Game Day #8 - Park Hill: Seven Tosses For Seven Losses

Game Day #8 brought us to Ewell, to the Old Haileyburians Sports Ground to be precise; a place we’ve visited before, but to play the team formerly known as Deando Ruxley and now know as plain old Ewell. We were there to play Park Hill; nobody had ever played against them before, but a measured scan of their season’s results on Play Cricket – the fount of all knowledge for Sunday captains; our Opta index, the kind of thing Sam Allardyce would praise to the heavens if he played our game – promised a team similar to my Boars. Sometimes they’d make less than a hundred, sometimes they’d get to 160/170 and set up a real good game. And so that was what we were all hoping for, after two chastening Sundays had brought the kind of beatings likely to sap at morale and enthusiasm.

I’d already decided to bat first if I won the toss, purely as a result of the forecasted weather: hot, hot, hot. Fielding first is good to get everyone in the game, but if there’s a chance to expose the oppo to the hottest weather of the day, and you think your batting is strong enough, then you take that chance. Selection had been easier this week, with no dropouts once the team had been picked.

But first, there was the small matter of England playing in the World Cup. Their game against Panama kicked off at 1pm, and our game was due to start half an hour later; would we be up for a delayed start, asked their skipper, so we could all watch the first half of the football? Of course we were. And so we all camped down in their wonderfully roomy and well-furnished clubhouse, and spent the next forty-five minutes marvelling at a different kind of England team actually demolish a minnow, rather than our normal constipated 2-0 win. With it being 5-0 at half-time, the oppo skipper and I went out to toss confident that England weren’t going to have lost 6-5 when we came in for tea.

Out we went to toss, and yet again I called correctly – “heads” is my word of 2018. That is now seven triumphant tosses in a row, and I dare any other Merton captain to say they’ve done that. I must’ve set a record. Sadly, none of them are followed by a victory, and so ‘Seven Tosses For Seven Losses’ should be the name of a Broadway musical instead of our season’s record. Ho hum.

The pitch looked flat and mostly grassless, with just some patches on a good length right in front of where all the batters would be standing. And batters was the right word to use, not batsmen – for, in Park Hill’s ranks, was Clare Daniels, the first female player I’ve seen in an opposition (I picked my thirteen year-old daughter to play for us last year, so we’ve selected a mixed team before but never faced one) for a 40-over match. Inevitably, one or two eyebrows were raised her way, especially as she’d been seen bringing in the sandwiches for the tea interval – you know the kind of thing, “Oh, the tea lady’s on the pitch” etc. But for those of us who just like to watch cricket, regardless of the sex of the players, our eyebrows stayed jammed to our foreheads. Ominously for us, she looked fit and raring to go – hardly a makeweight. She would soon show us what she was capable of.

Richard and I opened the batting and faced Lawn, their opening bowler. Dreams of settling in for the first ten overs were rudely shattered on the second ball as Richard played forward, momentarily lost his balance, and was castled by an accurate underarm throw from the wicket-keeper. Maybe watching the football had relaxed us a little too much; suddenly, after two balls of the match, we were 0/1. I stood and stared at the crease that Richard had just departed; had I dreamt it? I couldn’t believe it. Aleem saw off the rest of the over and got a single to face Manson from the other end; his first over was wayward as he struggled to find his bearings, and Aleem took full toll to notch the first two boundaries of the innings. Amidst the wides, Lawn was bowling a nagging middle-stump line and getting balls to lift into the body; after four overs, I still hadn’t scored a run. The pitch was offering late swing and awkward bounce, and when I was straightened up by a good ball from Lawn and outside-edged it into my stumps, the collapse was on. Alex B was bowled by Lawn two overs later, complaining that the wicket-keeper had been talking from the run-up to the delivery, and Dave B perished caught behind to Manson, who had sorted his line and was bowling really well. We were 18-4, and my head was in my hands. Our top five suddenly had more ducks in a row than Hilda Ogden had on her wall in Coronation Street back in the ‘70’s.

Aleem had only been able to score one run in eight overs when Joe got to the crease, who promptly pulled his first ball for four. Enter Daniels to the bowling attack (Lawn had 3-3 after five overs), who was right on the money from her first ball. Her first over was a maiden; the second ball of her second over cleaned up Joe for five. We were 30-5 with almost a third of the innings played, and I well and truly had my Captain Grumpy head on, thumping the table and muttering darkly to myself. If I could’ve smashed a chair in frustration I would, so instead I stomped back to the clubhouse – just in time to see Panama score a goal against England (we’d bagged a sixth by then) to try and clear my head. And then it struck me that my Boars team is just like the Panama’s of this world, and that our day would mirror theirs: smaller gains that we’d have to celebrate passionately, in the face of a likely large beating.

Debutant Abdul joined a clearly frustrated Aleem at the crease, and added some attacking intent to the innings. Daniels had 1-2 after three overs but Abdul hit her for two fours, before perishing to the same bowler one over later. Drinks had just been taken and we were now 49-6; Aleem had scored one run in seventeen overs, and angrily threw his bat away after another back-foot punch went straight to a fielder.

