Game Day #14 - Plastics XI (home): The Boars (plastic) Bagged & Tagged

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 11^th 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 40^th 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 19^th 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.

Game Day #13: Hook & Southborough - Sour Grapes & Brown Stuff

And then, it rained.

This was the twelfth Sunday of the season that the Boars were due in action, and the first to feature a single drop of rain since September 2017; that day was memorable for the following exchange took place between captains, as us lot turned up to play Trinity Mid-Whitgiftians down near Sanderstead:-

Their captain: “So, what strength are you today?”

Me: “Weak. Very weak. There’s only nine of us, and one of those is my eldest daughter."

Their captain: “Oh…we’re quite strong today. We were expecting your strongest team.”

Me: “That’s funny. I was expecting to play your weakest team.”

Their captain: “Oh. Well, I’m sure it’ll be a good game.”

And it was – for them. 320-2 in 35 overs played 120-odd for nine, my daughter surviving the last three balls of the match and even scampering a bye off the last ball. 35 overs bowled in just 90 minutes, and the entire match played in a stinking September drizzle.

In terms of the weather today promised much of the same, and the initial forecasts weren’t good for the game at all. We were due to play Hook & Southborough, arguably our oldest friendly opposition on the circuit, and I woke up expecting to see the remnants of a downpour battering against the windows and my phone bearing the fatal message from the Hook contact telling me the game was called off. But the ground was dry, the skies were sort of clear, and my phone was silent. I cracked on with putting together the picnic  food for the daughters, reminded myself of the buses I’d need to catch to get to the ground in Chessington, and made my plans for the day.

Firstly, we had to be better than the opening game of the Sunday season. That was against Hook at our ground, on a pitch that offered zilch to the bowler except low bounce; we’d bowled really well in restricting them to 165-4, with Kaleem getting the ball to hoop around corners and Rob taking his first Merton wicket, but we couldn’t get their opener Roland out that day, and he played the pitch brilliantly to notch 73 not out. That was nineteen more runs than our entire team mustered; five of our batters were bowled by pea-rollers as we slid from 19-2 to 30-8, and only some lusty blows from Kaleem took us to our final total of 54. Also, in last year’s corresponding fixture, we were 129-2 chasing 171 to win and ahead of the run-rate until a collapse reminiscent of cars down a sinkhole saw us lose by 21 runs. It would take all our powers of concentration to overcome this team of stubborn (mostly) old pros.

The rain started whilst the daughters and I were on the second leg of a three-leg trip to the Hook ground. The sky grew darker and the rain heavier. Daughter #2’s mantra-chant of “I reckon it’s going to be called off, Dad. What do you think?” did nothing to help my mood, and as we switched to the final bus in Kingston the rain was set and steady. Glumly, I traipsed my daughters to find the right bus stop, and after a short journey we were at the Hook ground. The rain had now lessened to a relentless drizzle; the sky was a grey blanket covering everything, without a crack in the clouds to be seen. Keith Milton, one of Hook’s great stalwart players and officials, was already there and, after making us feel welcome, jumped on an engine-powered roller and went off to roll the pitch.

The outfield was covered in baseball markings and, more traditionally, feathers. Either the foxes use this ground as a place to eat what they’ve caught, or there’s cock-fighting here every year. The feathers would come in handy later, for one of our players. Keith had done a brilliant job with the strip; the surface moisture had been rolled in and the strip itself was very firm. If only the bloody rain would hold off…

The rest of the players began to arrive. We welcomed Shakil and Joe back into the Boars fold in place of Dave “The Demon”, cruising somewhere in the Med doing his best Rob Brydon impression, and Kaleem, who simply wasn’t available (but could probably do a good Rob Brydon impression if asked to). Being very bowler-heavy meant stints up the order for Ian Bawn and Joe, up in the ‘nosebleeds’ at 3 and 4 respectively, while everyone bar myself, Alex “The Jailer” and Aleem would get a bowl at some point. That was, of course, if the game was to be played in its entirety…

Adnan, the unforgettable Hook skipper, suddenly appeared out of nowhere, beer in hand. We went out to toss and agreed to shorten the game to 35 overs in case we ended up losing any time later in the day. Deep down, I wanted to bowl first; Adnan won the toss and I got my wish. Before that, though, a scare: my phone went off, and I found myself speaking to Greg, Joe’s son. Joe’s dad had had a fall, and despite us offering Joe the chance to go home, he opted to stay and wait for further information. Things like that put everything into perspective, including what would happen later in the day.

Under slate-grey skies but with the drizzle thinning out, we took the field minus Shakil, who hadn’t turned up yet. I threw the new ball to Rob to bowl to Keith, and we instantly found out what happens on this pitch if you bowl it a fraction short: it gets cracked for four. Keith either gets a duck or a fifty-plus against us; duck was now off the menu. Killer Smither took the ball from the other end and bowled a tight line, while Rob – whilst bowling at good pace – got punished virtually every time he dropped one short. The ball was doing zero off the pitch and Keith and Richard looked very comfortable, until Shakil got one of his first deliveries to take a wafer-thin edge off Keith that Aleem agonisingly couldn’t keep hold of. It had stopped drizzling completely now; the ball was still in good condition and the run-rate had slowed due to a thickish outfield. We didn’t look like getting many wickets, mind. Keith and Richard were running well between the wickets until Richard tried one sharp run too many and did himself an injury, retiring hurt on 12. That brought Simon to the crease, who refused to be bamboozled by Sujanan’s swirling deliveries and started hitting to long-on for four. Then, another chance: Keith popped one up to Rob at cover, but it cannoned straight into Rob’s chest and onto the floor.

