Game Day #12 - Golden Age(away): They Came From Beyond Wandsworth

“Space-age” can conjure up all sorts of futuristic images: hover-cars, droids, artificial intelligence, holograms. ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Back To The Future’. Human colonies on the Moon and on Mars. ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Trek’. Well, Captains Kirk, Picard and all the others on board the Starship Enterprise were completely wrong: space is not the final frontier. Wandsworth Common is. And, in the case of the Boars trip there to play Golden Age, it was the “Space-age” of an old episode of ‘Dr Who’ from the Seventies rather than the sleek lines, flying vehicles and bright neon colours of ‘Blade Runner’; a desolate, ashy, dustbowl of a wasteland that hosted the great Dalek War of 2967 (and was filmed in a Welsh quarry in 1972).

We appeared to be boldly going where no man had gone before.

Unusually, we were playing Golden Age away; we usually play them at home. We’ve been playing them for a few years now and they’re a great crowd, with the games played in the right spirit and each game has always been a close-run thing (in their favour regarding the result). Our fixture secretaries confirmed the fixture and they booked the pitch; I must confess I’d never been to Wandsworth Common despite once living about fifteen minutes walk away, but my fellow Sunday skipper Arjun had played there earlier in the season and warned me about the pitch, remarking that the ball had a tendency to  roll along the ground instead of bouncing. It had been another blisteringly hot week too, in this “son of ‘76” summer that we’ve been having, and with the pitch being maintained by the council I guessed correctly that it wouldn’t have seen a drop of water all week, adding to whatever uneven bounce awaited us.

The other Sunday teams, the Rhinos and the Wolves, were playing much stiffer opposition on the same day, so Andrew, Matt and Sam E – who played so well to help us win the game against Sutton Challengers – went back to play for the Rhinos, and into the Boars came James Prebble, erstwhile Saturday captain and owner of the dirtiest, shabbiest kit you’ll ever see on a cricket field, alongside the return of the Miltons and Dave “The Demon” Barber. Aleem had damaged his finger keeping wicket in the previous Saturday’s league game which meant he wasn’t able to keep for us, and so myself and The Demon stepped up to deputise. Foolish people…when we ever learn?

On the way to the ground, accompanied by daughters #1 and #2, this wonderful cricket ground suddenly shimmered into view. It was an oasis of green; the lushest, softest field of grass I’ve ever seen, with a good-quality square parked in the middle. Could this, I dared to wonder, be Wandsworth Common? But where was the dog shit and pile of used barbecues? Should we get off the bus now? Then a huge banner caught my eye which read, “Home of Sinjun Grammarians etc”, and I sadly settled back once more for the (Star) trek ahead.

From the road, the Common looked pleasant enough; tellingly, after a scan of the ground, my eyes couldn’t actually see anything that remotely looked like a cricket pitch. Ian Bawn had been the first to arrive and was waiting for us in the shade of a tree next to a very nice-looking café, killing his time admiring the quality of the people coming in and out of there. To the right of the café were a couple of playgrounds, so I instantly went to the top of daughter #1’s Christmas card list by asking her to take daughter #2 there whenever she got bored (which turned out to be often). Ian and I went out to look for a cricket pitch, and were disturbed by what we saw: the first pitch, which was the nearest to the café, was barely visible with hardly any lines marked out. If the Japanese had been playing cricket in Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped, and had run for their lives when they heard the whistle, this must’ve been the pitch they were on – neglected, abandoned, not curated for decades. So, we went to look at the other pitch, nearest the main road…and that was even worse. There may well be water somewhere on Mars, but there’s more moisture up there than had been seen on this wicket, and it was so dusty I half-expected to see the Mars Rover probe suddenly roll into view and take a sample. I can see NASA releasing a press statement about what Rover has found: “After taking the samples and sending the data back to Earth, we have instructed Rover to win the toss and bowl first. Find water, and have drinks at eighteen overs.”

Either that, or we’d found the place where they’d faked the Moon landings in 1969.

