey Rec, squash had to do.

Once the break was over, I asked Richard and Andrew to open the innings. After Richard had copped his lump on the head against Chessington he’d picked up a helmet from the clubhouse; he ended up picking up the one that made him look like Robocop. It didn’t take away from his form, though; he may not be getting the big scores he’d undoubtedly like to post,  but he’s hitting the ball hard this year and the timing is good. It wasn’t easy to score quickly for the first few overs – the odd boundaries were counter-balanced by Prudeep’s maidens – but the guys were hanging in there and not looking too troubled. The first wicket didn’t fall until the 15^th over, when Richard was caught at mid-on trying to hit over the top, and the opening partnership had yielded 47  runs. That brought me to the crease and, maybe imagining that the ball looked like Miss Busybody’s head, I proceeded to smack it the boundary whenever I could. I was only out there for just under five overs but hit a breezy nineteen and added 38 with Suggs, who was looking in great form, until adrenalin – and a horrid pull shot to a good-length ball keeping low – did for me. That was drinks and we were 83-2; at this point, I hadn’t envisaged a serious assault on their score, but the pitch was lifeless and we still had a ton of batting in Matty, Aleem, Ian, Joe, Sam and a few others. Crucially, we had more wickets in the bank at drinks than they did. Could we give it a real go?

As Matty and Suggs continued untroubled for the next few overs, taking their partnership past fifty, we caught our first sound of the Sutton Challengers’ version of Monty Python’s Black Knight. Fielding deep near long-on, you heard this voice, time after time, urging “Come on boys, one more wicket and we win!”, despite the fact that we had only lost two so far. Suggs reached an excellent fifty of his own; watchful when required, attacking when required. Soon after, however, he was lbw to Chetan and Aleem was in. From the first ball, Aleem knew the run-rate and came to the crease with the handbrake off, crashing Chetan straight for two fours in two balls. This attitude had a sudden liberating effect on Matty, and an extraordinary series of overs followed; this was the end of the 29^th over, and with eleven left – or 66 balls – we needed 95 to win.

“Come on boys, one more wicket and we win!” piped up the Black Knight, still based at long-on. Matty was beginning to open his shoulders and runs were coming quickly, so – if you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” – this was the equivalent of him piping up just after Graham Chapman had taken his arm off.

The last two overs had yielded us 23 runs, the next five yielded us 61, mostly from Matty’s bat. If you bowled to him on leg stump, he pinged the ball over or through midwicket for four every time, and if you strayed outside off-stump he smacked it through cover or long-off. It was brutal, exhilarating stuff, and as I umpired at square leg, watching Matty take the bowling apart, I suddenly dared to dream that the win was on. Aleem’s game-management was brilliant, giving Matty the strike and running so well between the wickets that misfielding and overthrows became the norm. On one occasion, they took a comfortable two – only to take two more from the same ball off overthrows due to some shoddy fielding. The pitch was lifeless, the bowling was flat, and their heads were dropping. Matty was middling everything, sending their fielders into the bushes time and again to retrieve the ball. Another cleanly-hit pull shot brought him a very quick fifty, and the run-rate was now down to six an over.  When the 200 came up we were still in the 33^rd over, and now we only needed 34 runs from 42 balls. I began to feel giddy at square leg as Matty and Aleem continued to milk the bowling and find the gaps. In desperation they were changing the bowling every over, and their keeper frantically appealed for a caught behind off Aleem that only he heard, but still the runs came.

“Come on boys, I don’t give a f*** about the result…one more wicket and we win!”

Then, with five overs left and just sixteen runs required, Matty charged at Chetan’s slower ball and was stumped by the keeper. Off he went to a terrific ovation, but the butterflies in my stomach flittered about uncomfortably. Could we really see this off, or would we freeze? Being a captain with only four wins to his name in near-four seasons, and someone who has seen us snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory on many an occasion, the doubts crept in. I envisaged their bowling suddenly tangling us up in knots, and denying us by the slenderest of margins. The unease wasn’t helped by Joe facing the rest of Chetan’s over; every ball was right on the money, very tricky to face, and how the last ball of the over didn’t knock over Joe’s leg stump I’ll never know. But survive it he did, and after three dot balls of the next over and a single to get Joe off the mark, Aleem eased the tension with his third and final boundary – at square leg, I gave myself a fist-pump. We’d done it. Still came the Black Knight, hooting from the boundary, both his arms and one leg chopped off. Six was required from 12 balls; Aleem pocketed two two’s, Prudeep bowled a wide to bring the scores level, and after two more dots Aleem placed the sixth ball perfectly through a gap and took the winning single to seal the mother of all run-chases and the unlikeliest of wins.