We needed some comic relief, and it came in the form of Sam Wyld and – quite literally - some shit. Fielding a ball at mid-off, he began staring in disgust at his own hand, then wiped both the ball and his hand on the grass furiously. In picking up the ball, he’d put his hand in a pile of fox-shit. Horrified at the prospect of what we presumed to be his eating hand potentially struck down by streptococcus, he sprinted, gazelle-like, off the pitch to wash his hands, Rob’s advice of “Don’t rub your eyes, mate!” ringing in his ears (along with our laughter). Aleem mentioned it was the first time he’d even seen shit stop play. Keith called for a shovel, and with a freshly-cleaned Sam in tow, Keith’s son David came out carrying a shovel to look for the offending excrement. I watched from slip as three Boars players, plus David and the umpire, examined the ground around them like police officers conducting a fingertip search of a crime scene. It took them a full two minutes to realise that Sam’s hand had probably destroyed the entire mound before play continued; we carried on until drinks, but Simon and Keith were still there, and we hadn’t taken a wicket. 77-0.

By now, Killer had found a use for the plethora of feathers that were scattered, confetti-like, around the square by plucking them into his shoes and hat. As he has a reputation for being (probably) a serial killer on the sly, we reasoned it was better for him to wear them as trophies rather than the less-preferred ears, scalps, noses etc of any potential victims that may or may not lie buried beneath the home ground.

Johnny M, “The Steriliser”, and Sam “Shit Hands” Wyld then entered the attack, and immediately Sam struck to get us off the mark. With the field slightly spread and Simon looking to continue hitting over mid-on, Sam induced another expansive drive and Simon nicked it into Aleem’s gloves. Nobody really wanted to shake Sam’s hand, but rubbing his hands in fox-shit seemed to have done the trick, and when he repeated the dose two overs later – same shot, same catch, same result – I started to hatch a plan. Next week, before the game, I am going to secure enough faeces from somewhere (not mine; that would be far too weird) and get my bowlers to rub their hands in it. It’ll be like an aphrodisiac to their bowling hand; a Viagra for their wicket column.  At the other end, The Steriliser was bowling really well, probably the smoothest he’s run in all season. Out came Adnan to bat, a man who loves to swing so much he should be living in Boxhill. Naturally, after moving Rob to fourth slip for impending catch, Adnan slashed one over where  fifth slip would’ve been, but that was the prelude to a memorable Steriliser moment. In his next over to Adnan, he had him swinging and missing, before pitching it up a little more with his next ball and clean-bowling him. He’d set up his man and then served him up his wicket, and after bellowing out a war-cry Johnny M fixed Adnan with a classic bowler’s death-stare send-off as he trudged slowly off the pitch.

We’d made inroads into their batting, but that was that as far as the wickets were concerned. Paul came in and put some loose stuff away in quick time, and Hook ended on 189-3. Keith had carried his bat for a brilliant 93, the two drops being the only chances he gave us. In our last three encounters against Hook, and after bowling a combined total of 110 overs, we’ve only taken  ten wickets. It’s the kind of problem that would have taken Sherlock Holmes three pipes of tobacco to ruminate over but, as I don’t smoke, egg sandwiches and cans of bitter will have to suffice.

After a very satisfying tea (finally, somebody serves Battenberg cake!!!), Aleem and I went out to open the batting. Sam A bowled the first over and should’ve had me out second ball; he bowled me one so wide I could barely reach it, but reach it I did and it popped in – and out – of first slip’s hands. Galvanised by my second chance, Aleem and I went off like a train. We were 25-0 after three overs, and the middle one – bowled by the ever-wily Mark Dainty – had been a maiden. Sam was struggling for line and length, and every loose ball he bowled me went for four. We were flying along at 40-0 off seven overs, before a nasty case of déjà vu came to hit me between the eyes (and the stumps). Last year, in the corresponding fixture and when on 28, I stepped back to a Dainty special, tried to pull it and was bowled. This year, despite telling myself over and over what not to do, the exact same thing happened: same delivery, same shot, same result. This time, I’d made 29. I stomped off, furious with myself, loudly calling myself every name under the sun. And when I got inside the changing room I carried on, bellowing as loud as I could a couple of times for good measure. Sixty seconds later, the toilet door inched very slowly open and Sam Wyld stepped quietly out. I hadn’t even known he was in there and he seemed not to have paid much attention to my rant, instead warning me to steer clear of the toilet he’d just occupied and pumping copious amounts of handsoap all over his digits. Lovely.

Ian joined Aleem at the crease but quickly lost his bails to a Phil Evans moonball, which brought Joe to the middle. As the pace of the ball teetered between ‘slow’ and ‘stop’, Joe struggled to hit his trademark big shots, but the singles were still coming and Aleem was as hard to dislodge as ever. Then, controversy. It was a moment I missed, as I was playing football with daughter #2, but raised voices from the middle got the attention of everyone. Aleem had about eight Hook players crowded around him, including captain Adnan, and things looked animated. For a couple of minutes, time stopped until someone got wind of what had happened: Evans had bowled, Aleem played the ball, and the bails had been dislodged. The Hook players were adamant Aleem had been clean bowled; Aleem was convinced the ball had gone past the stumps, hit the keeper’s thigh-guard, and ricocheted back onto the bails. The umpires weren’t sure, and had erred on the side of caution: Aleem was not out. That, unfortunately, set the tone for the rest of the match. Ian and I took drinks to the middle shortly afterwards and I was expecting reference to be made of the incident, but to hear the slip fielder’s cry of “What a f***ing cheating b****rd!” rather took me aback. Five of their fielders were extremely wound up over what had happened and were clearly in no mood to let it go. Scores-wise, we were around the same as Hook had been at their drinks break; the only question was, did we have enough batting to chase down the rest of the target?

