Boars @ Sanderstead: Touched By Serendipity

Serendipity: 

the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Some wins are happy accidents; some can be planned and executed well; some come about by complete and utter surprise. Our first-ever game against Sanderstead fell into the final category. After years spent snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, it was an occasion when the exact opposite occurred…and only by dint of some serendipitous moments did it come about.

Firstly, a word about the previous week’s game, at home to Red Square Lions. They were a lovely bunch of players, some of whom brought their kids along, and the day’s cricket was enjoyable. Sadly, the now-notorious home pitch – wrecked by a heatwave and a total lack of curation – decided to live up to its reputation as a graveyard for all bowlers who can’t turn it a mile from leg to off, and was about as sterile as a vasectomy ward the morning after the big snip. One gun batsman, who scored a hundred despite batting with a damaged shoulder, was the difference between the teams (as was some seriously off-kilter fielding), and they won by 90-odd runs. Everything about the day, apart the pitch, was great…but I wasn’t going to blog about another day when we only took three wickets on a dustbowl in forty overs!

And so we moved on to the Boars’ inaugural trip to Sanderstead, and what a difference a week had made. Last Sunday had been the fourth day out of six where the temperature in London had topped 35 degrees; come Saturday, and either everyone’s games had been washed out or T20 games were being played instead as a way of guaranteeing cricket against the forecasted monsoons. I’d half-expected to receive an email from Tom Palfrey, my opposite number, telling me the game was off when I found out they’d had four of their five games cancelled on Saturday; thankfully, the inbox stayed quiet, and as we all arrived at their picturesque little ground, The Old Saw Mill, conditions for cricket looked good. The forecast had changed significantly – only showers were coming our way, so they said – and a whole day’s cricket was on the cards.

As Tom picked a fight with a pull-cord leaf blower and lost, and with the legendary Derek Rushforth sitting atop the club roller, bristling with intent and revving the engine every few moments, the Boars marvelled at the condition of the pitch. I was expecting a soggy pudding of a wicket, the kind that makes you say “we’ll have a bowl” upon winning the toss and not feeling guilty about asking your team to field first yet again; the pitch was smooth, covered with a nice, even layer of grass and rock-hard. I’d already decided to bat first if I did call correctly, but for only the fourth time in thirty tosses I didn’t…but I was pleased when Tom decided to have a bowl first anyway. The rest of the Boars, who’d presumably struck me off their Christmas card lists the previous week for erroneously bowling first against Red Square Lions, reacted with a mix of surprise and delight. Richard and I went to pad up.

A word about Sanderstead. For the last few seasons, they have established a thriving YouTube channel which had become home to dozens of highlights packages of their games, and it’s done a fantastic service to the recreational cricket scene as well as for their own club. Filmed by the inestimable Dan Allen, they’ve recorded some high-quality League cricket on Saturdays and some moments of utterly hilarious, totally village and always entertaining friendly and development cricket on Sundays. The whole world knows about Sanderstead; one of their clips has been used in the ECB Umpire course, and even the great Sachin Tendulkar retweeted one of their most talked-about clips to all his followers. During lockdown, their videos have been watched time and again, and – certainly for me – were a source of great comfort whilst the game was put in mothballs.

When other members found out that the Boars were playing Sanderstead, everybody wanted to play in the team…Instagram and Tik Tok might be the millenial’s craze of choice, but the prospect of being on telly is still just too much of a pull to resist. Appointments at hair salons were booked. Nails were manicured. Backs, sacks and cracks were waxed. The bit of space between the eyebrows was plucked and moisturised. Blusher was packed into kit bags. All, though, was to no avail; Dan had decamped to Beddington to film a development game instead (which also turned out to be a cracker), and freshly-coiffed fringes flopped sadly at the prospect of once again playing to no audience. In the absence of the camping Dave “The Demon” Barber and the working Rob “Typhoon” Turner came Jack Ayling and “Bertie” Basit Ubaid; Jack’s presence behind the stumps meant I had another day of grazing in the outfield, so I was a happy chappy.

Ben Carter-Martina bowled the first over: he is just thirteen, he is quick, and his length was excellent. Bowling down the hill, though, saw him develop a no-ball problem that blighted his first four overs, but he ran in with purpose and intent and gave Richard and I precious little to go after. His style was complemented at the other end by Milan, who came in off about four steps and bowled every ball on the same spot just outside middle and off. Sure enough, as soon as Richard told me to keep an eye on what Milan was bowling, I played the wrong shot to the wrong ball; it simply wasn’t full enough for the drive back over his head that I attempted, and the ball went high rather than far between mid-off and mid-on. At first, Stuart Elleray didn’t look like he was going to make up the ground, and when he did he juggled the ball four times before pouching it. One run was my solitary contribution, but our first serendipitous moment had arrived; Jack was now batting. His temperament is excellent and it needed to be, as the pitch – as bouncy and true as ours was untrustworthy and all over the place – was slower than I thought it would be.