As I ran towards Aleem and Joe and nearly committed GBH on each of them in turn, you could tell the Challengers were hurt by defeat. I’ve been there on several occasions, and you’ll never see me rub victory in anyone’s faces unless they’ve acted like a bunch of numpties throughout the match. The Challengers had played the game in the right spirit and were unlucky to run into us on the day our batting rose magnificently to the occasion; our four wickets had been worth 47, 36, 68 and 82 in turn. I hadn’t prepared for winning until Matty and Aleem put their astonishing partnership together in record time and would have settled, at the time, for getting to within thirty runs or so; I hope we play Sutton Challengers again in future. We shook hands with Mahesh and his players and exchanged pleasantries, before I proceeded to crush as many of my players as possible with a Simpson-sized man-hug. Still, I expected the Black Knight to nod in our direction and say, “All right…we’ll call it a draw”…

To be honest, it still hasn’t sunk in. In eight years of being a Merton player, I’ve never seen a run-chase like that, never been part of a comeback win like that and I guess I won’t again. And with that, the Boars clocked up our second win in three games and second of the season. For Ian, it’s like buses; you wait twenty-nine games for a win, and then two come along at once. I’d started the day making sandwiches and nearly having my collar felt by the law; I ended it as the only triumphant captain of the weekend. Still, it wasn’t all good news at the end; some sod nicked my batting pads. Jeez, man; where’s the Police when you really need them?

Game Day #10: Graces - Ballet on the Boundary, and Mahender's Match

After a one-week break from the regular Sunday circuit while the club held its annual Six-a-Side tournament, it was back to business as usual for my Boars team, still riding high on our one-game winning streak following the defeat of Chessington a fortnight previously. Graces were the visitors to the John Innes Bernabowl, a club that are always as impressive on the field as they are off it. They’re one of those teams I’ve yet to taste victory against – not, I hasten to repeat, that winning should matter on a Sunday – and so maybe, if we could just harness the batting solidity and prowess in the field that got us over the line so well in our last game, we could break our duck against them. Famous last words…

A word about our visitors for the day. It can be hard enough sometimes to admit to someone, “I play cricket at the weekends” – especially to kids who have never heard of it unless it’s a feature on Minecraft, Roblox or Fortnite – and also during a summer when, thanks to the World Cup, the planet is fervently pro-football. It must be even harder to say to people, “I play cricket and, by the way, I happen to be gay. As is everyone on the team”. To their knowledge, Graces are still the only gay cricket club in existence since their mid-1990’s inception, which can make them seem like a token or pet club, to be patronised or stared at as some kind of curio. Indeed, there will undoubtedly be some who expect a gang of extras from “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” to turn up to matches and act like shrieking divas from first ball to last – we may live in more enlightened times, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s attitudes to certain aspects of life have caught up. In fact, what you find is  that eleven cricketers turn up; eleven bloody good cricketers, and fantastic people as well. As Boars captain, I always savour the days when Graces come to visit; the cricket is friendly and the atmosphere is harmonious. You won’t get idiots shouting in umpire’s faces when their lbw appeal is turned down, taking out their crap week at work onto the cricket field, or batsmen nicking one to first slip and refusing to walk because he’s neck and neck with the Chairman for the batting trophy. Two teams playing good cricket and enjoying their Sunday, and on these days – more than any other – being gay, straight, black, brown, male etc is irrelevant. And that’s the way it should be.

Mind you, they’d had their fair share of drama leading up to the game. They were short of players all week and we drafted in a couple of our guys to play for them – one of them then had his finger injured attempting to take a catch on Saturday. Then, on the morning of the game, they’d been let down by a couple more players, suspicions rising that it happened to coincide with the Wimbledon Men’s Final…but a contingency plan was put in place. They could bat down to ten wickets by rotating what batsmen they had, and their bowlers could max up to ten overs each instead of the agreed seven. And seven was the magic number for them, as only six Graces players turned up with our very own Andrew Van Derwatt standing in for them.