Joe and Aleem were slugging it out; boundaries were hard to come by, but the running between the wickets was keeping the score ticking over. Rob and I went out to umpire the last twelve overs of the match, and I immediately found that the Hook players were still grumbling. Aleem was being sledged behind the wicket, with slip making constant references to him being bowled, and even tricked Rob into calling for the wickets column on the scoreboard to be updated from two to three, when we were only two down.

Sam returned to the attack and, after Joe and Aleem had put on 63 runs, dismissed Joe by rocking back his middle stump. Cue more references of “are you sure that’s bowled?” etc etc, and on top of one other fielder mimicking Aleem I started to get a little uncomfortable at how unfriendly the game had become. “The Jailer” came to wicket, batting arm swirling like a windmill, bristling with attacking intent. And attack he did; from ball one, if it was in the slot he was going to hit it. Before he got started, though, Aleem brought up another attritional fifty that was studiously ignored by the fielding players. Enter Alex: Mark Dainty came back into the attack, and Alex played him like I wished I’d done, using some fast hands to pull him down to long-on time and time again for two runs at a time either side of some fiercely-hit boundaries. Aleem was a man possessed now, both riled and inspired by his treatment by the Hook players, and he began urging and pushing Alex to turn ones into twos. This rattled Hook even more, and when the scoreboard was posted incorrectly one of their ringleaders started moaning at me. The implication was that we were being a little creative with the scoring, to which I replied that whatever had gone on before had nothing to do with the scoring, and we weren’t trying to con them out of runs or overs. The mood had not only turned decidedly ugly, but seemed set in concrete as well.

On and on, Aleem pushed Alex; it was the hardest The Jailer had run in a long time. With a face like a moustachioed tomato, he collapsed to the ground in exhaustion at one point as if he’d just completed Tough Mudder, prompting the slip fielder to ask if he needed an oxygen canister. In the meantime, I made my feelings known about the constant carping to Adnan, who didn’t say anything but instead  lit up a fag next to me at square leg. The running between the wickets was becoming more and more frenetic, leading one fielder to have a shy at the stumps as Aleem made his ground. Funnily enough, the ball didn’t appear to have been actually aimed at the stumps. If I’d known yesterday that it was a Level 2 offence under Law 41, as I do today, I’d have issued a warning.

With five overs left, we needed 36 to win. Another round of moaning came my way, as the scoreboard read 164-3 instead of 154-3. It was human error, but clearly Mr Evans was having none of it. I finally piped up and told him, and slip, that the last few overs had been the most unfriendly I’d witnessed in years, only to be by slip to “teach your team about f***ing gamesmanship then!”. Paul came onto to bowl and, after bowling a couple of deliveries that were too good for both Alex and the stumps, bowled a straighter one and cleaned him up. The partnership had been 51, and Alex had contributed 22 of them; his best knock so far for Merton, and one that we were all very proud of him for. That brought Shakil to the wicket, but he only lasted one ball: done by a filthy double-bouncer that he would’ve needed a broom handle to reach. Paul on a hat-trick, The Steriliser to face. Sure enough, Paul worked his magic: Johnny M scooped it high, for Sam to take a comfortable catch. Paul had his hat-trick, and our charge to the finish line had been halted.

In the midst of all this, I made sure Mark Dainty heard my complaint about his team-mates language and behaviour. At the fall of a wicket he had them all in a huddle, after which Adnan belatedly bounced over and offered profound apology.  Aleem, his mind as always on the game, was still there, now joined by Killer Smither, and after a barrage of Aleem twos Killer looked and sounded as out of puff as Alex had. With twenty-two required off the last over, fours were needed; sadly, we couldn’t get them. Only six runs had been mustered when Smither departed, leaving Sam Wyld – now he was wearing batting gloves, people were only too willing to shake his hand – to face the last ball. We had run Hook close but not close enough, and lost by sixteen runs.

I managed to shake about seven hands; nobody shook Aleem’s hand at all except his fellow Boars players and Mark; he’d finished on 83 not out, his fourth consecutive red-inker for the club. The result was immaterial; what had become a thrilling climax to the game had been totally overshadowed by the League-style hostility shown by at least five of their players, and cast a pall over the relationship between the clubs as well. I paid for the teas, we all packed up and then we all left the ground. We normally stay for a beer and a chat at the Hook ground, but nobody wanted to. Besides, Joe – who had played the whole game for us despite his dad being admitted to hospital – wanted to get there. The poor spirit of the game had soured the day for many of us, but compared to the day Joe was having it was nothing, and didn’t really matter. We all hope Joe’s dad is on the mend; whether or not the connection between Hook and us will is a matter for another day.

Now then: where can I get my hands on a gallon drum of top-grade, freshly-laid, fox-shit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game Day #11 - Sutton Challengers: Cops, Capers, Convoys and Comebacks

 An unwanted turn of fate brought our Boars “away” game against Sutton Challengers closer to home than originally planned; the venue for this game was meant to be the neutral Colets Leisure Centre in Surbiton, home of the sadly-departed Surbiton Imperial Cricket Club, a team we had many eventful tussles with but one that has become a victim of an all-too familiar malady: the chronic player shortage. I hope we see them resurrected, Phoenix-like, at some point in the future. The turn of fate was us, as a club, suddenly losing the availabilities of almost twenty players in a week; three games became untenable and, for a few hours, even two teams was looking a tall order. The Sunday captains decided to shelve the Sutton Challengers game and concentrate on a home game versus SW United (who the Rhinos had beaten away the previous Sunday) and a “home” game at one of our satellite grounds, Abbey Recreation Ground, against London Fields. In a classic example of Sunday cricket timing, once I’d informed Sutton Challengers that our game was off, London Fields then pulled out – which now meant our original fixture was back on, but half a mile away from our home ground instead of a thirty-minute drive to Surbiton. Happy days.