Progress was slow. The bowling was excellent, and shots that on other days would have yielded runs were going straight to fielders. Richard and Jack had their defensive game in place and looked solid; we just needed a big over or two to loosen the shackles. They never came. Dev and Darren Budden replaced Ben and Milan and continued the squeeze with accurate slow bowling, and in the 15^th over Richard was trapped in front by Dev. 38/2 was the score and in came Andrew Counihan, and together with Jack the score crept inexorably up. But, after a thirty-run partnership and with only fifteen overs left, Budden bowled Andrew. Shakil came in and signalled his intentions with a booming drive for four, but he too got bogged down; with only nine overs left we were only on 95/3 – nowhere near setting a realistic target for Sanderstead to chase. As Jack kept on chipping his way, finally entering the forties, Shakil was cleaned up by Budden; two balls later, it was 95/5. Joe, promoted one place up the order to provide some fireworks, got a top-edge that flew to the gully area; Simon Clare hared around from point whilst Tom, as keeper, chased after it, and as they almost collided Simon took a brilliant diving catch.

That, serendipitously, brought Saurabh to the wicket and, after a slow start to his Merton career, opened his shoulders and started to score runs. Tom’s best four bowlers had, crucially, bowled out, and the legendary “Deadly” Derek Rushforth and Mark Hughes were to bowl the final eight. If we were to motor, it had to be now. The new bowlers weren’t able to replicate the accuracy of their predecessors, and Jack – batting like a man liberated – brought up his fifty with a drive through the covers. It was a deserved moment for him after narrowly missing out against Sopwith Camels a fortnight previously, but shortly after that came calamity: a mix-up between Jack and Saurabh saw them both at the same end after an attempted second run, and Jack had to go for a dogged, determined 57. He’d built the foundations; now we had to push the scoring on.

Cometh the hour, cometh Basit. I’ve seen him bat, and boy can he bat. He’s a livewire: bristling with energy and determination, and – in tandem with Saurabh – laid waste to Derek and Mark. Forty runs were plundered in three overs, including a huge six off Derek the ball after Simon had dropped Basit in the deep. 150 flew past, and finally we were posting a total we could realistically defend. Saurabh rotated the strike and Basit was finding the gaps previously closed to us, running hard twos and pressurising the field. The two of them brought up their fifty partnership with the first ball of the last over, but with the second ball Basit went for one big hit too many and was excellently caught by young Ben. The next ball saw Saurabh call for two when only one run was on, and the unlucky Ian Bawn found his wicket sacrificed at the altar of quick runs without facing a ball. Welcome to the Platinum Duck club, Bawny. Saurabh had time for one more pull shot for four before being caught off the last ball of the innings, a superb take by Dev on the square-leg boundary, and we had finished on a scarcely-believable 176/9. Sixty-nine runs had come from the last seven overs. Basit had finished with 30 and Saurabh an excellent 33 (plus two run-outs)…but all that running between the wickets was merely a precursor for more serendipity whilst we fielded.

Tea-time saw the now-regular inspection of Joe Gunewardena’s lunch box. This week, following on from his previous offerings of six digestive biscuits and six almond slices, he’d brought himself two packets of mini-Cheddars and what looked like four or five malted milks; we launch our “#FeedJoe” appeal this Friday.

Sujanan and John “Killer” Smither opened the bowling for us against Simon Clare and Ian Lemon, and Simon soon looked in good touch. Killer provided the openers with some moments of concern and they were very good off their pads against Suj, but it didn’t seem to matter how tight we kept it, runs trickled along. Just like in our previous games, toil and luck were about as far apart as Castlemaine and Castleford, and apart from Simon being perilously close to being run out from a direct hit, chances weren’t presenting themselves. Then, in the 12^th over, we finally made a breakthrough. It came the ball after Simon had chipped one wide of me at midwicket; I leapt at it and got my hand to it but couldn’t wrap my fingers around the ball, and it fell to the ground. Killer then bowled his worst ball, a full-toss right in the slot for Ian to cream for four…only the ball sailed to Andrew “Safe Hands” Counihan at mid-off instead, and he never drops those.

Then came another of those serendipitous moments. Saurabh, having chased a pull to the leg-side boundary and stopped a couple of runs, went to field the next ball and felt his hamstring go. Not only did that leave me with an injured player in the field (and we swapped him with Richard at slip), but it had robbed me of a bowler. Shakil, promoted up the order to get more batting time, was only supposed to bowl four overs; now, with Saurabh out of the attack before he’d started, he’d have to bowl a full eight.

