It was the former Spurs and England player Jimmy Greaves who
coined the phrase about football being a “funny old game”; cricket, at times,
can be even funnier. If you’re on the right side of the funny, great; if you’re
on the receiving end, the funny tends to be gallows humour, something fans of
cricket – especially those of an English variety – have been excelling at for
generations. Earlier this season, after a run of endless defeats at the hands
of Sopwith Camels, we shot them out for 64 and recorded a most remarkable – and
unexpected – win. On this day, against a Banstead 3rd XI that
weren’t showing that many changes from the team we beat by nine wickets exactly
a year ago, it was us that copped a bit of a hiding. A funny old game, indeed.
Last year’s game, despite the end result, was anything but a
stroll. Timed cricket was something this captain had precisely zero experience
of; we bowled first, and I spent most of the Banstead innings scratching my
head at slip, wondering what on earth was going on, when we were going to
finish, who should bowl the longest, etc. We bowled well and we fielded tidily
and restricted them to 211-7 from 41 overs, at which point they declared.
Bowling with the older ball, nothing happened for their bowlers; Waleed Sajjid
and I opened and racked up 94 in no time. When Waleed departed, in came Ian
Bawn, and we didn’t lose another wicket. 213-1 was out end total off just 31
overs, to record the biggest win of my time as a Merton player. The following
week, we batted first against Ewell and were bowled out for 40. A bloody funny
old game.
Banstead Cricket Club is picturesque and laden with history
and tradition, and has hosted cricket for 177 years. It’s near enough to the
high street to enable you to pop to the shops, but far enough away to keep the
scream of traffic insulated from cricketing ears, and when us Boars began to
arrive we found to our happy surprise that we would be playing on the front
pitch. Last year’s wonderful game was played on the back pitch, which was
enjoyable enough, but there’s always something special about playing on a
club’s “show” pitch. Ominously though, our Sunday Wolves team had been playing
the Banstead 2nds on the front pitch at the same time we were putting their
3rds to the sword…and lost.
It was a fine day. The sky was blue and mostly cloudless,
and a nice warmth embraced Banstead as James Harper, their skipper, and I went
out for the toss. I called correctly yet again (oh, if only I won a grand every
time I won the toss I wouldn’t have to shop at Sports Direct for my cricket
boots), and had no hesitation in batting first; this season’s four wins have
all been won when bowling second, and with Pranav Pandey returning for his
second game after spinning his web around the Park Hill top order the previous
week, the first part of the plan had, well, gone to plan – which was, bat
first, get as near to 200 as possible, unleash Pranav and Ben from the start
and tie their batters up in knots. Team-wise, we were – as always –
much-changed. Andrew, Suj and Ben came back to the Boars after Rhinos duty; Rob
was playing his first game in a month due to injury; Johnny “Steriliser” Milton
was back in the ranks and we also welcomed a brand-new player, Azam Khan, who
my fellow captain – Tom Allen – had reported, and I quote, “was a bit nippy in
the nets”. Tom Allen also thinks Aston Villa are going to finish in the top
four this season.
SUNDAY BOARS: Neil Simpson (capt, wkt); Aleem Sajjid; Andrew
Counihan; Johnathan Milton; Dave Barber; Pranav Pandey; Azam Khan; Sujanan
Romalojoseph; Bob Egan; Ben Drewett; Rob Turner.
As the clock above the changing rooms struck one, Aleem and
I strode out to the wicket to open the innings. A good start was essential, I
said; I’d made 92 not out in the win the previous year, but knew runs wouldn’t
be easy to come by this time around. I wanted 180 on the board as a potentially
winning total; it would be down to myself and Aleem to lay the foundations. The
first ball of the innings, bowled by Bill Early, went a mile down leg side and
bounced at ankle height. The second ball I can’t remember facing; the third
ball pitched on leg stump, so I played forward…only for the ball to move late,
beat the edge, and knock back my off-stump. If my head were a balloon, the
sound of air screaming out of it would’ve deafened the locality; as it was,
after a slow, doleful look at my shattered stumps, I was trooping off towards
the pavilion for another duck. 1:02pm, and most of my day’s work was done.