The day’s tea lady would be me, and I ensured that the players would be well-fed and offered loads of variety by hitting Lidl like a hammer. I know my shortcomings, though; the ladies that do our teas on Sundays offer levels of care and attention I can only dream of owning, and so my sandwiches reflected my Midlands upbringing: no frills. My ham sandwiches had nothing in them but ham: you want cous cous and rocket salad with that? Waitrose is a mile away; jog on down there, mate. The only reason I put any pickle in the cheese sandwiches was because my first batch were so crumbly the sandwiches were barely staying together. The second batch needed some binding. I had visions of players tucking into my cheese sandwiches, only for them to watch as the cheese tumbled from between the slices of bread and fall all over their trousers, like clouds of dandruff from an itchy man’s scratched head.

Needless to say, most of my sandwiches went uneaten.

Friday’s forecast thunderstorm didn’t arrive, and so this part of the world was still plugged into a heatwave that meant you started sweating at 10am and didn’t stop until 11pm. Game day was sultry and hot from the moment the daughters and I clambered into an Uber to take all the tea stuff to the ground, which was by now bleached white by the relentless heat in certain parts along the boundary. The only water being used on the ground was to water the square, and that now looked like a green postage stamp stuck on a manila envelope, such was the lack of greenery around the rest of the ground. The sandwiches were done, and the other players had arrived to take all the equipment we needed, convoy-like, down to Abbey Rec: tables, chairs, scoreboard and stumps etc, all the water I’d bought, and of course the tea. It was twelve o’clock, we were an hour away from the first ball of our game being bowled, and we were ahead of schedule.

Then came one of those incidents that can either define your day or destroy it. If you’ve followed this blog from day one, you’ll know I’m a single parent, and my two daughters come with me to cricket every week – much to their often-disguised ‘delight’. Sometimes, when you’re rushing around with a thousand things on the go, it’s easy to leave one ‘I’ undotted and one ‘t’ uncrossed…and that’s what brought me my one and only brush (to date) with the law. I’d asked daughter #1 to take a stack of chairs to Joe’s car, but she misheard and brought them to Kaleem’s instead, which is where I was with daughter #2 and Kaleem.  I took the chairs to where they should originally have gone…not knowing that daughter #1 had followed me. Kaleem, meanwhile, had let daughter #2 in his car and made sure she was seatbelted in…then he followed me too. Minutes later, when I got back to Kaleem’s car, I was confronted with the sight of daughter #2 crying and upset and being spoken to by an irate-looking lady who soon made a beeline for me. Her vitriol was off the scale as she demanded to know what kind of father I was for locking my daughter in a hot car, berating my lack of proper parenting skills, and generally heralding my existence as the biggest, dirtiest turd she’d ever laid eyes on. Every one of her machine-gun sentences started with “How dare you”. When she then hectoringly demanded that I give my daughter a hug, forty-five minutes of preparing enough egg mayo, tuna and ham sandwiches to feed a small army followed by readying tables and chairs for convoy led me to boil over and snap back at her. After berating her in turn for her lecturing, holier-than-thou, busybody attitude, she then told me – despite daughter #2 telling her I was just around the corner, which I literally was – that she’d called the police. Kaleem was extremely apologetic but I wasn’t having any of that;I’d got caught in such a rush and he’d done what he thought was the right thing to do. Perhaps the Busybody would have been happier if he’d just left daughter #2 standing on the street corner where she could have come to some real harm.

After fifteen minutes of waiting for the police with my back turned to the Busybody and fantasising about finding where she lived, defecating in my hand and smearing it all over her windows, I left my details with her to give to the Police and we headed off to join the rest of the team at Abbey Rec. Daughter #2, incidentally, was absolutely fine, but the Busybody – who was by now very quiet indeed, especially as her own kids were demanding to know why they were being held up from playing with the other snowflakes in the park – was only interested in her own sense of self-righteousness. I imagined her to be the kind of person who’d shout at a Muslim for not wearing their burkha properly.

Finally, we got to Abbey Rec to meet the rest of the team bar Andrew ‘Suggs’ Suggitt. Two years ago he’d played here and ended up waiting for ages on the front pitch while the rest of the team were on the back pitch, wondering where he was…surely the same thing couldn’t have happened, only with the pitches the other way round? Oh yes, it could! We all looked over to the top of the Rec, to where a sturdy metal fence separated the two pitches, to see Suggs waving at us, and wondering how he was going to get to where we were. In the meantime, and to the disbelief of some, the Police arrived. I welcomed them and volunteered my statement, only to be met by one officer’s first sentence of “Have you been arrested before, Mr Simpson?”…I calmed replied in the negative despite my brain asking “Am I about to be arrested now?”. The third officer – yes, it took three of them to come down and see what kind of tooled-up monster they’d been told about, while somewhere someone was probably becoming the victim of an actual crime – took daughter #2 to one side and spoke to her, and after a five-minute discussion that took in my side of things, I was told I’d passed the “Attitude Test” and there’d be no action taken. I felt sorry for Kaleem, who couldn’t have done right for doing wrong, as he was given a stern lecture about the perils of locking someone else’s child in his car whilst going to pick up a bag of stumps and bails for a game of cricket.

Right, shall we get on with the cricket?

Hang on, not yet; as the police exited the Rec car park, I turned to see Suggs now inexplicably hopping from garden to garden of the houses on the other side of the bushes from where we were, looking like a burglar (albeit a well-spoken one) trying to find an escape route. God only knows how he'd got there, and I was just waiting for the police to come and arrest him for trespass to top off an eventful morning. He finally managed to join us, but I wondered if the day’s quota of bizarreness had been fulfilled before a ball had even been bowled…

Mahesh, the Sutton Challengers captain, and I went out to toss, having  been advised to bowl first by my senior players if I won. Well, if I won, it’d be ten won tosses in a row – La Decima; the pitch was, like all the others in the Surrey county, a dustbowl covered in a thin verdant layer of grass. Mahesh called correctly and my run was over; he decided that the Challengers would bat first.