Ian and Basit took over the bowling, and Basit immediately got turn and bounce from the pitch. A battle worthy of the Coliseum between Basit and Simon unfolded before us; Basit, turning the ball prodigiously across Simon, who either defended and missed or played the bowling well. Both would give each other a knowing smile from time to time. At the other end, Stuey Elleray was happy to rotate the strike which meant five runs an over were being scored without any discomfort, until Simon offered Joe a difficult skied chance on the boundary which Joe just couldn’t hold on to. Drinks were taken with Sanderstead 97/1 and in no trouble at all; the sun was shining and the light was strong, and the earlier showers that had briefly christened the ground had disappeared for good. The pitch contained no demons. Simon grew increasingly confident facing Basit, who received zero success for his excellent endeavours, and the fifty partnership was brought up as their score breezed past 100.

Shakattack was immediately into his groove bowling up the hill, while at the other end, Joe came on to bowl. He had appeared to have developed a new/old style of bowling: the Victorian, pre-Grace speciality of round-arm. As his first ball was smashed into Sanderstead High Street by Simon, I loudly questioned his style of bowling from long-off, and wondered whether he’d like to bowl over-arm instead. When he did, in his next over, the difference was immediate: Simon, on 75 and having been dropped one more time by Killer in the deep (running in to take a difficult diving catch, he had his hands around the ball only for it to spill from his grasp as he hit the floor), tried to paddle Joe around the corner to fine leg, only for the ball to loop up off the bat and into the grateful gloves of Jack. That was the 29^th over: Sanderstead were 139/2, needing 37 more runs to win. Game over…or so it seemed.

Joe was suddenly unplayable. His arm was high and his famed loop and air had returned; after conceding 15 off that first over, his next three produced a debit of just eight runs. Meanwhile, Shakil had placed a tourniquet around Stuey Elleray and Sofiane; the off-side was packed to compliment his off-and-middle line and length, and the scoreboard had ground to a halt. Basit and Suj had brought an astounding energy to the fielding that only comes with youth and a set of limbs untroubled by age, and as the boundaries dried up, so did the ones and twos. Stuey tried to take a run but was run out by a combination of Suj and Jack, but surely this mini-collapse was surely nothing more than that; Sanderstead needed 33 off eight overs, or 48 balls. We were never going to take the rest of the wickets, and surely were playing for nothing more than the opportunity to make them fight for every run they needed.

If that was the script, Shakil and the returning Suj simply ripped it up. Shakil conceded just nine scoring strokes off his entire eight overs, and finally got just reward in his seventh over when Mark Hughes drilled one back to him and he held on to a smart catch. At the other end, Suj was a different bowler. He returned to the attack full of fire and bursting with pace, and after beating Sofiane’s bat he cleaned him up with a ball that was simply full and fast.  Then, in the same over, Tom was stranded in the middle of the wicket as Basit’s throw was scooped up and the stumps rearranged. The 37^th over closed, and Sanderstead had suddenly stalled at 154/6. Twenty-three needed off eighteen balls. The tension was palpable. Ian Bawn returned once Shakil had finished with 1/16 off his eight overs, and only conceded one run from his first over back – Ben and Dev were at the wicket, twenty were needed off twelve balls. Ben can hit a mean ball and slashed at Suj’s penultimate delivery, sending the ball flying to the third man boundary to break the shackles, but only three more runs came from the rest of the over. With ball in hand, Ian Bawn had the final six balls to defend fourteen runs.

Ben started with a good hit for two, then blocked the next two balls. Thirteen needed from three. The fourth ball yielded a single whilst screams for a second run to be taken rent the air; it was now or never: twelve from two balls. Dev was good enough to hit two sixes, we all knew that, but Ian’s fifth ball was flatter and Dev could only hammer it into the leg-side outfield where Basit was prowling; it was soon back in Jack’s hands, two runs had been taken, and they needed ten runs from the final ball. All Ian had to do was avoid bowling a wide or no-ball, and we’d won. Dev was cursing himself; he hadn’t realised it was the last over, and thought there was still a couple left in the day. He knew we’d somehow contrived a win from a losing position. Defiantly, Dev struck the last ball of the game powerfully over the fence towards the scorebox; through its small window it sailed with a loud wooden clatter, almost decapitating the scorer in the process. From Sanderstead needing just 36 runs to win from their last ten overs, the Boars had won by just three runs having conceded just 21 runs in eight overs leading to the finish. We’d turned it round in a manner we’d never done before, certainly not in my six years’ captaincy. Sure, as I said at the top, we’ve thrown away lots of advantageous positions in the past against all manner of teams, but the dice had never rolled in our favour. Tom and his players were as gracious and classy in defeat as we’d expected them to be, and a twinge of sympathy was felt for Simon, who’s 75 looked like it had paved the way for a cruise to the finish line.