We didn’t bother with the toss as I’d already said I wouldn’t make them field first with only seven players, so I won by proxy. Yes, I’m claiming that, and that’s nine wins at the toss out of nine this season. Life is good before the first ball has even been bowled every week. I’m winning.

The heatwave has still been raging on; the lack of rain had turned the outfield into a patchwork quilt of mottled green, yellow and brown patches, with some areas around the boundary as bald as myself, Joe Gun and Killer Smither. The square, by contrast, had taken on a lusher green hue due to some watering in the week, and the individual strips no longer resembled upturned shortbread fingers. I had watched James P cracked on the helmet from a shortish length in the league game yesterday so  the watering would, thankfully, ease the worries of batsman safety after the way the pitches have turned nasty in recent weeks…but it would also nullify my pace attack a little. Swings and roundabouts. And my pace attack was probably the most youthful it’s ever been on a Sunday: the average age of Sam E, Sam W, Johnny M, Sujanan and Hassan was 16.8 years. Then, when I added the ages of myself, Joe and Killer, it bumped it up to 30.25, which shows how old we’re getting (52.8 years between us on average…).

Under spotless blue skies, and with the lunchtime mercury topping 30 degrees on the thermometer, Mahender and Moran opened the batting, facing  Suj from the Clubhouse End and Sam W from the Kingston Road End. We soon discovered how much the pitch-watering had slowed the pitch down, as anything slightly short sat up and demanded to be hit to the square leg boundary. That’s what happened, time and again; the openers took it in turns to rock back, play the pull shot, and send our fielders running into the bushes to locate the ball. Graces were scoring at six an over when Sam E and Killer took over the bowling, but the same things were happening; Sam built up a terrific head of steam and was taking his frustrations out on the pitch at express pace, but he too was going at six an over. During the opening overs, Mahender survived two very sharp half-chances to Aleem behind the stumps; one edge falling agonisingly short of the gloves while the other squeezed out after an acrobatic leap to attempt the catch. That was as good as it got for us; a pitch that previously had something in it for the likes of Smither to threaten to take wickets was now offering nothing, and getting drier and flatter under the scorching sun.

At this point, our fielding started to resemble something from a Royal Ballet Company production, especially near the boundary. As the opener’s century stand was notched, I reflected on how most of the runs had been scored off the back foot and how many of them had been singles turned into fours by the habit of using a foot to stop the ball…only to lift the foot at the crucial moment. Maybe the thinking is that a special forcefield will be generated by the lifted foot that will repel the ball away from the boundary…sadly, not even Elon Musk or Q from the James Bond film franchise has invented footwear capable of doing this, and instead we were donating runs to Graces as if we were donating five pound notes to Comic Relief. The ballet-style fielding got worse; I swore I could hear the strains of “The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy” or “Romeo and Juliet” as the ball disappeared time and again through our fielder’s bodies, up on one toe in Arabesque fashion (the club kit shop will be selling tutu’s next season, with our numbers and initials on them). I could really have done with all of us being bitten on the hands and feet by mosquitoes; the swelling would have stopped every ball travelling our way and saved a stack of runs.

As the run rate hovered near eight per over, firstly Joe and then I had a go with the ball. Joe didn’t bowl as badly as he thought he had, but the pitch was offering zero and he dejectedly took himself out of the attack. The score had sailed past 150 when I came on in the 21^st over, and finally made the breakthrough with my second ball. It pitched in line and kept straight, hitting Moran halfway up. When I could still see most of leg stump visible I appealed, and the umpire thankfully raised his finger. Moran had made a very good 61, patiently moving the scoreboard along while Mahender did most of the damage – which he continued to do to me during the rest of my spell, time and again putting my best efforts back past me and on the way to the long on boundary at some speed. I could have had him, though; he smacked a booming drive down to long-on where Hassan was waiting, hands cupped, to take the catch. Despite a valiant effort, the ball hit Hassan’s fingers – injuring one of them – and over the boundary. Before that, though, Sam E returned from the Kingston Road End, bowling leggies, and after his first three overs of searing pace had whistled by for 34 runs, his remaining four went for just four – including the wicket of Stuey, lbw for seven. Dom came in and helped Mahender reach his century, before Johnny M – The Steriliser – cleaned him up with what must’ve been a wafer-thin edge to Aleem. Maximum credit to Dom here as he chose to walk when several others wouldn’t have budged, in what was a fitting act of sportsmanship. Nobody else had heard a nick.