The team had a good balance to it; we welcomed Matty Holmes to the fold, one of the finest batsmen at the club, and someone I’d wanted in the Boars for a couple of weeks. Him only playing Sundays this year, when he is usually a high-standard League cricketer, was Saturday’s loss and our gain. Kaleem and Rob returned to Boars colours too, to complement a bowling attack that retained Joe Gun, Ian “Treadstone” Bawn, and the Sams Wyld and Egan. And so, after rebutting the Challengers’ attempts to have leg-side wides as part of the game – no thanks, I said, I don’t fancy being here at nine o’clock at night having racked up a hundred wides in the day – we took the field. The heat of the day wasn’t going anywhere, but we did have a sudden, welcoming breeze descend upon the ground as I handed the new ball to Rob and Kaleem. Thulasi and Sai were the openers, and they found life very hard going against some excellent bowling; Rob had not long returned from the hamstring injury he’d suffered at Old Wimbledonians, but his run-up was smooth, his pace was good and he was looking sharp. It was Rob who made the breakthrough; with only a few runs on the board, and with Sai looking to hit big, he bowled a straight one that Sai tried to hit into Wimbledon and had his middle stump rocked back instead.

After ten overs, the Sams came into the attack and it was the Wyld one that struck immediately. Thulasi seemed to be caught in two minds over how to play his straight one and ended up turning it to square leg; Joe Gun took a couple of steps to his left and, to his utter astonishment, held onto the catch. "Oh my God, I've taken a catch!" he was heard to cry. His face was a picture, like someone who’d been paid a visit by the people in the Postcode Lottery commercials. You know how it goes, Joe: “Someone’s knocking at the door…”

We were ticking through the overs but runs were starting to flow a little easier now; edges and nicks were evading our fielders, and the outfield wasn’t helping either, the ball in danger of spinning two feet past you after landing. I prefer my cricket grounds to have some grass on them, and none of us were enjoying fielding on what amounted to a cracked concrete floor. Sam Egan then got his first wicket in classic Sam fashion. Vinayak cut outside off-stump to Sam’s sharply-rising ball and it looped just over Rob’s outstretched hands at deepish gully and ran away for four. Next ball, and Rob had moved about a foot to his right: Sam bowled the same ball, the batsman played the same shot, and this time Rob gratefully and gleefully took the catch. Sam’s trap ball had worked again: that ball plus that shot plus that field equals wicket. Almost immediately, his fiery pace cleaned up Bhasat’s stumps to leave the Challengers four down, and that became five down as Sam Wyld got Hemmant to bottom-edge one that rolled slowly onto his stumps. The bails tumbled to the ground, and as drinks were taken we were halfway through their batting with only seventy-odd runs on the board.

As has happened so often in the past, however, the drinks break seemed to sap our strength. The breeze disappeared, the mercury inched a little higher on the thermometer, and Jay and Afif tucked into our bowling. With there being bare, grassless patches at both ends of the wicket, I was confident that Joe and Ian's slow bowling would profit, but although Ian bowled a beauty of a maiden over, the pitch was suddenly flat and lifeless and gave them nothing. The backside suddenly fell out of our fielding too as fatigue took hold; one attempt to stop the ball on the boundary looked like a move (complete with jazz hands) from a “Chicago” number and the bowling figures suffered. I include myself in that category; one particular ball – a standard pick up and throw – dribbled along the ground past me, as my three bellies compressed together like an accordion and denied my hands the ability to reach the floor. Poor Joe and Kaleem, on the other side of the wicket, were running so often to beyond the boundary to fetch the ball, we wondered whether it was worth hiring a Ring & Ride van from square leg to help them on their fetching missions. 

Jay was seeing it, and hitting it, very well, and after the pair had posted a fine century-plus stand, Sam Egan came back with his leggies to finally break the partnership, bowling Afif as he tried to make room and hit to off. A couple of balls later, he got Chetan to do the same thing, and he suddenly had four wickets from five overs. Despite having eighteen balls to notch a five-for, another wicket eluded him, but the returning Kaleem finally got the reward his bowling had deserved by having Hardik trapped lbw; and, as I ran off to rip a tonne of tin foil from those sandwiches I’d lovingly sweated over, Rob took the last over and bowled Prudeep. I didn’t see it as my back was turned to the action, but I’m reliably informed it was a 110 miles an hour snorted that moved along the pitch like a racer snake, sat up, waved its middle finger at the batsman, and knocked all three stumps over like Jonah Lomu bulldozing Mike Catt all those years ago. The Challengers finished on 238-9 and Jay was 80 not out; a fantastic knock. Despite our fielding lapses and probably giving them thirty runs too many, I was pleased with the effort we’d put in. To almost bowl them out in that heat, and with two batsmen taking the game away from you, was a great comeback. As it would turn out, it wouldn’t be the last comeback of the day. Rob and Kaleem were the pick of the bowlers alongside Sam Egan and his four-for; I felt for Joe and Ian, as they’d bowled at the precise moment the pitch decided to take a holiday and turned everything they had to offer into scoring opportunities for their batters.

Tea was taken; for some reason, I didn’t feel like eating my own sandwiches. Neither did anyone else…the only attention they received was from the wasps that descended upon the tea table once all the mozzarella sticks and popcorn chicken had been scoffed. I could’ve murdered a cup of tea, but with no tea-making facilities at Abbey Rec, squash had to do.