Everyone had made a difference: Killer had made the first breakthrough; Suj’s second spell was death bowling at its fiery finest; Basit provided control with the ball, fireworks with the bat and urgency in the field; Shakil had strangled the batsmen into unconsciousness; Joe had provided the decisive moment by dismissing Simon; Jack’s 57 paved the way for the later acceleration and Saurabh’s 33 – and some fantastic fielding on one leg in the slips area – was another link in the chain. As for Sanderstead, they were extremely unlucky. Ben is a bowler who’s pace will be causing some intestinal quivering in two or three years, and I’ve had nightmares about Milan ever since. Dev and Darren Budden had us nailed to the floor, Simon and Stuey batted with a calmness and fluency that had sucked all the hope out of us at one point, and their fielding had been on point.

Back at the clubhouse, the beer was cold – very cold. The two teams grouped side by side, happily chatting away, laughing and joking as the light drew in and the dusk settled over the Old Saw Mill. Once again, it had been a fantastic day’s cricket; we’d been at a lovely ground and played a great set of players. Here’s hoping for a repeat fixture next year…and the salons of Merton will once again be called into action.

Boars v Sopwith Camels: (Sod's) Law and (Batting) Order: Criminal (Pitch) Intent

 

It isn’t often you get to play cricket at a venue that reeks of grandeur and splendour. The moment I heard from Mat Flint, the long-standing member of the Sopwith Camels Cricket Club, that our game against them was to be played at a place called ‘The Warren’, also known as the Metropolitan Police Sports Ground, I did what every club captain does: I hit Google, and it looked like we’d hit the jackpot. An aerial image of a former stately home, surrounded by the kind of lush, leafy greenery that offered more than a hint of a miniature Downton Abbey to the image beaming out from my phone screen, was swiftly shared around the Sunday Boars WhatsApp group. “Cor, look at this!” was the underlying message, “we’re going to Bromley for a slap-up game of cricket”. No council estate park this, with pigeon feathers and dog and fox shit littering the square, and an outfield about as level as a corrugated iron roof being thrown around Alabama by the latest oddly-named hurricane. The kind of creatures you see only in zoos these days would be patrolling the boundaries and beyond, grazing on the grass, making all sorts of strange noises; Freddie Flintoff’s voice urging “Mind the peacocks, Tino” came into my head. I imagined chairs cushioned with something other than a thin layer of plastic to sit on, none of those dark green garden chairs we have at the home ground that my arse, which this year is roughly the size of a shire horse, would demolish in about five seconds with a splintering crash. I visualised, in days gone by, butlers bringing out drinks on a tray, glasses clinking against each other with every precarious step taken by Jeeves, or Hudson, or whatever butlers were called in the twentieth century. I don’t think even Coronavirus would have stopped the Bromley set from enjoying a glass of something sparkling – reading through tales of cricket during the Edwardian era, players weren’t satisfied with a plastic beaker of warm orange or blackcurrant purchased four months previously from the cash and carry. Those that had survived the First World War were only too happy to stick their middle fingers up to anything that wasn’t as horrifying as mustard gas attacks and walking into a hail of bullets at the Somme, and so only something fizzy and alcoholic would have passed muster, and consequences be damned. Apparently, the England bowlers Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster took a sip of champagne every time either of them took a wicket on the 1911/12 tour of Australia; seeing as England won that series 4/1 and Barnes and Foster took a stack of wickets between them (Foster, apparently, invented Bodyline on this tour, not Douglas Jardine twenty years later), they must have spent most of their days on the field pissed out of their minds.

 

Fast forward to the 2020 season, and if the Boars had celebrated every wicket with a drop of alcohol we’d be virtually tee-total. To say that we’ve found it hard to take wickets on pitches bone dry, un-rolled and starved of moisture would be an understatement; the drier the summer, the more the bowlers toil, and the less rewards they reap. This truncated season has begun to mirror 2018, when a heatwave baked the home ground so hard that 1990’s football pitch markings rose to the surface when the outfield hadn’t been cut for a while, whereas last year was not as warm, with more rain during the summer weeks, and we as a team bowled other teams out on a regular basis. This season, so far, we’d taken three wickets against Cheam, six against Trinity Oxley, and seven against Banstead in a combined total of 122 overs. Discounting extras, that’s a wicket every 46 balls. Rob Turner, Suj Romalojoseph, Shakil Ehsan, John Smither – all have bowled well and with distinction, for virtually zero reward.