Replacing me at the Clubhouse End – going for 12 and a half runs per over is more than enough for anyone – was Alex “The Jailer”, Johnny M’s older brother, for his first-ever bowl in a game of cricket. Halfway through his first over came the only moment of controversy in the game; “The Jailer” bowled a double-bouncer to Mahender, who bottom-edged it onto his stumps. Most of us jumped up in a combination of celebration and laughter; when I came back to cricket in 2011 in a bowler, the double-bouncer was my stock ball. Mahender, as was his right, stood his ground and asked how many times it had bounced (three or more bounces to the batsman is a no-ball), and we were in the process of telling him that it had bounced twice when somebody from our side piped up and said it had bounced “loads of times…at least four”. The umpire duly signalled a no-ball, and Mahender was reprieved. I was furious, not with Mahender I might add; after a day of extreme heat, poor fielding, an unresponsive pitch and a rocketing run-rate, talking our own team out of a wicket – and Alex out of his first-ever wicket – made me boil over. I voiced my frustrations very loudly and scowled at square leg until the end of the innings. That came a few overs later, and we were set the middling challenge of 294 to win in 35 overs. Mahender was 141 not out, and was applauded off accordingly, while I went in search of a stiff drink.

As we’d agreed to have a longer break so people could watch the World Cup Final (planned at the start of the week, when England were a shoo-in for winning the competition…how foolish we all felt now!!), we began our innings straight away. Only three overs were possible but Andrew Suggitt and I negotiated them without any difficulty, even putting 20 runs on the board. The extended break was welcome; it’s never nice batting straight after fielding for nearly three hours in relentless heat, but as France dominated the scoring against Croatia in the football, we all took the decision to cut short the break and get back to cricket.

The two Sams did some sub fielding for Graces, as did one of their supporters – a guy in at least his seventies, who I mistook for a dog-walker who’d strayed onto the outfield and so mistakenly stopped running when I hit the ball his way – but I managed to find the gaps against the bowling of Newton and Merton’s own Andrew VDW to the extent that 44 runs were on the board in the ninth over when I played an appalling slog to Mahender’s fourth ball. Forget the fact it turned six inches, the shot was just dreadful. Alex “The Jailer” got off the mark but was then castled by Mahender, who was steadily making the match his, which brought Aleem to the crease. His twos and ones, coupled with Suggs’s boundaries, kept the scoreboard ticking over until Suggs became Mahender’s third victim. Andrew VDW was having no luck at the other end despite bowling terrifically; the pitch was offering him no assistance.

Sam Egan came in and got off the mark with a boundary, and not for the first time forged a good understanding and partnership with Aleem. Running between the wickets was crisp and the boundaries were coming too; Dom took some stick from “Widowmaker” Sam (if his bowling doesn’t get you, his batting will), and the hundred came up in the 22^nd over. Fielding wasn’t easy; the ululating surface of the outfield near the clubhouse was resembling corrugated iron in some places, and time and again Stuey’s diving efforts down there saw the ball rear up from the ground and slam him in the chest. Runs were coming freely; sadly Sam was dismissed by the returning Newton with seven overs left after a 62-run partnership. “The Steriliser” came in and made a few before being run out going for a second run. That brought Joe to the crease, and Aleem suddenly went turbo as they smacked 28 runs in the last four overs. Finally, he brought up his first Sunday fifty of the season, then went boundary-mad by taking fifteen off Newton’s last over. He ended up on 68 not out, the team ended up a very credible and enjoyable 187-5, and the game came to a close.

Once again, the margin of defeat had been heavy – over a hundred runs – but we’d given such a good account of ourselves with the bat (and had notched our highest team score of the season to date) that none of that mattered. After our iffy performance in the field, we’d redeemed ourselves. Before we closed the ground down, Jonathan – Graces’ main man – called everyone in and made a lovely little speech praising us for the way we’d upheld the spirit of the game by lending them sub fielders and not taking advantage of what was 11 v 7, and I reciprocated by reminding him that his team will always be fondly-regarded by Merton, and we will always look forward to our future fixtures here and elsewhere. It was also nice to see the players of Arjun’s Wolves  stick around all through our game and even help with umpiring, and then have a few more beers with us afterwards.