Then came Johnny M, “The Steriliser”, who for the first couple of overs of his innings was also known as Louie, the King of the Swingers from ‘The Jungle Book’. Between them, Aleem and Johnathan finally got the scoreboard ticking over and also managed to find the boundary a few times – Johnathan in particular playing some crunching straight drives. The more he batted the better he got, until their partnership of forty was ended by the returning Manson. It had been his best, most composed innings to date for Merton; crucially, despite the lean overs, Aleem was still out there, holding the innings together. Ian Bawn – now known as Treadstone, according to Richard – went out and accelerated the scoring as he always does, with both Jeavons and the returning Lawn conceding boundaries. We finally reached the team hundred and could dream of a defendable total, but with a couple of overs left, Treadstone gave Jeavons the charge and was stumped. Our last three overs only yielded six runs, but we’d compiled 119-8 and wickets 5-8 had put 89 runs on the board – considering where had our innings had been at drinks, that was a mighty fine achievement. Aleem was still there at the end, having literally chiselled out 34 and not happy with his contribution, but if it hadn’t been for him the match might have already been all over.

We retired to a lovely tea, to find England had beaten Panama 6-1 and had already qualified for the knockout stages, but England’s cricketers were sliding to an improbable defeat against an Aussie team we all wanted to see whitewashed. With the pitch getting slower all the time, I let Joe – the slowest, and canniest, slinger of pies at the club – know that he’d be opening the bowling (last year, an opposition actually put his name down in the book as “Bentos” as they’d heard somebody call him it) with Killer Smither at the other end. I set the field for some big booming drives against Joe’s finest steak and kidney, and wasn’t disappointed; from ball one, Joe had the batters either defending stoutly or trying to whack him over Cow Corner. A succession of play-and-miss efforts had us hoping that early wickets would turn the game our way, but any sliced aerial shots were ominously dropping either side of fielders. At the other end, Killer bowled one loose ball that was pulled for four but then applied the strangler’s tourniquet and was, at times, close to unplayable; Aleem was keeping brilliantly as the bounce became more uneven and the bats resembled windmill blades. Opener Prem looked troubled by the bowling but was still keeping the scoreboard ticking over, until his partner Lush was removed in the tenth over. He tried to hoik Joe’s chicken and mushroom special over mid-off but instead offered an appetising catch to Killer, who made no mistake. Shortly after, it was John’s turn to be rewarded as a wonderful yorker crashed into Blake’s stumps and, whisper it – with the run rate slower than ours – we were back in the game.

Drinks came and went with Park Hill needing more runs per over than they’d needed at the start of the innings, but we still weren’t in the wickets. Having taken over from Joe’s end, Abdul was bowling brilliantly to slow the scoring even further; Sam, at the other end, struggled for line and length but was still producing the kind of deliveries that couldn’t be scored off. Abdul bowled through his seven overs; despite deserving a wicket or two, a globe would be notched in his wickets column. Treadstone came on and struck almost instantly; Goldsborough, who had played well with Prem in keeping the score ticking, was trapped in front and given out lbw. We were running out of time, though, and shortly after Prem notched a gritty, patient 50, the winning runs were scored to secure a seven-wicket win for Park Hill. There were only 25 balls left in the match, prompting another of those “What if?” scenarios: what if we’d scored another twenty or so runs, or taken another couple of wickets? Surely it would’ve been another last-over thriller. Still, it wasn’t to be. Pride can be taken from the fact we’d run them so, so close after posting what had been an ultimately disappointingly low total, and we’d made a real game of it. For the second time this season, Aleem hadn’t conceded a single bye behind the wicket, to cement a growing reputation for being one of the best keepers at the club.

The teams congratulated each other, then discovered that England’s cricketers hadn’t handed Australia a freebie, get-out-of-jail win after all, but had nicked a one-wicket win due to more brilliance from Jos Buttler. Alongside Lewis Hamilton’s win and Harry Kane’s hat-trick, it had been a great day for English sport. The clubhouse Guinness was very cold and went down very well, as those of us who stayed behind reflected on the day we’d had. One of these days, somebody’s going to cop a beating from us; I just hope it’s sooner rather than later. Maybe I need to lose the toss to break the hoodoo.

Our other two Sunday teams, the Wolves and the Rhinos, met with contrasting fortunes; the Wolves went down to a final-over defeat at home to Queensbury, and the Rhinos won a bum-nipper against Southbank by just nine runs.

Time to think of a cricket-based musical, seeing as I already have the title, and give Lord Lloyd-Webber a call. “Seven Tosses For Seven Losses”? It’s a smash!

Game Day #7: Old Wimbledonians - Where's The Beef?

Father’s Day; the perfect day for a nice bit of slow-matured, four year-old, prime beef. Not the beef you can eat in copious amounts at your nearest Toby Carvery, sadly, but the kind of beef anonymous twentysomething rappers indulge in over Twitter and through song lyrics. And, four years ago during this very fixture, I savoured my first – and hopefully, only – taste of cricketing beef as a captain.

Firstly, though, the preparations through the week had been mixed; player numbers, although healthy as always, saw four players I wanted to select for my team drafted in to the other two Sunday teams, the Wolves and the Rhinos. There wouldn’t be any real pace in the bowling attack, and the batting wouldn’t be as ardent as it had been in recent weeks. This left me hoping for two things: that the Old Wimbledonians team we were to face would be the Campions, as they are called, who – from their Play Cricket scorecards – appeared to be nearer to our level. If it was to be the Fishers, their stronger team, I knew we’d be in a bit of trouble, certainly with the ball. Regardless of all that, we would always have our indomitable Boars spirit; that unique part of my team’s DNA that has the ability to endure long stints in the field, chasing the ball, and end the game with a laugh and a shrug of the shoulders.