 

Come the morning of the match, and for a brief period the game was in real jeopardy. Injury and illness had struck the Camels, and they were down to just eight players – including one that had apparently fallen down the stairs. My mind travelled back to last year, when we played the Camels at the Roebucks ground, and Killer had blown away their top order on the way to the Boars greatest-ever performance with the ball, dismissing them for just 64; blimey, I thought, they’ll do anything to get out of facing Killer a second time. But no sooner had Mat given me the grim news, he was back in touch to say replacements had been found and the game was still on. A collective sigh of relief swept across the team; with more great weather forecast and the clock on this mini-season just starting to tick down, the prospect of losing a Sunday had been too awful to contemplate. I, for one, had cleaned the oven enough times during lockdown, thank you very much.

 

For the Boars, there were three changes: back came Saurabh Bhargava and Richard Ackerman for the unavailable Ian Bawn and Rhino-for-the-day David Floyd, and in came Jack Ayling, Saturday 1^st XI captain (and, happily for me, wicket keeper for the day) for Tom Allen. In normal circumstances, Jack is too good (and, alongside Suj, too young) for the Boars; when he’s played on Sundays previously, he’s played for the Rhinos, but having played all his cricket to date at the home pitch – which has offered the kind of playing conditions to justify the club paying for the square to be blown up in September – he was keen to get away from the place and have a game on a better wicket. We were a tad light on bowling but only playing 35 overs a side, which was a blessing, as surplus overs were to come from Dave Barber, Andrew Counihan and myself – none of whom had bowled since indoor nets in March. I prayed that the Camels’ stand-in players weren’t league ringers.

 

On arrival at The Warren, the place didn’t disappoint. A long driveway through wrought-iron gates led to the sumptuous, red-brick country pile from the photos on Google. A rumour went around that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, had once owned the place, but that turned out not to be true; he was certainly mad on cricket and once played for the same team as W.G. Grace, but he lived not too far away in Sydenham instead. No, the Warren was built in the 1860’s and it’s last owner, an MP by the name of Preston, was so supportive of the Metropolitan Police that he bequeathed the place to them in his will. For the last few decades, it has been a place for retired officers to come and relax, have a few drinks and watch the cricket. In more recent times, The Warren has become a venue for weddings and functions. Young families were at their cars, unpacking scooters, fold-up chairs and picnic baskets from the boot, ready to find a spot somewhere on the other side to relax and enjoy what was a lovely, warm, sunny day.

 

Our first view of any greenery was the bowling green, positioned to the side of the building. It looked like a luxuriant green postage stamp, as level as a snooker table; if the cricket field was anything as well-curated, I’d be tempted on winning the toss to announce the Boars would break first rather than bowl first.

 

Alas, the cricket field was not like the bowling green.

 

Given that newly-married couples regularly celebrate their nuptials at this venue, The Warren and its other surroundings were more like the marriage of David and Victoria Beckham or Kim and Kanye whatshisname: glamorous, eye-catching, something to murmur about, whether for good or ill. The cricket field was more like the marriage of Stan and Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street of yesteryear: grim in appearance, attritional-looking, not a hint of joy in sight. Two strips looked like they’d be cut and marked at some point in the last year, but not recently; they were barely distinguishable from the rest of the field. One of them had three large fungal-looking black stains at one end, just on a length, that covered the width of the wicket, and my mind was instantly taken back to a game we’d played at Wandsworth Common in 2018 – that pitch looked like it had been dropped in from the moon, with a crack the length and width of the San Andreas fault running across the crease at one end. These pitches had clearly been played upon at some point as well. The lack of rain, and also - it turned out - of an appointed groundstaff, meant the wickets were a Colombo-style dustbowl starved totally of any watering (it hadn’t rained heavily or extensively for weeks either), while the outfield had that burnt-brown hue and was as hard as concrete, pitted with hundreds of bare patches. The ground also sloped from top to bottom, with the square on the kind of gradient that gives learner drivers reverse-parking nightmares.  A lovely old scorebox was positioned in the shade of some trees alongside the pitch, but next to it was, I presumed, the pavilion – or rather, had been. It clearly hadn’t been used in several years; the windows were smashed and its wooden boards rotten and peeling. This being a ground hosting retired coppers every day of the week, it wouldn’t surprise me if this dilapidated old hut wasn’t housing  the dead body of one of those secretaries that had been the local doctor’s bit on the side in an Agatha Christie novel, or a flighty shop assistant who’d flirted with the local psychopath in an Inspector Morse story, her life extinguished by a sharp pull on the neckerchief swathed across her windpipe, sending her dreams of finding Mr Right and settling down to the grave with a choke and a gasp (a bit like the Boars innings, sometimes). And with Killer Smither in our ranks, as kindly and sociable as any other person but apparently a real wiz with a boning knife, a supply of gaffer tape and a shovel, and proficient at – to quote Ebeneezer Scrooge – decreasing the surplus population, anything was possible. I half-expected the Camels to produce Miss Marple as one of their guest players.

