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 21st 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 22nd 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…
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