The Father’s Day present my daughters got me was an unlimited supply of grief and bitchfits; I can’t recall ever hearing the words “Happy Father’s Day” escape from the lips of either of them. No ironic “Beer Hunter” or “Six Pack/Six Gallons” T-shirts that you find every year in supermarkets, that are always code for “My Dad Is A Fat, Lazy, Useless, Out To Seed B****rd”…how I used to chortle, back in the day, when I used to receive those. No Status Quo ‘Greatest Hits’, no ‘Top Gear’ DVD’s, no cards featuring a cricketer playing a dreadful shot. Such is life. All I wanted was a win. Just one win. Is that too much for a fat, lazy, useless, out to seed b****rd to ask for?

And so we made our way to Raynes Park, on what had become an unseasonably cold day; the skies were permanently grey and always threatening to dump a river of rain on us, and the wind was strong and biting. The Boars welcomed a new player called John R, who’d described himself to me as a guy in his forties who can bat and bowl a bit…to which I replied, “you’ll fit in just nicely”. Of the two pitches at Old Wimbledonians I’d hoped to be on the front one – the show pitch – as it is nearest to the clubhouse and has an electronic scoreboard. As soon as we arrived, however, we were pointed to the back pitch – which, upon inspection, was in pretty good nick with plenty of short green patches up and down it, and surrounded by what looked to be generously short boundaries. Seating on such pitches is always something of a rarity, that’s the downside of playing on ‘back’ pitches – you’re open to the elements if you aren’t fully prepared for all eventualities. Freeze or fry – you do what the weather wants you to do.

A familiar face came out as OWCC skipper – Dean, who I’d played against when he was a player for Graces, warmly welcomed us and we went out to do the toss. He knew that we weren’t at our strongest and had made efforts to mix up more of their two teams, which was nice of him to do. For the first time this season, I didn’t want to win the toss as I didn’t know what to do first; with stronger batting I’d have taken first use of the strip, especially when I learned that a certain Will Markham was playing for OW. More on him in a minute, but it would have been a good toss to lose; unfortunately, I won it. That means I’ve won six tosses out of six so far this season, so if nothing else I am the best tosser at Merton Cricket Club. Call me that, and I’ll simply smile and give you the thumbs-up – you aren’t offending me, just stating a fact. At least I’m winning in one respect!

Yes, Will Markham. I was hoping very much that he wouldn’t be playing, simply because he’s one of the best batsman I’ve come across on Sundays. According to Play Cricket he’d scored a hundred the previous week, and four years ago scored 119 against what was a decent Merton team with almost effortless ease. Will is a batsman who isn’t violent or a risk-taker, but strokes the ball for four and never seems to hit the ball too hard. And it was he, unbeknown to him, that was the cause of my beef four years ago. On that day, in 2015, we bowled first with only ten men (nine for thirty minutes, while Richard Ackerman changed his trousers in the car park), and had OW pinned down. Only Will stood tall as we picked away at their top and middle order, who resorted to wild swings for runs and were top-edging the ball to us for catches. The first flashpoint came when Sohaib bowled the only short ball of our innings, but as the pitch was flat it didn’t get above hip-height. The batsman was fifteen years old and playing the bowling well. But that wasn’t good enough for Garfield, their umpire, who came sprinting over to me from square leg full of fire and fury, admonishing me for letting my bowlers bowl bouncers at a kid, as he called him. For a moment I calmly debated the fact it hadn’t been a bouncer, before suggesting that we agree to disagree and get on with the game. Will had been making serene progress until Sohaib had him caught and bowled, on 91, with a low full-toss. A full two seconds after Sohaib takes the catch, the umpire pipes up: “No ball”. It had, according to him, been an above waist-height full-toss. By now I was feeling sore, and after Will had notched his century and added the rest of his runs, he was run out by half the length of the pitch. Not according to the same umpire, who said he thought Will had made his ground. Everyone erupted, including normally-placid characters such as Tony H and Richard, until Will took matters into his own hands and left the pitch of his own accord. And so the innings ended with them on 209 all out and on a pretty sour note; Will, having scored all but 90 of their total runs, had made 28 more runs after his reprieve. The margin of our subsequent defeat? 28 runs. As our final wicket fell, Garfield sprinted over to me as I umpired at square leg and was first to energetically shake my hand. How I didn’t tell him to sod off, I don’t know. Next year, seethed the voice inside my head, next year. Only next year didn’t come; OW only had eight players for the 2016 fixture, and pulled out on the Tuesday. I’d been stoked up, pumped up, I’d drilled the players and wound them up. We would’ve been taking a wrecking ball to Old Wimbledonians; a juggernaut of a cricket team in ability and attitude. Then, it was cancelled. In the time it took to read an email, twelve months of rolling thunder was transformed into a wet fart.

And so all my beef had been consumed by the time this match had started. Upon winning the toss, I decided to field first. I didn’t trust the batting to be as malleable as in recent weeks, so I thought it best that the bowlers got a proper bowl - especially after the previous week’s Southfields blitzkrieg. Sam W and Rob took the new ball and soon discovered that the pitch had absolutely nothing in it for them; Markham and Parker opened the batting and were soon scoring at seven an over. A sharp catching chance came my way at mid-off from Rob’s bowling but I couldn’t hold on to it. The boundaries came briskly as Sam and Rob gave way to Killer and John R, and it was John R – on his Boars debut – who finally got the batsmen guessing. He was getting the ball to turn, and suddenly top-edges were being drawn from both batsmen. Disaster struck when Rob, chasing a ball to the boundary, pulled up limping, and confirmed that his hamstring had gone. The rest of us proceeded to field as if our hamstrings had gone as well, although they hadn’t. Rob had only bowled four of his allotted seven overs and would need a runner while batting.