Ninety-two to zero in one year is reminiscent of the engine of a once-reliable
car blowing up and spluttering to a crappy halt.
Andrew Counihan came out to bat, and discovered for himself
that the ball to dismiss me was no fluke; every ball bowled was wicket to
wicket, landing on a perfect length, and for those of us who can barely move
our feet in the bath, let alone at the crease, a sort of torture had begun.
Mustafa bowled the second over and was pacy, getting good bounce out of the
wicket; neither Aleem or Andrew were being allowed to bat expansively, and we had
eked out five runs from the first five overs. Andrew finally got our first
boundary by edging Mustafa through an empty slip cordon, but after pulling him
for four in his next over and taking a single, Mustafa claimed his first scalp.
Of the three fielders positioned on the off-side, Aleem had the misfortune to
pick out the middle one as he cracked a short-length ball with some ferocity;
it went down Read’s throat, and we were 20-2.
The pitch was proving to be very slow; the bowling slower
still. Local knowledge was paying dividends for Banstead. Johnathan joined
Andrew; the scoring still resembled a person with chronic constipation in
urgent need of a laxative. Surely they could find a way to collar Bill Early?
No chance. Over after over he wheeled away; dot after dot, maiden after maiden.
Runs were coming off Mustafa at the other end, but Early was saving the scorer
a fortune in pencil lead by tying up our batsmen in all sorts of knots. Johnny
and Andrew were finally able to exchange a couple of boundaries, as Mustafa
made way for Neil Sunderland, who – naturally – was a slow bowler, and notched
a maiden with his first over. Eight balls later, Andrew was cleaned up by Sunderland;
he reached a little too far forward to play defensively…and the stumps were knocked
back. 41-3 after 15 overs became 50-4 five balls after drinks; Johnathan was
well dug-in, but Dave tried to get a bit of power into a lofted drive, miscued
and scooped it up to the waiting Harper.
Pranav came out to bat; the two youngest players were now at
the wicket. Alan Lester had replaced Bill Early, whose eleven overs had
included six maidens and only yielded an unbelievable five scoring strokes;
once he’d bowled his customary maiden first over, Lester struck. Johnathan by
now had become strokeless; his feet weren’t moving and he was drawing nearer
and nearer to playing across the line. When he eventually gave in to
temptation, Lester’s delivery was far too straight, and for the third time in
our innings the stumps had been broken. Johnny had played really well for his
21, showing great patience and power when he’d had to chance to break free from
the shackles before frustration had overcome him.
Azam came in and looked to push the scoring on. He
miraculously kept out a Lester yorker that was taking out middle stump until
the bat edged it a cigarette paper’s-width past off-stump and down to third man
for two, but in the next over he went the way of Aleem, seeing a perfectly good
hit go straight to a fielder – Harper again – who doesn’t appear to drop
anything. 64-6 in the 28th over was at least forty short of where I
wanted us to be; Banstead’s bowlers were on the kind of strangling spree that
gets serialised and shown on Netflix, and my hopes of declaring with a
reasonable score had evaporated. Someone had to go big; sadly, it wouldn’t be
Suj. Only two more runs had been scored when he played all round a straight one
from Lester, and I had no choice but to raise the finger. At least I wouldn’t
be alone in the Duck Club; he was the 34th Boar duck of the season,
and we were 66-7.
Pranav was still battling away, showing great maturity for
his young years, but he had been backed up well and truly into his scoring
shell. Bob joined him and hit a great boundary, but then became the third
batsman to pick a fielder with a good shot: this time it was Sunderland taking
the catch off the bowling of Nick Hunt. Bob and Pranav’s 21-run partnership was
the joint-highest of the innings, which couldn’t have told the tale of our
innings more eloquently had Stephen Fry been reading it. Nearly 38 overs had
been bowled, and we were barely getting the ball off the cut strip, let alone
the square. An anxious glance at the clock saw the long hand dropping to
3:20pm; we didn’t have any batters left to go big, so we’d have to suck up our
low score and try to defend it as stoutly as possible. I told myself that
3:45pm would be the cut-off point for our innings, regardless of where our
score was. Besides, I’d remembered how nice the sandwiches had been the
previous year; if we couldn’t attack their bowling, surely we’d do a better job
getting stuck into the teas.
