Home, sweet home. After a few weeks on the road, the Boars
were back at the John Innes Theatre of Dreams for a game against a team
brand-new to the Merton itinerary: Plastics XI, a nomadic team that – from their
excellent blog – promised a friendly but competitive game of Sunday cricket.
After the grief and the unsavoury scenes from the previous week, I was looking
forward to something a little less fraught.
All of the talk pre-match was about a certain England player
avoiding getting jailed for affray, and then parachuted back into the team that
were playing at the same time as we were. I’m not completely aware of the
night-time manoeuvres undertaken by all of the guys at Merton, but I have known
players in the past for whom a piss-up and a punch-up at 3am on a Saturday/Sunday
isn’t affray, but merely pre-match conditioning and rehydration. We do have our
own ‘Rocky’ in Ian Crawford, but he’s a big pussycat! I wouldn’t wind him up,
mind…
My first job on arriving at the ground was to marvel at the
pitch that had been “prepared” for us…well, it’d had the lines marked on it,
and that was it. The grass was as lush as the rest of the square, and so –
after taking some advice – I decided to play on the previous day’s pitch. It
was still firm and in good condition, even after it had weathered nearly eighty
overs. After it had a roll and new crease lines painted, we were good to go.
The Boars welcomed the returned of Richard, Rocky, Abdul “The
Silver Fox” Hameed and Kaleem, and received William – aka “Big Ol’ Bill” – and Jake
for their Boars debuts. Charlie, the Plastics captain, and I went out to toss;
instinct screamed at me to bat first if I won, which I did, but I decided to
bowl instead. Charlie had said that he had a couple of players new to his team,
including a softball player decked out in black like a sporty Johnny Cash, and
so I decided to bowl first instead. The plan was to keep them under 200, and
then go for the chase.
Olliver and Bishy opened the batting for Plastics, while Rob
“Typhoon” Turner and “Special K” Kaleem took the new ball. And what a fine
specimen of a new ball it was…a Dukes ball. For those not aware of the
significance of receiving such a high-quality ball to play Sunday cricket with,
it’s a bit like buying a Smart Price microwave lasagne for one and – when you
go home and take off the wrapping – find it’s actually a Waitrose “Swan &
Caviar” lasagne instead. There are times when you dread the visiting oppo
throwing you the ball they’ve brought, because sometimes it turns out to be a
ball bought in a newsagents that a dog would turn its nose up at, but not this
time. If the Plastics have a nice supply
of these beauties in their locker, they’ll forever be welcome at ours!
Rob and Kaleem kept it tidy at the start, as they now do
every time they bowl in tandem; there were only three boundaries in the first
eight overs. The outfield was quick and the pitch, thankfully, was offering
proper bounce and pace; a return to the pitches of June, when they’d settled
down, rather than the unpredictable wasps nests of recent weeks. Chances came
early, but our catching wasn’t up to it; Olliver was living dangerously, dropped
twice and finding the top edge regularly, whereas Bishy looked a bit more
comfortable. It was a surprise, therefore, when he became Kaleem’s first victim
when he played forward and looped up a catch to the tumbling Jake Curnow
running in from the corner of the square. It was a carbon-copy of Mike Gatting’s
Headingley catch of 1981, and Bishy initially queried it for bump ball, but the
umpire was satisfied with his decision and Plastics were 37-1 after ten overs.
Vice came in and, after a couple of swings and misses,
quickly settled down and looked good. Two wickets in two overs then put us in
the driving seat: Rob struck in the 11th over, enticing Olliver to
lob the ball to the waiting Big Ol’ Bill, and in the next over Kaleem removed
the softball player by clean-bowling him. 49-3 had me dreaming of keeping
Plastics even lower than 200 as Billy Soomro came out to bat, and he looked
nervous at first facing the cutters of Ian Bawn by driving outside off and
slicing it through the slips area. The bounce of the pitch was also working
against us; any drive that took the top edge went flying over slips instead of
towards them, and Johnny Milton’s first ball nearly accounted for a swishing
Vice just outside off.
At this point, Vice took a shine to Ian’s bowling and Ian
decided that any price for a wicket was better
than nothing, and switched from buying his wickets from Poundstretcher to
buying them from Harrods. The right-handed Vice thumped him high and hard over
long-on for three successive sixes; frustratingly, against the left-handed Soomro,
he was beating the bat time and again. At the other end, Johnny M was doing his
best to keep it tight but the batters were motoring now; at drinks, and after
Vice had brought up a rapid fifty, Plastics were a daunting 118-3.