On the stroke of drinks, and with the score around 150 already, Will went for a big drive and sliced the ball high to where I was fielding. This time I held on, and we had finally broken through. That brought skipper Dean to the crease, and although we managed to slow them down a little over the remainder of the innings they were still scoring at around eight runs per over. Dean was steering the ball both sides of the wicket to the boundary, and respite came when the much-improved Johnny M – with a smoother, sleeker run-up – got Parker to hole out to Sam W at a deepish mid-on. Despite a quick juggle that included the use of his jumper, Sammy held on and “The Steriliser” had cleaned up for his wicket. That was our last breakthrough, as Dean and Rory saw them through to 264-2 after 35 overs, Rory finishing the innings with a six.

We trooped off to the clubhouse chastened and disappointed; our fielding hadn’t been great, resulting in us taking more than two and a half hours to bowl our thirty five overs. In a way, we’ve become the Merton cricket equivalent of FC  Barcelona; they keep the ball on the ground, and so do we – when we’re passing it between ourselves, and back to the bowler. Tiki taka cricket: you don’t see the ball in the air when we’re fielding. Maybe we should start bowling pea-rollers too.

And then we ran into something on the tea table that made us all forget the fetching and carrying we’d just been doing: warm fish finger sandwiches. To say we dived in would be an understatement; we attacked them with the kind of gusto Jack the Ripper used to treat prostitutes with. Like piranha fish stripping a victim to its bones, you could see the pattern of the tray beneath the sandwiches in about twenty seconds flat. Mexico were playing Germany on the big screen, and only those people backing Germany in their assorted sweepstakes didn’t cheer when Mexico scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game. Alas, we lost John R at this point: an emergency meant he had to leave the ground and miss out on batting. It was a shame, as he’d been the pick of the bowlers and had, indeed, slotted in nicely with the Boars.

Richard and I opened the batting, against Baksh and Ali who opened the bowling for OW. Realistically, we weren’t in the game, but that didn’t stop us putting away the bad ball until Ali – fast and bouncy – got a full one to breach The Earl’s defences; a shame, as Richard is in good form this season. We’d put on 27 in even time, and OW had also lost a player to make it ten apiece. Aleem came out to bat and instantly played a cracking pull shot to the boundary, which we were finding quite regularly. We took no chances with Ali’s bowling and saw him off, but now Aran from the other end – after a couple of expensive overs – had found his radar, getting full balls to swing dangerously late both ways. It was he that struck next, getting Aleem out with a carbon-copy of his previous weeks’ dismissal, a bottom edge that lifted the bails from a ball that didn’t get above knee height. Aran then bowled Alex M with a peach; extra bounce pierced Alex’s defence and gently lifted the bails, as delicately as you like, off the stumps. Drinks came and we were 74/3, rattling along at four an over. The pitch held no demons provided you took notice of the bounce; could a couple of extra batsmen have put OW’s score under real pressure?

Aran was well into his rhythm now and bowled The Steriliser and Hassan with identical balls, either side of me bringing up a fifty. I was enjoying a tussle with Ryan; tall and skiddy, getting it to lift into my gloves or forearm, but giving me some half-volleys outside off to drive to the boundary. Sujanan came out and survived some scary moments, and together we added another twenty runs. Scoring was now much harder after Will Markham entered the attack; suddenly, he was getting turn and bounce with no bad balls to take toll of. At the other end, Josh bowled me a half-tracker that kept low; I greedily went to pull it for six, only to top-edge it into my mouth instead. Maybe I’d thought he’d bowled me a pork pie instead. After checking that all of my teeth were still in one piece, I had a rush of blood at Will, hit high enough but not long enough, and departed. The end came shortly after, as 102/5 slid to 103/9 and all out.

And so, another heavy defeat for the Boars. A stronger team would have posted a stiffer challenge, but OW were worthy winners and were a nice bunch as well, and well-captained by Dean. We’ll return there next year, and I was pleased that any lingering bad smells from the 2015 encounter had been expunged and dispersed, and a game of Sunday cricket between two friendly teams had been played without incident or controversy. The beef will simply have to go back in the freezer – for now. There’s always an idiot or two lurking around the corner, and there’s still a lot of the season to go…

Game Day #6 - Southfields: The Ghost Of Mismatches Past...

Patience is a virtue, especially if you're booking cricket fixtures - and this particular fixture proved that maxim is still correct, all these years after being first coined. I stepped in to help our Fixture Sec book a raft of fixtures back in March when she went abroad for a fortnight for work, and my general approach has been "if you see it, book it, get it out of the way". On the whole, this has worked...until my Boars team played Southfields, who also go under the nom de plume Tooting United, on Sunday. Having perused the various fixture websites over the last couple of weeks, primarily to help the newly-formed Saturday 3rds to find fixtures, I'd been amazed at how many teams were asking for a Sunday fixture as well having been blown out by their organised oppo. Teams that were similar in strength and set-up to us, as opposed to - as we were about to discover - Southfields/ Tooting United. How I wished I'd been a bit more patient...