 

The Camels themselves were hard at work undergoing their pre-match conditioning and hydration: relaxing around the tables, waiting for us, beer in hand. The stalwarts were instantly recognisable - JP, Merton’s bete noire on so many occasions in the past, was shaggier of hair but heartier of laugh; Hughie, the Camels’ wily old fox, looked ready to unpick us again with his wobble-seamers, Al was wearing his traditional white vest and shorts (he wore it to bat last year, and umpired topless); Scooby looked as cool as ever in his trademark shades; Ed was sat like a coiled spring, ready to leap into action. Also with them was young Sam Meakin, flying the flag for the younger generation, but missing was Harry Deans – an emerging talent – and Vinay, who appeared to be the one who’d picked a fight with the stairs and lost. That was a crucial loss for them, as Vinay is another who has done us a lot of damage in the past. In to the team, as the short-notice replacements, were Duncan and his young daughter Emily, fresh from a game of age-group cricket in the morning. That still left them one short, but they were playing the Boars…a numerical advantage on our part, no matter how great or slim, counts for nothing.

 

With everyone present and changed, ready to play, Hughie and I tossed up. Yet again, heads won it for me, and in to bowl we went. Rob “The Typhoon” Turner and “Killer” Smither, still buoyed by the memory of slicing and dicing the Camels a year ago (5-26), took the new ball, and as I watched Jack keep wicket to balls lifting shoulder-height or threatening to shoot along the floor, I was thankful I was back in the field and not wearing the gloves.  JP and Ed were opening the batting, and JP in particular was merciless on anything short. Rob was bowling down the hill into those ugly spore-like patches and they simply sucked the pace out of every ball he bowled, enabling the batsmen to play anything outside off-stump as late as possible. The pitch was ridiculously slow, with the kind of uneven trampoline bounce at both ends to destroy a batsman’s form and confidence. Killer was arguably bowling better than he did when he took all those wickets, but this time around JP and Ed were equal to him; we were, for the first time in a very long time, very ordinary in the field as well, and Killer’s figures suffered through some dubious attempts to stop the ball. The outfield was like a sheet of glass too, which meant if a defensive prod went past a fielder it usually resulted in a boundary.

 

Rob was unlucky not to snaffle the adventurous JP when he pulled a ball straight to Suj at midwicket; the speed of the ball surprised Suj, who got both hands around the ball but couldn’t hold on. Ed kept finding the fielders with his cuts and drives but JP was scoring freely, and not long after the fifty partnership had been notched his innings came to an end. Suj and Shakil replaced the luckless Rob and Killer, and Suj got JP to top-edge a ball straight back to him. Drinks came on 18 overs with the Camels at 74-1, and Suj and Shakil had really put the squeeze on: the pressure to start scoring at more than three runs per over had increased to an extent that, as soon as the drinks break was over, Ed called for a single to Saurabh at mid-off that really wasn’t there; Saurabh fizzed the ball expertly back to Suj, who threw the ball behind him and knocked down the stumps. Prashant had been the unlucky batsman, run out for 1; next in to bat was Ash, the Camels wicket keeper, and he too found batting very heavy going – one good-length ball from Suj zinged three feet over his head and flew to Jack behind the stumps. But, as the score slowly crept past the hundred mark and with Suj and Shakil – wicketless again - bowled out, it took a fresh batch of left-arm pies from me to save the scorebox wickets mechanism from rusting up totally. My first over, a maiden, was tidy enough, and at the other end, Dave Barber was having his first-ever bowl for the Boars – it went for just two runs, and he really looked the part with ball in hand. Then, in my second over, I hit Ed on the front pad as he tried to push me round the corner to leg. Whether it had pitched in line or not, I was certain it had hit him in front (I could see leg stump as the ball made impact), and so I loudly asked the question of Al, umpiring topless once more. He had a think as the ball ran down to fine leg, then – to my delight, as I kept my eyes from being distracted by his nipples - raised his finger. That brought Sam to the crease, who’d heard me moaning earlier in the day that I was having to bowl a few overs without ever wanting to do, and as he pulled his first ball straight to Dave Barber at mid-on I’m sure he thought I’d been kidding him. It was the kind of pie Hansel and Gretel’s witch had been fattening them up to make – I’d wanted it to pitch yorker-length, only to see a knee-high full-toss leave my hand. Dave swallowed the catch, and as Duncan came out to bat, the field came in for the hat-trick ball. As Rob positioned himself at silly mid-off, I saw an enticingly large gap between Duncan’s bat and pad, off and middle stump beckoning me like a sea siren to an enchanted sailor. I willed myself to bowl it full and straight but my bolwing hand has long since stopped doing what my brain tells it to do, and it pitched just outside off instead; Duncan prodded at it, the ball looped up towards Rob who dived full-stretch and just about got his fingertips to it, and as we all gasped, the ball hit the turf. It had been agonisingly, teasingly close, but just not close enough.