Drinks breaks are funny things. Normally, our fielding and
bowling takes a turn down Fred Karno Street once a drink has been taken, but on
this occasion it meant instant success. Vice tried to wallop Ian’s first ball
after the resumption and was bowled, and we weren’t sure who was more surprised
– the batter or us. Better still, after Ian’s first five overs – which weren’t
as bad as they were costly – had cost eleven runs an over, this one was a
wicket maiden: the first maiden since the second over, and the last one we
bowled in the innings. Abdul replaced Johnny M and could’ve had a couple of
wickets from top-edges, but they sailed harmlessly either side of square leg
and midwicket, and it was the returning Rob who picked up another wicket. With
his pace cranked up, he got Smith to edge a tracer bullet past Rocky at slip…only
for Rocky’s hands to suddenly appear and pouch the ball, and Rocky was as
nonchalant as you like. This man’s hands are some of the safest at the club,
and then had to deal with being mobbed by the elated Typhoon. That was 190-5
with nine overs left. Okay, I thought, 230…keep them to 230…
A couple more wickets were snapped up; Abdul finally picked
one up, with Jake taking an easier catch than his first one off Kaleem, and
Kaleem then bowling Soomro for 80. 225-7 after 36 overs was respectable, but
the last four overs subsequently conceded a blood-curdling 22, 7, 24, 26.
Davies and Anderson hit the ball harder and cleaner than the previous batsmen,
leaving me grumpily chuntering on about ringers (primarily because it was my
bowling being carted to all parts) and relieved that they hadn’t been batting
earlier. Spare a thought for Jake; he didn’t want to bowl the last over, but I
was insistent. It was only one over, I said. Wrong: when it was finished, it
was two and a half overs. Maybe Jake wanted more bowling and decided he’d
string the 40th over out a little bit; every one of his nine
no-balls got higher and higher, until Aleem nearly tripped over the sightscreen
keeping wicket. On taking one moonball, he shook his hand as if in pain, and
all I could surmise was that the ball had gone so high in the sky it had come
down with snow on it and frostbitten Aleem’s fingers. When the over was
finished, someone somewhere played “The Last Post”; on this date, August 19th
next year, there will be a service of remembrance for Jake’s over and a wreath
laid at the wicket.
Plastics finished on a mammoth 298-7; bizarrely, we didn’t
feel like we’d conceded all of that. It had taken nearly three hours for the
innings to be completed, and on returning to the clubhouse we were shocked to
discover that England had folded during the same period of time at the Nottingham Test Match. Another wonderful tea
was consumed before Richard and I padded up and went out to open the innings.
Bishop and Bradbury opened the bowling with a quick/slow bowling combo, and it
was Bradbury who looked dangerous bowling from the Kingston Road End; every
ball to Richard was on the right spot and his first over was a maiden. Bishop
was struggling a little for line and length at the other end and I was able to
put some boundaries away, including a six over long-off; Richard hit a couple
of nice fours before Bradbury got him to nick one to the keeper and we were
22-1. Aleem succumbed to a very smart catch at short mid-on; driving low and
hard, the fielder scooped the ball off his bootlaces and Aleem had gone for a
rare low score.
All the while, I’d kept the scoreboard ticking over and brought
up my fifty with a four…before I reverted to type, and pulled Soomro’s worst
ball straight and true into the grateful hands of midwicket. We were going at
eight an over and, although the game appeared to be beyond us, we were looking
to have a good innings.
That was until the introduction of Anderson to the bowling
attack. A genuine spinner, he was getting the ball to turn prodigiously, and
Jake was his first victim as a ball turned outrageously around the back of his
legs and bowled him. Rocky hit a lovely four before he and Bill were snapped up
in successive overs by Anderson, and at drinks we were 108-7 and teetering.
Abdul was now batting, and – just as a drink had revived Ian with the ball, a
drink had the same effect on Abdul with the bat. Picking off the bad balls saw
him score rapidly while firstly Johnny M and then Ian kept him company at the
other end - taking a liking to Webster and Smith - and as we sailed past 150
Abdul brought up his first Merton fifty. Almost instantly, though, he perished
to the returning Bradbury, before Anderson returned for a solitary over and
cleaned up Rob and Kaleem in successive balls. We were 165 all out and, on
paper, it was a proper shellacking, but we’d given a good go and it was the
first time in seven games we’d been bowled out. There were the customary handshakes
all round at the end, and we congratulated them on a fine display.
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