The day itself started on a positive note. The previous day had seen no less than four centuries scored across the three Saturday teams - unprecedented in Merton Cricket Club's recent history, and possibly its full history - and the Sunday buzz was livelier than usual. The weather was glorious; nice and sunny with a cooling breeze, and the pitch once again looked like a 'bat first' jobbie. After the drama of the previous week's last-ball, one-wicket defeat against Flying Ducksmen, confidence was brimming through what was a much-changed Boars team, and I was determined to bat first if the toss fell favourably for me once again. Atul had been initially picked but became unavailable on the Saturday morning, and so in stepped Peter Morcombe, the "Muscles" of Merton (it's a Uni nickname, he says). The batting had been bolstered and the bowling hadn't been weakened at all, so although sad to lose Atul I was still pleased with the make-up of the team.

Southfields players began to arrive; their contact, Sohaib, plays League cricket for us and so is always a friendly face. His team had been described as "Sohaib and the mates he nicked from Kingstonian"; yes, said somebody else, the League-playing mates he'd nicked from Kingstonian. Oh, dear. I knew it would be a harder game than the Ducksmen, and had said so in my team email during the week - certainly, their approach to batting would be markedly different - but it suddenly dawned on me that it would be a much harder task than originally planned for. Omar turned up to watch the game, I thought; he's another of the guys that plays League cricket for us, and is a great batsman. Only he hadn't come to watch - he'd come to play. For them. Oh, dear.

I duly won the toss to make it five out of five for the season, and opted to bat first. Then we received an offer to mix up the two teams to make a more competitive match; I respectfully turned the offer down as I wanted my team to embrace the challenge, however daunting it now looked to be. And so Andrew Suggitt and I padded up and went out to bat as the clock struck one-thirty, and I took the first over. The bowler, Naqash, started from the Clubhouse End and was quick but getting no movement, so I gratefully drove one through backward-square for the first boundary of the match. Raja, a left-armer from the Kingston Road End, bowled the first over of what proved to be a miserly spell and conceded no runs; then a straight drive off Naqash brought the first of several mini-delays that blighted the first hour or so. The ball nestled under one of the covers, and it took several minutes and several players looking for it to find it; maybe I can blame the delay for what happened next ball. I'd told myself to brace for a bouncer and it duly came, but it bounced so high that Chewbacca would have had trouble getting a bat to it. Nevertheless, I recklessly swung at it as it looped about five feet above my head and top-edged it to square leg. I stomped off, fuming; it's my duty as captain and opener to not play irresponsible shots like that, and I felt I'd let the team down. Alex B, "The Grenadier", was next in and manage to break his bat without even facing a ball; delay #2 came as his replacement bat had to be retrieved from the changing rooms. "I hope he doesn't get out first ball now", said somebody - thankfully, he didn't. He blocked his first one, then belted his next one for four. After exchanging more boundaries with Suggs - which brought about delay #3 as the ball went in the bushes and no less than four fielders didn't want to go in and fetch it - delay #4 came when AB decided he didn't need his helmet any more and asked for one of us to come and get it! By now, it was half past two and we'd had just eleven overs of action. The Southfields fielders were getting frustrated at the slowness of the game, as was the Tea-Meister Christine, but their frustrations were then eased when Suggs was trapped leg before with the score on 40 to Raja. 40-2 became 40-3 as AB was bowled having a swing at Ahmed, which brought Muscles and Aleem together. We'd been well and truly bogged down again, a weekly habit we seem to have picked up; in the space of six overs we'd scored just two runs, and one of them had been a no-ball. But Muscles and Aleem were instantly in the runs, swapping singles and hitting some cracking boundaries - Aleem's pull-shot to the long boundary was one for the memory, and Muscles was lofting and driving fours with class and ease.

Drinks came, and the guys had pulled us up to four an over which meant we were on for something very defendable when it came to our turn to bowl. That hinged on Muscles and Aleem staying around for at least another ten overs, but disaster struck with fourteen overs left. Aleem feathered away an innocuous ball, only for it to roll onto the stumps and disturb the off-bail. It proved to be the turning point. Aleem was disgusted with himself but had no need to be; it was a fluke, and he'd put on 68 great runs with Muscles to pull the Boars back to the mark. Eleven runs later, Muscles was adjudged lbw for a well-made and entertaining 44, including nine boundaries, and the collapse was on: 119-5 became 119-7. Oddly enough, the quicker bowlers were now into the attack, and bouncers were flying at John Smither's head. "Killer" took great offence at this and charged at the bowler's next ball; again, it was short of a length, but Killer managed only to slap it straight down the fielder's throat at cover point. Naqash then cleaned up Sam Wyld for his third wicket, and after 108-3 and 119-4 we'd been hustled out for 128. Several "what if's" permeated our innings; it didn't take a genius to work out that we were well short of runs. Still, we ate well at the tea break; another fantastic spread was consumed with loads left over for the post-match wind-down. 

News spread via WhatsApp that Matty Holmes had spanked the weekend's fifth century, for the Sunday Rhinos down at Mitcham, in what was his first match of the season. They were in the box-seat, and the Sunday Wolves had posted a competitive total somewhere in Croydon. This is where my plans came in. I'd known all week that Southfields would be hitters; I also knew we didn't have the pace to bowl back of a length as the stock ball to pin their batsmen in the crease and use the full ball as the shock ball, so we were going to pitch it up, wicket to wicket, let them swing at everything, and have men on the boundary right from ball one to take the inevitable catching chances that were going to come our way.