 

We didn’t take any more wickets, but Dave came close in his third and final over. We’d effectively abandoned having a slip fielder as the ball was doing zero off the pitch, but Dave drew a defensive edge from Ash that would have arrived at a nice height for a first slip. Andrew Counihan also had a bowl and recorded six dots in his first over, before Rob and John returned to bowl the final five. They yielded just fourteen runs between them, and the Camels ended their innings on 144-4. It had been attritional and far from easy on the eye, but the pitch was to blame for that rather than the batting style; our bowlers had also been skilful in stopping the run rate from getting any higher than four runs per over in the face of the pitch and a lightning-fast outfield.  

 

Having spent the interval wondering whether any ex-coppers would try and arrest a couple of us for impersonating a bowler – when it was the pitch, so dead in places, that could have done with a chalk line around it – Richard “Snakehips” Ackerman and I padded up and went out to start our innings. From the start it was perilous, illustrated by two balls to me from Hughie in the same over: one bounced no higher than my shins, but the slow, trampoline bounce ensured I had time to jam it away, and another cut me in half whilst driving but bounced waist-high over the stumps. He was bowling into the ugly black spore-like patches, and every ball was akin to a lottery draw. Hughie opened with two maidens, with only byes coming from Sam Meakin at the other end, and it wasn’t until the fourth over that we managed to find the boundary. Richard and I traded boundaries to get the scoreboard going until I thought I’d kept a straight one out from Hughie, only to look back and see it bounce into the stumps. For the second week in a row I’d managed to deflect the ball onto my stumps, but that pesky Hughie Deans had got me yet again.

 

Jack Ayling strode out to the crease, and immediately creamed a short one from Sam down to the deep square leg boundary, but runs were not being allowed to flow. Richard looked strong at the crease once again, following his return to cricket a fortnight before at Trinity Oxley, and had to be at his patient best against the stuff being bowled into the fungus patch, but once Hughie was bowled out – 1/19 off seven overs, and ten of those runs coming in his final over – the shackles were loosened, but batting was still fraught with danger. Like the murderer in a Hercule Poirot story, waiting in the dark, silk scarf knotted around his knuckles, waiting to strangle some pretty young socialite for laughing at the size of his willy, the bowling still had the ability to shock. Young Emily stepped up for what could have been her first-ever bowl against grown-ups with a red ball, and after using her first couple of balls to get used to the length of an adult pitch, settled nicely into a groove. Anything bowled short was got after by Richard and Jack, which saw the score move past fifty, but when she got the ball pitched-up and straight, it was gun-barrel straight. A lesser batsman than Jack would have lost their middle-stump twice during her three overs, and she got better with every ball she bowled. At drinks, we were almost exactly where the Camels had been at the same time in their innings: 72/1, and half way to our target. Jack and Richard were batting well, and although the pitch could be spiteful – Jack was rapped on the gloves more than once – it was offering no movement at all to the bowlers. The batters were looking patient, untroubled, and putting away the bad balls when they came. Jack was showing the qualities that make him a Saturday 1^st XI player, while Richard was hitting the ball hard. We were motoring smoothly and harmlessly to our victory target.

 

At the other end, up the hill, Prashant had shown promise bowling seam-up, but had sprinkled each of his first three overs with a four-ball; that changed after drinks. He was suddenly finding the right length and looking a threat. JP, our friend always but nemesis with the ball in his hand, couldn’t find any rhythm at first and three fours in his first two overs helped the score past the hundred mark. We were 101/1, with twelve overs left to score the remaining 44 runs to win.

 

Ten minutes later, we were 102/5.