Once the break was over, I asked Richard and Andrew to open the innings. After Richard had copped his lump on the head against Chessington he’d picked up a helmet from the clubhouse; he ended up picking up the one that made him look like Robocop. It didn’t take away from his form, though; he may not be getting the big scores he’d undoubtedly like to post,  but he’s hitting the ball hard this year and the timing is good. It wasn’t easy to score quickly for the first few overs – the odd boundaries were counter-balanced by Prudeep’s maidens – but the guys were hanging in there and not looking too troubled. The first wicket didn’t fall until the 15^th over, when Richard was caught at mid-on trying to hit over the top, and the opening partnership had yielded 47  runs. That brought me to the crease and, maybe imagining that the ball looked like Miss Busybody’s head, I proceeded to smack it the boundary whenever I could. I was only out there for just under five overs but hit a breezy nineteen and added 38 with Suggs, who was looking in great form, until adrenalin – and a horrid pull shot to a good-length ball keeping low – did for me. That was drinks and we were 83-2; at this point, I hadn’t envisaged a serious assault on their score, but the pitch was lifeless and we still had a ton of batting in Matty, Aleem, Ian, Joe, Sam and a few others. Crucially, we had more wickets in the bank at drinks than they did. Could we give it a real go?

As Matty and Suggs continued untroubled for the next few overs, taking their partnership past fifty, we caught our first sound of the Sutton Challengers’ version of Monty Python’s Black Knight. Fielding deep near long-on, you heard this voice, time after time, urging “Come on boys, one more wicket and we win!”, despite the fact that we had only lost two so far. Suggs reached an excellent fifty of his own; watchful when required, attacking when required. Soon after, however, he was lbw to Chetan and Aleem was in. From the first ball, Aleem knew the run-rate and came to the crease with the handbrake off, crashing Chetan straight for two fours in two balls. This attitude had a sudden liberating effect on Matty, and an extraordinary series of overs followed; this was the end of the 29^th over, and with eleven left – or 66 balls – we needed 95 to win.

“Come on boys, one more wicket and we win!” piped up the Black Knight, still based at long-on. Matty was beginning to open his shoulders and runs were coming quickly, so – if you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” – this was the equivalent of him piping up just after Graham Chapman had taken his arm off.

The last two overs had yielded us 23 runs, the next five yielded us 61, mostly from Matty’s bat. If you bowled to him on leg stump, he pinged the ball over or through midwicket for four every time, and if you strayed outside off-stump he smacked it through cover or long-off. It was brutal, exhilarating stuff, and as I umpired at square leg, watching Matty take the bowling apart, I suddenly dared to dream that the win was on. Aleem’s game-management was brilliant, giving Matty the strike and running so well between the wickets that misfielding and overthrows became the norm. On one occasion, they took a comfortable two – only to take two more from the same ball off overthrows due to some shoddy fielding. The pitch was lifeless, the bowling was flat, and their heads were dropping. Matty was middling everything, sending their fielders into the bushes time and again to retrieve the ball. Another cleanly-hit pull shot brought him a very quick fifty, and the run-rate was now down to six an over.  When the 200 came up we were still in the 33^rd over, and now we only needed 34 runs from 42 balls. I began to feel giddy at square leg as Matty and Aleem continued to milk the bowling and find the gaps. In desperation they were changing the bowling every over, and their keeper frantically appealed for a caught behind off Aleem that only he heard, but still the runs came.

“Come on boys, I don’t give a f*** about the result…one more wicket and we win!”

Then, with five overs left and just sixteen runs required, Matty charged at Chetan’s slower ball and was stumped by the keeper. Off he went to a terrific ovation, but the butterflies in my stomach flittered about uncomfortably. Could we really see this off, or would we freeze? Being a captain with only four wins to his name in near-four seasons, and someone who has seen us snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory on many an occasion, the doubts crept in. I envisaged their bowling suddenly tangling us up in knots, and denying us by the slenderest of margins. The unease wasn’t helped by Joe facing the rest of Chetan’s over; every ball was right on the money, very tricky to face, and how the last ball of the over didn’t knock over Joe’s leg stump I’ll never know. But survive it he did, and after three dot balls of the next over and a single to get Joe off the mark, Aleem eased the tension with his third and final boundary – at square leg, I gave myself a fist-pump. We’d done it. Still came the Black Knight, hooting from the boundary, both his arms and one leg chopped off. Six was required from 12 balls; Aleem pocketed two two’s, Prudeep bowled a wide to bring the scores level, and after two more dots Aleem placed the sixth ball perfectly through a gap and took the winning single to seal the mother of all run-chases and the unlikeliest of wins.

As I ran towards Aleem and Joe and nearly committed GBH on each of them in turn, you could tell the Challengers were hurt by defeat. I’ve been there on several occasions, and you’ll never see me rub victory in anyone’s faces unless they’ve acted like a bunch of numpties throughout the match. The Challengers had played the game in the right spirit and were unlucky to run into us on the day our batting rose magnificently to the occasion; our four wickets had been worth 47, 36, 68 and 82 in turn. I hadn’t prepared for winning until Matty and Aleem put their astonishing partnership together in record time and would have settled, at the time, for getting to within thirty runs or so; I hope we play Sutton Challengers again in future. We shook hands with Mahesh and his players and exchanged pleasantries, before I proceeded to crush as many of my players as possible with a Simpson-sized man-hug. Still, I expected the Black Knight to nod in our direction and say, “All right…we’ll call it a draw”…

To be honest, it still hasn’t sunk in. In eight years of being a Merton player, I’ve never seen a run-chase like that, never been part of a comeback win like that and I guess I won’t again. And with that, the Boars clocked up our second win in three games and second of the season. For Ian, it’s like buses; you wait twenty-nine games for a win, and then two come along at once. I’d started the day making sandwiches and nearly having my collar felt by the law; I ended it as the only triumphant captain of the weekend. Still, it wasn’t all good news at the end; some sod nicked my batting pads. Jeez, man; where’s the Police when you really need them?