There was dust everywhere, the kind of dust you’d find in a Welsh quarry. At one end of the square, unbelievably, was a strip marked out for juniors, and I half-expected to find a couple of wreaths at one end; the strip at the other end of the square hadn’t been cut for a very long time, and just as well – a huge, jagged crack ran through the length of the crease, looking like the San Andreas fault line. A large, liberal sprinkling of what The Demon identified as goose droppings were awaiting anybody asked to field at mid-off. That left just one strip that looked like it could be fit for purpose, and when the Golden Age skipper Jerry arrived, he confirmed that it was the one we would be using. I was very glad that I’d started wearing a helmet to bat in.

The rest of the Boars arrived and took their own look at the pitch; as James Prebble arrived in a clean white T-shirt I didn’t recognise him at first. Also arriving were two players connected to our club that I’d arranged to play for Golden Age, as they were two short – Jake Curnow, son of club legend Geoff and soon to be Merton player, and Campbell, who played some games for me a couple of seasons ago. It was Campbell who provided the fighting talk by saying he wanted the wickets of Prebs and myself, while I told him my bowlers would be queuing up to have a bowl if he came out to bat. There were some familiar faces amongst their ranks; Paul, who’d booked the pitch, Matthew George, who always bowls his heart out and we always have to be on our mettle against him, and Gary, a good bowler/batter as well as a team cheerleader too.

Everybody decamped to the tree nearest the pitch that provided the most amount of shade, and I remarked on the fact that the Common was almost totally devoid of benches to sit on. Sunday cricketers are not very good at getting back up off the floor when they’ve sat down, so I was worried that once some of us got down to the floor, we’d be staying there until a winch was found. Jerry and I tossed up, and I resumed my winning habit by calling correctly. I was gambling on the pitch being like every other one we’ve played on since the heatwave started – spiteful and helpful for bowling for the first twenty overs, then becoming docile when the ball lost its hardness – and so I opted to bowl. I did the first stint with the keeper’s gloves and opened the bowling with Rob and Ian, and got off to an inauspicious start when a good length ball from Rob rolled at pace along the floor, under the batter’s bat, and under my outstretched leg as well for the first runs (via byes) of the day. Richard’s face at first slip was a picture of apprehension and alarm; he was clearly relishing batting on the same pitch later in the day.

We didn’t have to wait long for the first wicket; Ian, bowling into the moon rock from the Flats End, got their opener to shovel the ball straight into Kaleem’s hands at shortish cover. We soon worked out that Ian was bowling to the end that was slow and low, while Rob’s end was a bit more spiteful and unpredictable; he bowled a couple that almost came through at head height off a good length, and had the batsmen swinging like the proverbial rusty gate. He got his breakthrough in the tenth over when Jerry chopped the ball onto his stumps. Keenan had looked good and hit a couple of boundaries, but then he tried to hit Kaleem straight for another one but instead holed out to Prebs, and we had them 38-3.

By this point, we noticed that Ian was very happy to graze down at long-on/ fine leg once his spell had finished. At first, we thought he just wanted to enjoy the shade of the huge tree that separated him and a large wall from the block of flats that towered over the skyline. But then, upon spotting an elderly lady looking out of one of the flats, we surmised  that she had started to talk dirty to him and he was lapping it up down there. In fact, the only two times he came up from the boundary was for the drinks break and the close of the innings. I didn’t bother again to see if the lady was still there later on; she was standing on the eighth floor but her cleavage was drooping as low as the sixth, and I didn’t want to be put off my food during the tea interval.

Barr and George came in and steadied the ship; Prebs replaced Ian at the flats end and was getting ludicrous turn for his first three overs, but the batsmen were surviving and, at drinks, had inched their way to 68-3. Barr survived a very hard chance when Alex put down a long drive on the boundary – the kind of catch you only take after a lot of practice – and settled down after that, playing some very nice shots. Sam Wyld bowled well and with great enthusiasm but he, too, was getting no reward; using his height and getting bounce, he had the batsmen fending the ball away from their bodies.