 

Jack, on 45, used his feet to a shorter-length ball from Prashant; it popped up on him, brushed against the face of the bat like a tennis ball against a brick wall, and ballooned back to Prashant. Catch taken, deadlock broken. Jack had batted really well and deserved a fifty; his partnership with Richard had yielded 76 runs, and he’d seemingly set us on course for a trouble-free win. But we, of course, are the Sunday Boars, and the wickets column suddenly started revolving as quickly as the body count in Midsomer Murders. Oli “The Ox” kept out his first ball, then had a swish at his second ball and was bowled, and Prashant had two wickets in the same over – finally, a bowler was getting a bit of luck to go with their skill and effort. JP had found his radar; now he rediscovered his passion for taking the wickets of Merton batsmen. Saurabh was unlucky to scoop a full-length ball to mid-on, before Dave – whose birthday it had been the previous day, had had a nice debut bowl and had even brought us cakes, which made him the perfect murder victim in any crime story  – perished, attempting a big hit off one that popped up and gave JP a regulation return catch.

 

The legendary Boars wobble was in full swing. We’d gone from being HMS Invincible to SS Titanic in ten short minutes. Nine overs remained to knock off the 43 runs required, and the prospect of a second straight win over the Camels was evaporating; the ending seemed to be a Camels win, as obvious as the ending of any murder story containing a shifty-looking butler. Only a ‘Line Of Duty’-style twist would save us now, and in Richard Ackerman we had our Ted Hastings – only one that talks of “hitting bent bowling” rather than “nicking bent coppers”. I was umpiring, and gloomy about our prospects; he simply said “but Andrew’s coming out now”, and indeed, he was. Andrew Counihan started with a boundary and never looked back. Each of the next four overs went at four an over, meaning that – with 30 balls left – we needed 24 to win, or around five an over. Still nip and tuck. I still didn’t have us as favourites. But then, when it was 23 runs needed off 24 balls, Andrew produced the moment that finally loosened the Camels grip on us. Scooby dropped one short, Andrew rocked back, and crashed the ball over the boundary and almost into Kent for six. You could hear the team sigh with relief; it was the moment we knew we were going to win.

 

In JP’s next over, Richard banged one through the covers for four and the cheers rang out from the Boars on the boundary; Snakehips had notched his half-century, and what a brilliant innings it had been. He’d mixed an anchor mentality with an attacking one, to claim his first 50 in at least four years. Just for good measure, he pulled JP’s next ball for four as well; not for the first time, JP greeted his own bowling with a cry of “Oh, shit!” before the ball had even been hit. Typical of the great sport he is, though, he’d been the first one to congratulate Richard.

 

Into the 34^th over we went, and under darkening skies, we needed just four runs to win. Richard played out Scooby’s first ball, then pulled his second ball to the boundary – and we’d won. With just ten balls remaining in a match that saw just two no-balls bowled on a dog of a wicket, we’d secured victory by five wickets. Andrew and Richard had put on 43 in 44 balls, and Richard was 56 not out. What an innings from Andrew, who now has a reputation for keeping a cool head in a crisis. His 22 not out contained three fours and that smoking six, and without his unflustered, attacking approach I doubt we’d have chased that target down. It had been a pulsating game, with nobody outright favourite until that big six had been hit, and an absolute pleasure to play in. The Boars have had plenty of these defeats, but they never hurt: a great day’s cricket has been enjoyed. You don’t get that when you’re asked to chase 400 in two hours.

 

Richard Ackerman clearly likes batting at The Warren. The last time a Merton team had played there had been 2015; I remember the day well for all the wrong reasons, as it was my first day as captain of the Sunday team that would soon adopt the ‘Boars’ moniker. We played at home, against Hook and Southborough, and were bowled out for 53 chasing 170 (we had been 32/9). This was the days before WhatsApp and Facebook updates, so we knew nothing about what had happened to the other Sunday team, led by Bob Egan, down at The Warren against the Camels, until they returned to the clubhouse. As we enjoyed our third or fourth post-match beer, they wandered in and regaled us with tales of a ten-wicket win. I thought they were joking; they weren’t. Richard Ackerman and Graham “Faz” Fazackerley had chased down 164 in 33 overs, Richard finishing unbeaten on 86. Which meant that, in the two innings Richard had most recently played at The Warren, he’d scored 142 runs and not been dismissed, and shepherded his team to victory on both occasions. Additionally, he hadn’t looked like being dismissed either.

 

The ex-coppers had all gone home by the time we’d packed our bags, cleared our rubbish and strolled back to the bar area; those that had watched some of the game had obviously thought the cricket to be criminal, supped up and left. Both teams had beers or soft drinks on order, and the air was filled with cricket talk between the two sets of players (who are, and hopefully always will be, good friends). Then, via WhatsApp, came the shocking news that both the Rhinos and the Eagles had lost…meaning the Boars had been the only Merton team to win over the weekend. There is no competition between the teams as we want all Merton teams to win their games, but it was a little smidge of icing on an already-attractive cake. Boars? Top dogs? For one day, just one day, it was nice to bask in the glow.