Ben came out and kept Pranav company; Pranav didn’t seem
able to open his arms and get expansive, but he didn’t look like getting out,
either. Naturally, we were keeping an eye on the England/Australia Test match
at Old Trafford, and I reckoned one or two Pranav’s could’ve kept England in
the game. Pranav clipped a lovely boundary off his legs and Ben pulled Hunt for
four, but then Mustafa returned, refreshed and revitalised. Despite having done
a load of bowling in the League the day before, he’d lost none of his pace, and
the ball to dismiss Ben was a beauty; quick and straight, it clipped the
off-stump with such force that the bail went skimming halfway towards the boundary
and the ball ended up nestled against the sightscreen.
That was with 42.5 overs gone; Rob stepped out as the last
man, and I confirmed our innings would end after the next over. That over,
bowled by Hunt, was started but not finished, as Rob lunged forward and was
stumped by Beaumont. He became member no.35 of the Boars 2019 Duck Club. We
were all out for just 103 in 43.3 overs, or 262 balls (with one wide), in 165
minutes. Banstead had bowled an astonishing 15 maiden overs; almost a third of
all overs we’d faced. We hadn’t done ourselves justice with the bat, but I did
have seven bowlers to call on – bowlers who could exploit conditions of turn
and bounce. To win from here would’ve been more of a miracle that anything Ben
Stokes can do, or indeed ourselves a year earlier…but remember, cricket is a
funny old game…
And the tea was as sumptuous as I’d hoped. Crab meat, pulled
pork and sausage and brown sauce sandwiches. Deep fill. Having to open your
mouth really wide, just to take a bite. Cookies as big as a munchkin’s face.
Butterfly cakes. Onion rings. Chewable, easily digestable pizza. Such things
are what dream teas are made of, and I made sure nobody – well, me really –
went hungry. On the telly, England were sliding inexorably to an inevitable
defeat, having done that horrible thing of raising all our hopes earlier in the
day. Being shot out for 50 at about noon would’ve been better for us England
fans to see; we could’ve just got on with the day and let the Aussies
celebrate. To have them drag it out until the sun was going down is akin to
cricket waterboarding. I’m sure our human rights are breached whenever England
are chasing down Australian targets. Or maybe they’re all honorary Boars; after
all, our team motto is “It’s the hope that kills you”. Only an English team
could come up with a motto like that and keep smiling.
Back to our game, and the Boars bounded onto the ground,
keen to make quick inroads and get a foothold in the game. For the third game
running, I chose to open with our own slowies, Ben and Pranav, to bowl to
openers Stott and Sultan, and we almost made the perfect start from the very
first ball of the innings. Stott attempted to pull Ben square but it went to
where Pranav was standing at leg gully; agonisingly, it missed his fingertips
by mere centimetres. What a start that would’ve been! At the other end, Pranav
was getting prodigious spin and beating Sultan’s outside edge, but Sultan had
quick wrists and when Pranav dropped one just a fraction too short, he was on
it like a flash to pull it powerfully for four.
It set the tone for the first ten overs; as they looked to
score predominantly to leg, the batters were either flailing and missing or
hitting the ball into the gaps, a problem exacerbated by the fact we’d been
playing with only ten players since around 1:30pm. And the luck was with the
batters: time and again, chips and edges went either side of fielders, or
dropped behind them. I smiled ruefully from behind the wicket, as I remembered
how well our batters had picked out their fielders with an accuracy the
pre-shitstorm Tiger Woods would’ve been proud of.
And then, a breakthrough. After Pranav rapped Irfan on the
pads for an unsuccessful lbw appeal, Ben struck at the other end. It was Stott
pinned in front, and the umpire’s finger went up.