Oh well, if a winning streak must be broken, then a streak of one win in a row is better than nothing. The World Cup has finally finished; Alex “The Jailer” counted the cost of being drawn with Croatia and won a tenner to make up for his ‘ghost’ wicket, and we can finally start talking about cricket again. Until the football starts again, in about a fortnight. Pffft…

Game Day #9 - Chessington: Rulers Of The Roost (Finally)

When you’ve been on a chastening run of defeats, the visit of old friends can be as therapeutic in recreational sport as it can be in real life. Our ninth Sunday friendly game saw us due to host one of our firmest friends on the Sunday cricket circuit, Sopwith Camels; we’ve had many entertaining tussles with them over the years. It was honours even last year over the two games, one win apiece, and on a personal level they were the opposition in 2014 when I played my first decent innings for Merton and my best innings since before my testicles started to sprout hair – with four required to win off the last ball at about 8:35pm, I swished and missed and the ball went sailing harmlessly through to their keeper, and we lost by three runs. So you can imagine the disappointment I felt when I received a call on the Wednesday from their captain, informing me that reluctantly the Camels would be withdrawing from the fixture. Just two players were available, and the rest of the week wouldn’t be long enough to rustle up another nine. And so into their shoes stepped Chessington, a team we hadn’t been slated to play since 2011, when a massive thunderstorm thirty minutes before the game did to our sides what a scalpel and anaesthetic usually does to the nutsack of a male dog that’s already sired enough pups – despite John Smither trying to soak up the puddles of water on the square with a single, solitary tea-towel; the visible equivalent of, quite literally, pissing in the wind. The Chessington contact, Richard, explained – to my great relief – that his team were weak; a mixture of young lads and wise old heads would be travelling to the John Innes Theatre of Dreams. They sounded exactly like us, the Sunday Boars, and a great match was suddenly on the cards.

All we’d need was the weather, and oh boy what a wonderful day was in prospect as Daughter #1 and I made our way to the ground. We’re in the middle of the kind of heatwave that makes cricketers of a certain age whisper “1976” every few moments; on this first day of July, we still hadn’t had a game affected by rain and were seeing weather usually accustomed to August. A perfect yellow sun beamed out from a cloudless, blue watercolour sky and bathed the home ground in brilliant sunshine; the outfield was yellowing, the square bone-hard. Once again I’d already decided to bat first if given the chance; the temperature was due to hit 32 celsius, and I didn’t fancy fielding first in that. On top of that, the strip that had been prepared for us was the only one of the six on the square to possess virtually no grass, save for a bizarre two-metre wide strip of green on a good length right in front of the batsman; it was biscuit-coloured and felt like concrete beneath your feet. A glance to my left, to the pitch used on the previous day, caught a glimpse of a pile of sand that you’d expect to see at Caister or Sandbanks rather than Merton.

Chessington duly arrived, and on first glimpse looked the kind of team we should be playing every single week of the season; just like us, they were indeed a team of dads and lads, with the requisite septuagenarian thrown in for good measure. He would come in handy counter-balancing our own triumvirate of sexagenarians: Richard, Joe and the returning Rocky.

With no football to delay proceedings this week – unless you were mad keen on watching Russia beat Spain on penalties – myself and their skipper went out to toss. He called incorrectly, handing me my eight straight win at the toss (beat THAT, Eoin Morgan), and I opted to bat. Chessington were happy to bowl so that their lads could get a full game, words that usually trip from my lips on a weekly basis, and despite the fact we hadn’t even started the game I had already grown to like Chessington.