We took to the field, the players were given their positions, and Sam Wyld was given the new ball. The first two balls were dots: then, the third ball. Sam dropped it short, Sohaib leant back and pulled it straight to the midwicket boundary...straight to where the fielder had been positioned. We watched as the trajectory dipped, the fielder's hands were set, and the ball went straight in. I jumped in celebration, as did Aleem the wicket-keeper, and whooped with joy. The plan had worked brilliantly; Sohaib had fallen for it, and paid for it with his wicket.

Two seconds later, an unidentified voice piped up from square leg: "He's dropped it."

I nearly sank to my haunches, in a way that would make a man with sciatica scream out in pain. It was the sort of catching chance that only paid and highly-trained professionals take; it hit the fielder's hands at probably the same speed it left Sohaib's bat, and in the end it was a brilliant effort to take the catch. I certainly wouldn't have backed myself to catch it. But boy, did Sohaib make the most of his extra life. He hit the ball harder than anyone we've faced this season; anything that left his bat wasn't worth chasing if it had found a gap. He hit it through long-off, long-on, and pulled sixes that threatened the woodwork and glasswork of the houses on Cannon Hill Lane. From the other end, Rob was bowling really well and getting the batters to play and miss in amongst the flurry of violent hitting, and it was he that made the breakthrough in the eight over, getting one to move off the seam and rock back off and middle stump. Sohaib was out, but not after he'd completed his fifty. Ian Bawn came on from the Kingston Road End and nullified the hitting with his cutters, but the batters were simply going after the bowling at the other end and showing zero mercy: Sujanan, Killer and Muscles all had a go but Southfields were swinging at everything, like Pete Townshend during a Who concert.

The end came in the 20th over; the target had been reached with just the one wicket lost. We were beaten and slightly chastened, but not humiliated. Tyson Fury had had his comeback fight the previous night, nineteen stones and a fat stomach against a fifteen-stone former light-heavyweight, and from all accounts it was four rounds of showboating before the fighting started and the mismatch was brought to a stop. Well, our match was of a similar vein - there'd been a little showboating from them towards the end, when they decided to walk a single, stop in the middle, have a chat and a laugh before changing their minds, to which I verbally objected my displeasure - and, earlier in the day when Sam Wyld had been bowled, the bowler decided to laugh loudly about it. Such things make it easier to bring out the red pen when sorting out the fixtures for the next season, but for now it was time to close the ground down, have a drink and a laugh, lick our wounds and look forward to matches to come. Today had been frustrating because I'd hoped that we'd seen off these kinds of mismatched fixtures from the calendar, and it had been down to me and my lack of patience that it crept in. We don't have any more fixtures like this in 2018, or so I hope - we've said that before. It was, also, just as well we'd batted first; if we'd bowled first, seeing how they went about trying to hit the skin off every ball they faced, we'd have easily conceded between 300-400. 

Next week, we're off up the road to Raynes Park, and Old Wimbledonians are hosting us. Personally, it'll be my first visit there since an "eventful" match in 2015, and I've been itching to get back there ever since. It's also Father's Day, and what better present than a win - besides a "My Dad Loves 1970's Cock/Mock Rock" double CD collection - could there possibly be?

Game Day #5: The Flying Ducksmen (home) - "What a wicked game you play..."

After two weeks on the road, we returned to the John Innes Theatre of Dreams for a home game against one of our favourite opponents, the Flying Ducksmen. They are one of those teams that epitomises Sunday cricket: very sociable, always play in the right spirit, but still competitive. Later on, talk filtered down from one of our other Sunday teams that they'd encountered some unpleasant stuff from the team they'd played; stuff you don't expect to experience during Saturday League cricket, never mind Sunday friendly cricket. Needless to say, they've already been scratched from next year's fixture lists, whereas the Ducksmen are always a must-play fixture, win or lose.

Two years ago, this very fixture played out an encounter that still rates as my most satisfying day as a captain, a day when absolutely everything fell into place for us. I remember a bright, sunny day and winning the toss, and for once - despite serious misgivings - I chose to bat first. An Aussie bloke called Will was playing just his second Merton game, and proceeded to stroke the best century I've seen on a Sunday to help us post 201-2. Going into the last over, he needed fifteen runs for his ton and we needed fifteen for two hundred; both milestones were reached off the last ball, sparking some joyous celebrations from the rest of us outside the clubhouse. Will is ridiculously laid-back; it took him a while to realise he'd actually scored a hundred! We didn't have a lot of bowling that day, but what we did have in the attack was pretty special; Atul bowled ten unplayable overs and took 3-6, James Hurst 4-35. Young Johnathan announced himself to the club by taking an absolute rocket of a catch at midwicket, and then surviving when Arjun - who'd bowled the ball - jumped up and down all over him in celebration. Eventually, after a late rally, we bowled them out for 167 and won by thirty-four runs. At the risk of sounding like I've stolen my fellow captain James P's joke book, they had players called Mackrell and Fish and we'd reeled them in. Last year's fixture, by contrast, was a damp squib for us; we bowled well enough but let them score too many, then started a run-chase in first gear and never got out of it; a constipated three runs per over on average saw us limp to 120-odd for five and a 50-run defeat.

For the 2018 fixture, I'd already decided to bat first; in fact, I made the decision at around 6pm on the following Sunday. Our batting against Morden, on a very good batting track, had been dogged but also, crucially, hadn't been blown away easily; quite the opposite. As I've said before, I always prefer to field first to give everyone a game, but there comes a time when you get fed up of taking the hottest of the day's heat and giving the oppo first use of what are regularly becoming batting tracks. All I needed to do was wait seven days and win the toss..