The scoring rate was four an
over but, with 39 on the board, we’d chalked up a wicket. The unlucky Pranav
had been replaced for a debut bowl by Azam, and here’s where Tom’s “he’s a bit
nippy” comment had us turning the air blue. Expecting him to move the ball
around a little at slightly quicker than medium pace, slipper Bob and I
positioned ourselves about fifteen paces behind the stumps and waited for his
first delivery. It arrowed towards new batter Harper like a rocket; startled,
Harper hung out his bat and got an edge that went past me like an 80 mph tracer
bullet. Bob didn’t try and take the catch as much as put his hand in the way of
the ball, shaking his hand vigorously and counting his fingers as he watched
the ball sail on its way to Ben at third man. A bit nippy, Tom? Moves it around
a bit? Azam is seriously, seriously quick, and his howitzers were either just
about kept out or let go by the batter to thud heavily into my gloves. In the
next over, shortly after Dave had had a shoulder injury scare, the same batter
edged the same bowler through to Bob on the volley; it was so quick, I didn’t
even see it fly past me, or the parry Bob got in to take the fire off the ball.
All I saw was Bob sprawled on the floor, the appreciation of his team-mates
(and his own swearing) filling his ears, wondering what on Earth was going on,
hoping his hands would still be able to hold a pint glass at the end of the
game. Meanwhile, the score had flown up to 78-1 in the 15th over.
Dave was next to cop a hand injury, as Harper cut a Ben delivery with such
force it effectively hit Dave on the hand rather than Dave field the ball. A
word beginning with the letter F hung loudly on his lips for an eternity as he
screamed through the pain. Unbeknown to him, he’d also saved three runs.
Rob replaced the excellent Ben, and immediately blew away
four weeks of injury misery by making a breakthrough. Firstly, Irfan brought up
an excellent fifty; his innings had been full of power and precision, and
rolling his wrists to put the ball where our fielders weren’t. But it was 50
and out when he tried to turn Rob’s third ball through leg gully, only to find
Pranav standing and waiting to take a fearless, unflinching catch above his
left shoulder. It had been a long time since we’d heard Rob’s celebratory
pirate cry of “Aaaaaargh!”; it was great to hear it again. And there was more
joy in the very next over; Azam finally got reward for his searing pace,
getting an unplayable straight ball to rip through Harper’s defence and clatter
violently into the stumps, reminiscent to this cricket viewer of a certain
Steve Harmison (without the height or North-East accent). That made it 78-3,
and drinks were taken; we’d put the brakes on their innings and the faintest
nibble of a comeback was visible. Just twenty more maidens, and we’d win. Could
we? Could we?
Rob couldn’t be got away, conceding just seven runs from the
thirty balls he bowled and really tying up an end, but – with Read and Ives at
the wicket – Banstead weren’t to be denied. As Suj came on for the last few
overs, it was Ives who hit the winning runs, pulling a great shot for four in
the 25th over. At least we’d taken them as far as we could; the luck
wasn’t with us in the field, but we’d paid the price for being at least fifty
runs short in our own innings. A better performance with the bat would’ve made
for a thrilling finish and undoubtedly a classic encounter, but it wasn’t to be
our day. We’d squashed their hopes a year earlier, this time the roles were
reversed. As Jimmy Greaves once said, it’s a funny old game.
And England had, indeed, lost; but at least we’d expected
it. The beer at Banstead was great, the ground was bathed in that beautiful,
slightly watery sunlight you only seem to get in September, and we’d had a good
day. Back at the clubhouse, Joe Gun enthralled us with tales of his latest
wonderful discovery; lettuce in a tuna sandwich. Christine, the Merton CC
tea-lady, had provided this culinary marvel, and Joe had reacted to it like an
African child seeing snow for the first time. We were lost for words; how could
we tell the great man that Christine has been putting lettuce in sandwiches
since, well, she started doing the teas? Joe, though, was in raptures. We
expected tears of beatific joy to roll down his face at any moment, like a nun
seeing a statue of the Madonna weep tears of blood.
He’s led a very sheltered life, has our Joe…