Richard and I went out to bat at the stroke of 1:30pm, and within the space of young Stewart’s first couple of balls from the Kingston Road End we realised that the pitch was not in the kind of well-prepared condition I had expected. From the other end, Clark wasn’t as quick but was getting steep bounce off a good length that couldn’t be played easily. Richard then rolled back the years to notch up our first boundary, a hook shot off his shoulder down to the fine leg boundary. Pure vintage stuff, but then came the most worrying moment I’ve ever witnessed at the crease. Stewart’s next ball was a beamer which Richard lost and tried to hook, and the ball cannoned into his forehead. There was a pause until I suddenly realised that the green thing on his head wasn’t a helmet but his cap, and Chessington’s players ran to Richard’s aid as it dawned on us he was in trouble. A round, crimson, ball-shaped circle had instantly appeared to decorate Richard’s forehead, and despite Richard telling us he was fine he clearly wasn’t. Ice and the first aid kit came out as we gingerly carried him towards the clubhouse, and Dave was summoned to gather his bat and his thoughts and come with me to the middle. For the second time in two games, Richard’s early departure had totally thrown the innings into a state of slight bewilderment, only for vastly differing reasons, and it was clear Dave hadn’t been ready to bat when he sliced a rising good-length ball high in the air for gully to pouch. Furious with himself when he shouldn’t have been, he then treated anybody watching to an expletive-filled striptease when he returned to the clubhouse; just like the Burlesque dancers of olden days, a piece of clothing was hurled into the air every few seconds; a thigh pad here, a box there, a chest guard everywhere. Thankfully, nobody was on hand to stuff wads of money into Dave’s jockstrap, but if they had I’m sure he’d have donated it to a charity dealing with Tourette’s, as for the whole of routine he’d sounded like a sufferer.

Out came Iain Evans to join me and initially he came out swinging at the youngster – who, by the way, we’d all told should in no way have blamed himself for Richard’s injury; a beamer, yes, is a beamer, but a lot of us have bowled them and we’ve never meant to do so – but it was swinging and missing before he settled down and found the middle of the bat. Stewart was bowling horrible balls rearing off a good length at good pace and one of them brushed my cheek on the way to the keeper, prompting me to finally call for a helmet to bat in. Iain and I defied the pitch to notch a couple of boundaries apiece before Clark castled Iain with a beauty that moved off the pitch, held its bounce and hit the top of off. Aleem came out and instantly played two sumptuous pull shots off Clark; the outfield was like polished glass, and a half push/half drive of mine squeezed past mid-off and raced to the rope. In fact, all you needed to do was to find a gap and the ball was going for four.

Enter Dave Harrison, the aforementioned septuagenarian. Prior the match, we’d joked that he’d probably take a five-for, but his first over was to mine and Aleem’s liking. The pitch was unforgiving to anything dropped short, and we’re in good nick at the moment. With half the innings gone and the score at nearly 100, I took a step to Harrison and smacked him over mid-on…only to find mid-on was a little deeper than I thought, and he steadied himself to take a routine catch. With Richard at hospital, courtesy of Catering Preparation Supervisor Janet (I’m too scared in this day and age to say “tea-lady” in case I get trolled), we were only two down. But we are the Boars, and a mini-collapse ensued; Rocky banged one dismissively into the bushes for four, then fell lbw to Harrison who, not long after, snaffled Ian Bawn the same way. Aleem was playing really well and was joined by young Sujanan, who showed what he could do by pulling his second ball for four.

With ten overs left, Aleem danced a little to Williams and was stumped, which brought Joe to the crease. In tandem with firstly Sujanan (who became Harrison’s fourth victim, leaving me wishing I’d had a bet on him taking a five-for) and then Sam Wyld, Joe produced the kind of innings our lower order has missed all season: destructive when needed, intelligent, and assertive. He may be retired now but he hits the ball very hard, and the boundaries flowed from his bat. Sam batted out the last eight overs for his three not out as Joe farmed the strike and enabled us, at the close of the innings, to post an excellent 179-7, Joe’s contribution 45 not out.

Disbelief at Spain being beaten by Russia was smoothed over by the sumptuous tea that was on offer to us, and the sight of Richard walking back into the clubhouse with a smile and a square white bandage on his nut. He’d had the scans and everything, and thank God he was fine. Someone then piped up that he’d do anything to get a not out these days…

The game against the Flying Ducksmen was still fresh in the memory; a defendable total posted but a last-ball loss by one wicket. This time I decided against the Gareth Southgate-style pep talk, hoping that our bowling and fielding would be on point. Tellingly, the pitch had calmed down in our innings once the hardness had gone from the ball, and as we were using the same ball for the Chessington innings – and our attack wasn’t the quickest in the world – I was quietly confident that our slower bowlers would be the key.

Firstly, though, Sujanan (from the Clubhouse End) and “Killer” Smither (from the Kingston Road End) opened proceedings, and after one early boundary settled into a beggarly spell that neutered the Chessington top order – a top order that was opened up in the third over by a beauty from Sujanan. With the same delivery that dismissed Iain earlier in the day, Suj got one to hold its line and hit the top of off-stump – and it was Bilal, their best batsman to boot. Just eleven runs came from their first six overs but Spiller looked in good touch with some crisp fours and the outfield was as fast for them as it was for us; chasing the ball was a lost cause as soon as it went past you.