Before that, and after selecting a very balanced side, came a couple of injury scares to potentially derail my plans; Richard, the Earl of Merton and our esteemed Chairman, had injured his foot climbing over a stile in the countryside during a Bank Holiday walk, and then Sam E woke up one morning to find he couldn't open one of his eyes due to picking up a massive stye. Thankfully, Sam was good to go on the morning of the match, despite looking like he'd been watching Britain's Got Talent and had tried to scoop out his eye with a spoon at the horror of it all. Richard's place was taken by Sahir, who had hit the winning runs in a League match the previous day, and so my nerves fluttered happily away. What hadn't helped my frame of mind was listening to my two daughters indulging in what I call 'bitch-fits', and as it had been half-term all week, it had gone a little something like this:-

Daughter #1: "The sky is blue today."
Daughter #2: "No, it isn't!!!!!" (It was blue, by the way)
Daughter #1: "Go away and leave me alone."
Daughter #2: "Why are you being horrible to me? DAD! TELL HER! Get me a drink! I'm hungry! I'm tired! I'm bored! You're a mean father!"
ad infinitum

Half-term is code for "hostage situation"; the nine days' break between school days feels, for me, roughly the same length of time as it was for Terry Waite between 1986 and 1991. On the day they go to back to school, I actually feel like Terry Waite must've done the day his five years in captivity came to and end: relief, that it was finally all over. During these weeks, Sunday's game is something I cling to like a favourite teddy at bedtime; I'll even repetitively babble "roll on cricket, roll on cricket" while I wait for sleep to overwhelm me, and dream of opening the batting at The Oval...

The Ducksmen arrived for the 2pm start, Robin Mackrell - skipper for the day - called incorrectly at the toss (something I haven't lost yet this season) and I had no hesitation in saying those four magic words: "We'll have a bat". The Earl had recovered sufficiently from his country stile attack to come down for the day, and soon assumed the mantle of scorebook meister (and what a great job he did as well). Young Johnathan, 'The Steriliser", opened the batting with me on what looked a really good batting strip; oddly, there was a foot-wide green strip that ran the length of the pitch from leg stump to leg stump (for a left-hander), similar to the one used in ball-tracking replays, and we wondered what the bounce would be like if the bowlers got the ball to hit it. Grenville and Mackrell took the new ball and, after bowling a couple of wide ones, began to find their range, getting the kind of pace and bounce our home pitches had lacked all season; I hooked one good-length ball from Grenville - that flew off the afore-mentioned green strip - off the tip of my nose for a couple of runs. After a couple of singles, the same bowler got one to hold its line to Johnathan and cleaned him up, bringing Sam to the crease. Twenty-five runs later, and with Sam looking very comfortable batting at 3, Grenville got one to really pop up and balloon off his bat, dropping nicely into gully's hands. We were rattling along at four an over; Alex M came in and played very sensibly; he's getting to grips with batting, and was leaving anything alone outside off that he might have slashed at in previous weeks. He picked up a couple of singles, but then perished to a beauty from the Ducksmen's best bowler, Chris Fish. I'd put him over long-on for four in his first over; over his entire eight-over spell, there were only five more scoring shots off his bowling. His ball to Alex pitched slightly outside off, turned and bounced, and took the top of off. Aleem came in and helped me rotate the strike; I'd hit a few fours but then got a bit bogged down as Philpot came on to bowl from the Clubhouse End and had me on toast trying to cut him outside off. The field by now had spread right out, with two men on either boundary and one at long-on, and most of our shots were going straight to them for one run at a time. Philpot then got Aleem out with the same jaffa-ball Fish had dismissed Alex with, and Sahir joined me. After surviving an early caught-and-bowled Sahir gradually found his form, taking singles and hitting the bad ball for four. I pulled a six over the midwicket boundary off Singh and then, finally, brought up my fifty with four off Grenville. Moments later I perished in what is becoming a frustratingly familiar style, punching Singh straight down mid-off's throat. Out came the Bawn Accelerator; a man who can always be relied upon to be positive and attacking. He and Sahir found the gaps well and 46 runs came from the next 42 balls, including two crunching sixes from Sahir's bat - one of them nearly decapitating Atul as he was receiving some throw-downs near the clubhouse. Ian then got out in the penultimate over, selflessly trying to hit out, and together Gopy and Sahir (39 not out) saw the Boars to 169-6. I was very pleased with that; we were in the game, especially after Fish and Philpot had bowled so well to slow us down between 15 and 30 overs. Fish finished with 1-12; I checked the scorecards from the previous two years, and out of his last 24 overs bowled at John Innes against us, thirteen of them have been maidens. Miser. 

The Ducksmen began their reply at 5pm, with Rory Thomas and Wade opening the batting. Atul and Killer opened the bowling and were immediately in their stride, also getting good pace and bounce from the wicket. Rory, though, was looking dangerous; anything over-pitched was smacked hard to the long-off and long-on boundaries. After fourteen overs had been bowled - and Rory surviving a sharp chance at first slip off Killer - they were 54 without loss, but then Jatin struck in his fourth over from the Clubhouse End. He got one to hold its line and pierce Rory's defence, and the death rattle rang out around John Innes. The relief was palpable. Four balls later, after being hit for four by Denis, Jatin pinned him to the crease with a ball that remained ankle-high; the umpire's finger went up and Jatin had struck twice in one over. The Boars were up and running and I looked to where Jatin's mum, a lovely lady who had come down with him to watch the cricket, was sitting. She had a look on her face as if to say "And about time too, son. I'm not impressed"...it's always the mums who are the hardest to please.