Game Day #10: Graces - Ballet on the Boundary, and Mahender's Match

After a one-week break from the regular Sunday circuit while the club held its annual Six-a-Side tournament, it was back to business as usual for my Boars team, still riding high on our one-game winning streak following the defeat of Chessington a fortnight previously. Graces were the visitors to the John Innes Bernabowl, a club that are always as impressive on the field as they are off it. They’re one of those teams I’ve yet to taste victory against – not, I hasten to repeat, that winning should matter on a Sunday – and so maybe, if we could just harness the batting solidity and prowess in the field that got us over the line so well in our last game, we could break our duck against them. Famous last words…

A word about our visitors for the day. It can be hard enough sometimes to admit to someone, “I play cricket at the weekends” – especially to kids who have never heard of it unless it’s a feature on Minecraft, Roblox or Fortnite – and also during a summer when, thanks to the World Cup, the planet is fervently pro-football. It must be even harder to say to people, “I play cricket and, by the way, I happen to be gay. As is everyone on the team”. To their knowledge, Graces are still the only gay cricket club in existence since their mid-1990’s inception, which can make them seem like a token or pet club, to be patronised or stared at as some kind of curio. Indeed, there will undoubtedly be some who expect a gang of extras from “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” to turn up to matches and act like shrieking divas from first ball to last – we may live in more enlightened times, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s attitudes to certain aspects of life have caught up. In fact, what you find is  that eleven cricketers turn up; eleven bloody good cricketers, and fantastic people as well. As Boars captain, I always savour the days when Graces come to visit; the cricket is friendly and the atmosphere is harmonious. You won’t get idiots shouting in umpire’s faces when their lbw appeal is turned down, taking out their crap week at work onto the cricket field, or batsmen nicking one to first slip and refusing to walk because he’s neck and neck with the Chairman for the batting trophy. Two teams playing good cricket and enjoying their Sunday, and on these days – more than any other – being gay, straight, black, brown, male etc is irrelevant. And that’s the way it should be.

Mind you, they’d had their fair share of drama leading up to the game. They were short of players all week and we drafted in a couple of our guys to play for them – one of them then had his finger injured attempting to take a catch on Saturday. Then, on the morning of the game, they’d been let down by a couple more players, suspicions rising that it happened to coincide with the Wimbledon Men’s Final…but a contingency plan was put in place. They could bat down to ten wickets by rotating what batsmen they had, and their bowlers could max up to ten overs each instead of the agreed seven. And seven was the magic number for them, as only six Graces players turned up with our very own Andrew Van Derwatt standing in for them.

We didn’t bother with the toss as I’d already said I wouldn’t make them field first with only seven players, so I won by proxy. Yes, I’m claiming that, and that’s nine wins at the toss out of nine this season. Life is good before the first ball has even been bowled every week. I’m winning.

The heatwave has still been raging on; the lack of rain had turned the outfield into a patchwork quilt of mottled green, yellow and brown patches, with some areas around the boundary as bald as myself, Joe Gun and Killer Smither. The square, by contrast, had taken on a lusher green hue due to some watering in the week, and the individual strips no longer resembled upturned shortbread fingers. I had watched James P cracked on the helmet from a shortish length in the league game yesterday so  the watering would, thankfully, ease the worries of batsman safety after the way the pitches have turned nasty in recent weeks…but it would also nullify my pace attack a little. Swings and roundabouts. And my pace attack was probably the most youthful it’s ever been on a Sunday: the average age of Sam E, Sam W, Johnny M, Sujanan and Hassan was 16.8 years. Then, when I added the ages of myself, Joe and Killer, it bumped it up to 30.25, which shows how old we’re getting (52.8 years between us on average…).

Under spotless blue skies, and with the lunchtime mercury topping 30 degrees on the thermometer, Mahender and Moran opened the batting, facing  Suj from the Clubhouse End and Sam W from the Kingston Road End. We soon discovered how much the pitch-watering had slowed the pitch down, as anything slightly short sat up and demanded to be hit to the square leg boundary. That’s what happened, time and again; the openers took it in turns to rock back, play the pull shot, and send our fielders running into the bushes to locate the ball. Graces were scoring at six an over when Sam E and Killer took over the bowling, but the same things were happening; Sam built up a terrific head of steam and was taking his frustrations out on the pitch at express pace, but he too was going at six an over. During the opening overs, Mahender survived two very sharp half-chances to Aleem behind the stumps; one edge falling agonisingly short of the gloves while the other squeezed out after an acrobatic leap to attempt the catch. That was as good as it got for us; a pitch that previously had something in it for the likes of Smither to threaten to take wickets was now offering nothing, and getting drier and flatter under the scorching sun.

At this point, our fielding started to resemble something from a Royal Ballet Company production, especially near the boundary. As the opener’s century stand was notched, I reflected on how most of the runs had been scored off the back foot and how many of them had been singles turned into fours by the habit of using a foot to stop the ball…only to lift the foot at the crucial moment. Maybe the thinking is that a special forcefield will be generated by the lifted foot that will repel the ball away from the boundary…sadly, not even Elon Musk or Q from the James Bond film franchise has invented footwear capable of doing this, and instead we were donating runs to Graces as if we were donating five pound notes to Comic Relief. The ballet-style fielding got worse; I swore I could hear the strains of “The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy” or “Romeo and Juliet” as the ball disappeared time and again through our fielder’s bodies, up on one toe in Arabesque fashion (the club kit shop will be selling tutu’s next season, with our numbers and initials on them). I could really have done with all of us being bitten on the hands and feet by mosquitoes; the swelling would have stopped every ball travelling our way and saved a stack of runs.