Finally, the Steriliser made the breakthrough; Johnny Milton, with probably the worst ball of his spell, served a full-toss to George who cleaved it high towards point where Prebs took an excellent catch. That brought Jake to the crease, and in between dodging Sam Wyld’s throat balls played some crisp shots for four. As we have done time and again, we wilted a little after the drinks break: the fielding was much better than in recent weeks, but as the heat increased and Barr kept the strike, we started to leak runs. There weren’t many gaps in the field, but the batsmen were finding them, and predictably what help there had been in the pitch for the bowlers had vanished. After countless overs of skidding across the course, rough outfield, the ball looked like one a dog had spent years chewing . On we toiled, though; Jake and Barr had put on exactly fifty when a direct throw from Prebs, halfway between mid-on and long-on, shattered the stumps and left Jake short of his ground. Gary came out to bat and picked up where Jake left off, hitting the ball hard and, between the batters, about forty-odd runs came in the last five overs. Campbell’s batting services were not required, and so my queue of bowlers disappeared faster than a high street pound shop.

In lieu of tables and chairs, a fine tea was served upon a picnic blanket, and everyone dived in. For  the umpteenth game in a row, the heat wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry and so a gaggle of Boars tried their best to get some food down them. Word came to us later that the Rhinos had been served cream cheese and beetroot sandwiches for tea at their game; it sounded like the kind of lab-rat experiment that should see the tea provider locked up for crimes against humanity.

Richard “Robocop” Ackerman and I took our regular opening partnership onto the field to start our innings. We were chasing 190 to win off 35 overs; Golden Age had racked up over 120 runs in the seventeen overs after drinks, and we knew we’d have to try and score a boundary an over to keep pace with the target. Right from the first ball, their keeper experienced the same problems with the pitch that saw Dave and I concede 24 byes in the Golden Age knock as the ball whistled past him along the ground down to third man. George was getting his usual steep bounce from a good length but Richard and I repelled both him and Grant from the other end, finding the gaps and notching boundaries. As we approached our third 40-plus partnership, George and Grant gave way to the one and only Campbell from one end, and top-scorer Barr from the other. After I survived a nervy first over of Campbell’s slowies, and with a fifty partnership on the horizon, Barr got a ball to nip into Richard off the pitch and he bottom-edged it into his stumps. The partnership? Forty-seven. With eleven overs gone, we were ticking over at four runs per over, and Prebs joined me at the crease. As I struggled against the slow stuff for an over or two – and was dropped by the keeper and square leg – Prebs struggled to get a bat on the flotilla of leg-side deliveries bowled his way. But, at drinks, we were comparatively ahead of Golden Age by four runs; could we kick on like they did?

I was managing to find the boundary a bit more regularly, and brought up my fifty in the 24^th over. As I ran out of energy and out of shots to play, Prebs got frustrated and tried to charge Barr; the ball evaded the bat and cannoned into the stumps. Johnathan came and went as his bat simply wasn’t long enough to stop a pea-roller taking out leg-stump, leaving Aleem to survive the hat-trick ball. And then I perished in the next over, bogged down by Gallimore’s nagging, arrow-straight spears; I swiped wildly and was bowled. Aleem, with more singles to his name than Tinder and in such great form that even the aforementioned Daleks wouldn’t exterminate him easily, saw Alex (after hitting his first boundary for the club, duly celebrated with a swish of the bat), Ian, and Rob only stay briefly at the crease – yet another grubber doing for Rob – which left us hanging on for dear life at 109-7. The win was out of the question, and so it came down to salvaging pride in seeing out the overs. Kaleem joined brother Aleem at the crease and they did just that, with a partnership of 37 that saw Aleem put away some bad balls and Kaleem stick around to help him.

At the end, we closed on 146-7; forty-four short of victory. We gave them 36 extras and there were a couple of loose overs from us too, so it could’ve been a lot closer than it was in the end. But that’s cricket. The game was played in an excellent spirit, and Golden Age proved themselves to be a fine set of winners. On top of that, they produced a hamper of cold beers and lagers for everyone to enjoy, which was fantastic. Once they were consumed, we all headed for the convoy of cars to take us back to Merton; leaving behind the desolate landscape of Wandsworth Common, wondering if we were going to be the last set of humans to set foot upon its surface for many a year.