Ian Bawn replaced Suj in the 13^th over and struck with his sixth ball, piercing Raje’s defence to clatter into the stumps. Killer bowled straight through and, despite bowling really well and getting the ball to swing and bite, ended luckless and wicketless. In his seventh over, Spiller bottom-edged the ball which started rolling towards the stumps. Everyone got ready to jump up in celebration as it clunked into the bottom of the stumps, but alas the bails refused to move. 0-21 was poor reward for another great spell, but that’s just 36 runs conceded in 15 overs over two games for John. One of these days, somebody’s going to be on the receiving end of a Killer special, and that Charles Manson stare will once again grace the greens of John Innes Recreation Ground.

The Bawn Snaffler got another cutter to dissect another defence, this time Stewart Senior, and Chessington were rocking at 43-3. That became 44-4 as Sam got Clark Senior to slap one in the air to a waiting Iain at midwicket, who made no mistake with the catch. Stewart Junior arrived at the crease, whose first act was to reverse –slap Ian for four over backstop, albeit off of a top-edge. Stewart the Younger was bristling with intent and looking to score, but some brilliant fielding was restricting him to mostly singles. Sam was bowling with the kind of pace and accuracy I’d been yearning to see since he bowled at me in winter nets; in tandem with Ian, he was conceding less than three runs per over. Rocky had breezed from slip into short extra cover and absolutely nothing was going past him; one shot rocketed off Spiller’s bat and was heading at speed past Rocky until he stuck out his left hand and nonchalantly caught it on the bounce. It typified our performance; our tails were up.

Spiller and Stewart Junior had put on 47 runs when the defensive field paid off; he pulled Sam to the waiting Ian at cow corner, who took a great catch to finally end their resistance. We sensed that the turning point had been reached, and two balls later Sam bowled Spiller for a well-made 38. They were 91-6, and Sam’s third wicket was his sixth for the weekend. With Treadstone bowled through, it was time for Iain Evans to inject slightly more pace into proceedings. After some further resistance from Garner and young Harry Wort – whose spin bowling earlier in the day had been top quality – Iain’s extra pace cut through their lower order. In the space of four balls he took three wickets, including an arrow-straight lbw and a caught and bowled. With the score on 113, it was left to Joe to take the final wicket and seal a first win of the season for the Boars.

Oh, my God. We’d won. We’d actually won. Played eight, lost seven…won one. And what a one it was. Even the weather had behaved for us; a lovely breeze sailed around the ground for the entirety of our fielding stint. Furthermore, it had been an all-round great performance with players one to eleven leaving their mark on the game one way or another. Another Spiderman-like performance behind the stumps from Aleem had kept the extras low again, and every single bowler had contributed. We congratulated Chessington on their performance and their spirit; sixty-six runs was the margin of victory but it wasn’t as easy as that sounded. They’re also a terrific bunch of people, and I’ll be ensuring we get a fixture with them again next year. Our victory was compounded by the results coming in from the other Sunday teams, the Wolves and the Rhinos; both teams had lost.

And so it won’t happen often, but Sunday was our day; the day that the Boars ruled the roost. We’d posted our highest score with the bat, we’d taken all ten wickets for the first time in 2018; we didn’t drop a single catch. Spare a thought too for Ian Bawn, for whom victory made his Foster’s taste a little sweeter – in 29 games, stretching back more than two calendar years, he hadn’t won a single game as a player of any Merton team. Next week is the Six-a-Side Tournament, meaning that the Boars will remain unbeaten for a further week until we travel to Banstead on the 15^th. That’ll be 14 days unbeaten, a bit like when English golfers hit the top of the world rankings (they don’t usually stay there long), and I’ll settle for that.

It was nice to finally wake up on a Monday morning with a smile on my face. The groin strain, sore calves and sore heel were all there as standard, but with a smile on my face I couldn’t feel a single one of them. It was just nice to realise that I’d finally notched up a win as captain in 2018, and was the last of the seven – yes, Mother, count ‘em – club captains to register a win. Now that’s what I call fashionably late. And, if you know your Doctor Who, that makes Arjun Kiswani William Hartnell and me Jodie Whittaker…