As the run rate hovered near eight per over, firstly Joe and then I had a go with the ball. Joe didn’t bowl as badly as he thought he had, but the pitch was offering zero and he dejectedly took himself out of the attack. The score had sailed past 150 when I came on in the 21^st over, and finally made the breakthrough with my second ball. It pitched in line and kept straight, hitting Moran halfway up. When I could still see most of leg stump visible I appealed, and the umpire thankfully raised his finger. Moran had made a very good 61, patiently moving the scoreboard along while Mahender did most of the damage – which he continued to do to me during the rest of my spell, time and again putting my best efforts back past me and on the way to the long on boundary at some speed. I could have had him, though; he smacked a booming drive down to long-on where Hassan was waiting, hands cupped, to take the catch. Despite a valiant effort, the ball hit Hassan’s fingers – injuring one of them – and over the boundary. Before that, though, Sam E returned from the Kingston Road End, bowling leggies, and after his first three overs of searing pace had whistled by for 34 runs, his remaining four went for just four – including the wicket of Stuey, lbw for seven. Dom came in and helped Mahender reach his century, before Johnny M – The Steriliser – cleaned him up with what must’ve been a wafer-thin edge to Aleem. Maximum credit to Dom here as he chose to walk when several others wouldn’t have budged, in what was a fitting act of sportsmanship. Nobody else had heard a nick.

Replacing me at the Clubhouse End – going for 12 and a half runs per over is more than enough for anyone – was Alex “The Jailer”, Johnny M’s older brother, for his first-ever bowl in a game of cricket. Halfway through his first over came the only moment of controversy in the game; “The Jailer” bowled a double-bouncer to Mahender, who bottom-edged it onto his stumps. Most of us jumped up in a combination of celebration and laughter; when I came back to cricket in 2011 in a bowler, the double-bouncer was my stock ball. Mahender, as was his right, stood his ground and asked how many times it had bounced (three or more bounces to the batsman is a no-ball), and we were in the process of telling him that it had bounced twice when somebody from our side piped up and said it had bounced “loads of times…at least four”. The umpire duly signalled a no-ball, and Mahender was reprieved. I was furious, not with Mahender I might add; after a day of extreme heat, poor fielding, an unresponsive pitch and a rocketing run-rate, talking our own team out of a wicket – and Alex out of his first-ever wicket – made me boil over. I voiced my frustrations very loudly and scowled at square leg until the end of the innings. That came a few overs later, and we were set the middling challenge of 294 to win in 35 overs. Mahender was 141 not out, and was applauded off accordingly, while I went in search of a stiff drink.

As we’d agreed to have a longer break so people could watch the World Cup Final (planned at the start of the week, when England were a shoo-in for winning the competition…how foolish we all felt now!!), we began our innings straight away. Only three overs were possible but Andrew Suggitt and I negotiated them without any difficulty, even putting 20 runs on the board. The extended break was welcome; it’s never nice batting straight after fielding for nearly three hours in relentless heat, but as France dominated the scoring against Croatia in the football, we all took the decision to cut short the break and get back to cricket.

The two Sams did some sub fielding for Graces, as did one of their supporters – a guy in at least his seventies, who I mistook for a dog-walker who’d strayed onto the outfield and so mistakenly stopped running when I hit the ball his way – but I managed to find the gaps against the bowling of Newton and Merton’s own Andrew VDW to the extent that 44 runs were on the board in the ninth over when I played an appalling slog to Mahender’s fourth ball. Forget the fact it turned six inches, the shot was just dreadful. Alex “The Jailer” got off the mark but was then castled by Mahender, who was steadily making the match his, which brought Aleem to the crease. His twos and ones, coupled with Suggs’s boundaries, kept the scoreboard ticking over until Suggs became Mahender’s third victim. Andrew VDW was having no luck at the other end despite bowling terrifically; the pitch was offering him no assistance.

Sam Egan came in and got off the mark with a boundary, and not for the first time forged a good understanding and partnership with Aleem. Running between the wickets was crisp and the boundaries were coming too; Dom took some stick from “Widowmaker” Sam (if his bowling doesn’t get you, his batting will), and the hundred came up in the 22^nd over. Fielding wasn’t easy; the ululating surface of the outfield near the clubhouse was resembling corrugated iron in some places, and time and again Stuey’s diving efforts down there saw the ball rear up from the ground and slam him in the chest. Runs were coming freely; sadly Sam was dismissed by the returning Newton with seven overs left after a 62-run partnership. “The Steriliser” came in and made a few before being run out going for a second run. That brought Joe to the crease, and Aleem suddenly went turbo as they smacked 28 runs in the last four overs. Finally, he brought up his first Sunday fifty of the season, then went boundary-mad by taking fifteen off Newton’s last over. He ended up on 68 not out, the team ended up a very credible and enjoyable 187-5, and the game came to a close.

Once again, the margin of defeat had been heavy – over a hundred runs – but we’d given such a good account of ourselves with the bat (and had notched our highest team score of the season to date) that none of that mattered. After our iffy performance in the field, we’d redeemed ourselves. Before we closed the ground down, Jonathan – Graces’ main man – called everyone in and made a lovely little speech praising us for the way we’d upheld the spirit of the game by lending them sub fielders and not taking advantage of what was 11 v 7, and I reciprocated by reminding him that his team will always be fondly-regarded by Merton, and we will always look forward to our future fixtures here and elsewhere. It was also nice to see the players of Arjun’s Wolves  stick around all through our game and even help with umpiring, and then have a few more beers with us afterwards.

Oh well, if a winning streak must be broken, then a streak of one win in a row is better than nothing. The World Cup has finally finished; Alex “The Jailer” counted the cost of being drawn with Croatia and won a tenner to make up for his ‘ghost’ wicket, and we can finally start talking about cricket again. Until the football starts again, in about a fortnight. Pffft…