Drinks came and went, as did the sunshine, and the Boars attacked the fielding once more. J Fish and Wade, who'd been farming singles excellently, went for one risky run too many; a throw from Sahir was expertly received by Aleem, the stumps were broken, and Wade was on his way. We were now applying our own scoreboard pressure; Sam, back to his fiery best after a couple of weeks of injury, was steaming in from one end - perhaps mildly irked by the batsman's choice of a straw hat for headgear - while Gopy Singh, making his Boars debut, came on to bowl spin from the Kingston Road End and had the batsmen in knots. On another day he'd have taken five or six to himself; I was at short-ish cover, and I could actually heard the ball fizzing and whistling as it travelled from Gopy's hand to the batsman. He had to wait until his fifth over for his first wicket, bamboozling Singh with one that finally hit the stumps. Sam's serious pace finally got him his reward; Straw Hat Man - after being made to dance a couple of times - had his stumps shattered, and they were 95-5. With thirteen overs to go we were halfway towards our Holy Grail of a Boars win. Straw Hat Man had looked like a character from "The Wicker Man" (not the rubbish Nicolas Cage version, the original Christopher Lee one) when batting against Sam; at this point, I'd have happily sacrificed a Scottish police officer and a truckload of farmyard animals inside a giant wicker effigy if it'd guaranteed my lads a win.

It got even better; Gopy wrapped up his spell with yet another bowled victim, and three overs later the returning Atul picked up a deserved wicket to leave them 121-7. They were eight down an over later as The Steriliser entered the attack, got Grenville to heave across the line and hit the stumps. Only two wickets to go, but they needed less than a run a ball, and - crucially - Atul, Jatin and Gopy were all bowled out. It was now getting darker too; I was reticent to bowl Sam again because of the gloom, but gave him one more. Robin Mackrell and Chris Fish were now returning the reeling-in of 2016; their batting was everything you'd want at the tail-end of an exciting run-chase. They were calm and assured, and were now finding the gaps for ones and twos. Then, with just sixteen balls left and requiring sixteen to win, Fish spooned a skier to where I was standing at short midwicket. Having spilled every single one of these that have come my way over the years, I yelled with relief when the ball dropped into my waiting hands instead of hitting my breasts and tumbling to the floor. One wicket left; surely this was the moment. Surely?

The last over began. The Ducksmen were 157-9. Thirteen required off six balls, and the poisoned chalice of 'death bowler' was passed to Ian. But Mackrell was still there, playing a captain's innings; four runs came off the first two balls. Then, the fatal blow; a four down to the square leg boundary, piercing the gap between two fielders. The margin for error had gone. Four more runs came off the next two balls, to leave the scores tied with just one ball to come. Encased in gloom, and the wrong side of 7;30pm, the whole field swooped inside the circle. Ian bowled, Mackrell pushed forward and, as all the fielders scrambled towards the ball, both batsmen set off...and made their ground. The Ducksmen had won the game by one wicket, off the final ball of the match.

The Boars were devastated; more than one of us sunk to the turf. We'd given absolutely everything we had, and come up short by the narrowest margin you can get in cricket. For a moment I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole; I felt responsible for my team not getting over the line, as none of them deserved to be on the losing side. Then I remembered my responsibilities as captain, shook the hands of the batsmen, and congratulated them on their win. Both teams shook hands warmly as we left the field, but we were slightly more muted than usual - you could tell how much it had meant to us. And when you get so, so close to winning and don't make it, the thought starts to whirr around your head: "Will we ever win a game this season?"

Oddly enough, my head had cleared after about twenty minutes - the reason being that, if you have to lose, you lose like this. I can regale you for hours with tales of heavy beatings by cocky teams stuffed with ringers, horrendous mismatches that leave you feeling punch-drunk and in danger of diminishing your enthusiasm for the game. This was not one of those days. I was far moodier after the Morden game the previous Sunday, because of the two guys we'd run into. This week, we'd lost to a fantastic bunch of blokes who play the game we do and celebrated their win in a classy manner with a few beers afterwards. My team will come again, I'm sure of that; we've now proved to ourselves that, regardless of who is representing the Boars on a Sunday, we're a competitive outfit who will give anyone a game. On a happier note for Ian, the foul-smelling insect repellent he'd smeared all over his legs had saved his calves from receiving the same feasting the midges had had the previous week.

On a Sunday evening, we do a very Millennial thing of putting on the TV to listen to the radio. It's always the nice, mellow stuff from days gone by; none of us of a certain age need to be listening to German techno at nine o'clock at night. As I was maintaining my daughters' healthy living standards by microwaving them burger and chips, "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak filtered into the clubhouse. As I listened to the lyrics, it hit me: the song must have been written about cricket, and about days like this:-

"What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way,
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you..."

All week, I'd formulated plans to beat the Flying Ducksmen; I'd dreamed of it, and with seven overs left I could almost touch it. Then, cricket showed its cruel streak by snatching it from my hands. Is this what Chris Isaak had in mind when he wrote this song, and not - as the music video suggested - Helena Christensen dancing around a beach wearing only half of a two-piece bikini? All in all, I hope there's a different tune playing next week after we entertain Southfields; "Heroes" by David Bowie or "Celebration Day" by Led Zeppelin would be lovely.