Report of Thursday 2 May 2024, Mandarins vs HMT Treasury, T20 at King’s House School
After a soggy spring of cancelled fixtures, the Mandarins finally began their season with a rare T20 match. Our opponents were a combined HM Treasury and Cabinet Office team, which was fitting given former Mandarin greats like Gus O’Donnell and JC Gray made their careers in HMT and our illustrious founder Robin Butler rose to Cabinet Secretary. The match in Chiswick was also played at what was traditionally the civil service sports ground; until the Treasury sold it off to King’s House School during the post-2010 austerity years…
Expectations were low though for the prospects of play, with skies as gloomy as the state of the public finances and a weather forecast as bad as recent economic forecasts.
In a classic Treasury powerplay reminiscent of how they set Spending Review terms for line departments, HMT “negotiated” that there was no need for a toss as they would bat first; like they did last year when smashing a high score before skittling us out in fading light.
Undeterred by these inauspicious signs and your correspondent’s delayed arrival via Southwest Trains, the Mandarins fielded a strong mix of youth (well, under 45s, plus Stan…) and experience. This included Hawkhead pilgriming again from Solihull to add to his double century of caps, and Ramani managing to find his way from East London.
The pitch was greener than HMT’s book for appraising public spending, and Boycott’s keys would certainly have sliced through the moist surface.
Thankfully given the gloomy light, skipper Dan Foreman had brought a pink ball for the novel pair of Tunbridge and Healey to open the bowling with. Their wicket-to-wicket medium pace seamers brought back fond memories of the Black Caps’ “dibbly dobbly” bowling attack on similarly green decks in New Zealand.
Healey struck first, bowling the dangerous Bentley for 5. The Mandarins started to fancy their chances of containing HMT, given the lush, slow outfield, long boundaries and surprisingly accurate bowling and sprightly fielding. There were athletic dives among the ring fielders to save singles and speedy sweepers cutting off the boundaries. Remarkably, there were no bobbles in the field by the Mandarins, except the skipper’s thermal headgear…
The contest was intriguingly poised at 37/1 as the ten over mark approached, with the skilful top-order batsmen starting to stimulate HMT’s run rate through quick running and the occasional boundary.
First change bowler Ramani was unlucky that the Mandarins couldn’t snaffle some difficult stumping and catching opportunities, as his beautifully flighted off-spinners were beating the batsmen in the air and off the pitch.
Just as HMT seemed to be getting on top, Baxter memorably produced the match’s turning point with an outstanding catch off Ramani’s bowling. The HMT opener cut powerfully and uppishly in the expectation of a boundary. But he watched in dismay as Baxter at point leapt to his left and grasped the pink ball by the fingertips of his right hand, whilst at full stretch. He then cushioned himself from spilling it while landing. It was such a stunning catch, even amongst Tim’s remarkable collection of stunners in recent seasons, that comparisons were soon made to Jonty Rhodes or Ben Stokes’ blinding takes of yesteryear. The non-striker was also so impressed that he jogged over to shake Tim by the hand in congratulation. Blowers and the Test Match Special team would have unanimously declared this the match’s “champagne moment”.
HMT’s incoming left hander strode confidently to the middle at 53/2. Seeking to regain the momentum in his first few balls, he cleanly middled Rakesh with a lofty swing. He looked destined to get himself off the mark with a six. But his heart sank as he spotted Stan Forman poised on the boundary and watchfully tracking the pink ball’s rapid flight against the low cloud, strong wind and noisy planes descending to land at Heathrow. Steadying himself just inside the rope, Stan confidently took a difficult head height catch and avoided overstepping backwards. 53/3.
Stan was back in the action bowling at pace, but even he couldn’t prevent HMT recovering in the middle overs with some skilful use of their feet resulting in lofted boundaries.
Dan brought himself on and was soon causing problems on a pitch proving surprisingly dangerous for the spinners. HMT imprudently abandoned their previous orthodoxy and embarked on some Kwasikaze strokeplay. Wickets began to tumble like Britain’s credit rating during the final days of the Truss premiership and Lowin regained his poise with the gloves with two smart stumpings.
Remarkably, Forman senior took all six of HMT’s final wickets as they were dismissed for 93 after 19 overs. Dan’s superb 6/15 off four overs were his best ever figures for the Mandarins. They also gave him a four wicket lead over Rakesh in their eagerly anticipated duel to see who would claim the 2024 season bragging rights for most wickets.
At the interval, the Mandarins were feeling chipper about chasing down the 94 runs required. But it was a subdued start by openers Williams and Baxter against tight bowling, with Williams soon caught for 2 against the tall, wily offspinner.
In a rare return since he became a dad a couple of years ago, Brockbank took guard. He made a watchful start and started accumulating singles and twos.
Despite his new gloves, Baxter was soon caught behind for 6 off the medium pace away swinger and walked off in his very old pads.
Ever enthusiastically, Brown strode to the wicket and showed positive intent. But he fell early as he chopped onto his stumps when beaten by the turn and bounce from the fine offspinner.
Perhaps seeking to emulated his beloved Warwickshire Bears’ T20 blast hitting, Hawkhead swiped at his first ball. But his leading edge arced comfortably to point and he trudged off, leaving the Mandarins in some disarray at 16/4.
Brockbank gave the incoming Lowin a pep talk that all was not lost, especially as this Mandarins inclusive batting line-up in fact got stronger in depth as evidenced by Healey at 11. Lowin saw off the hattrick ball and they soon combined to run smartly and starting forming a steady partnership. The scoreboard pressure was beginning to build, although the batsmen couldn’t actually make it out in the gloom.
But Brockbank’s patience was rewarded as he punished some bad balls, such as dispatching a waist high full toss to the midwicket boundary. His pick was sweetly timing a pull shot off an attempted bouncer that invitingly sat up on the slow pitch.
But just as the Mandarins looked on top again, Brockbank was bowled for 18 by a fine yorker. Entering at 46/5, Stan Forman looked unfazed by the pressure and the deteriorating light. He kept up the swift running and middled some boundaries.
The Mandarins were pegged back to 58/6, however, when Lowin was caught and bowled for a useful 11. Reassuringly, Tunbridge was next in. But he couldn’t discover his usual silky touch due to the gloom. He was also bothered by a rapid chest high full toss that the umpire failed to call as a no ball. When he was bowled for just 1 and the Mandarins fell to 61/7 with around six overs to go, we were set for a thriller.
The incoming left-handed Rakesh looked as calm and technically correct as ever though. He partnered smoothly with Stan and their worked the gaps to bring down the required rate to less than a run a ball.
Thankfully, as our high viz clad scorer Baker assiduously noted, HMT loosely gave away 18 wides and 6 no balls; which proved a self-inflicted stealth tax on their prospects and helpfully inflated the Mandarins total.
Stan cheered the Mandarns faithful with more fine hitting; including against HMT’s female bowler. The Mandarins’ social media feed (Whatsapp, rather than any of that Insta, X or TikTok nonsense…) began to ping with live updates in anticipation of an unlikely win.
If Wilmot had been around to calculate it for us, the WinViz % would probably have climbed to around the 70% levels of that morning’s BBC forecast for the probability of rain. But while remarkably the rain held off and the target neared, the fading light reminded onlookers of England’s famous run chase in near darkness in Karachi in 2000.
Like fellow lefty Graham Thorpe in Karachi, Rakesh hit the winning runs and the Mandarins clinched a three-wicket victory was an over to spare. While our Chennai born star would have loved the win to have been against Pakistan too, it was also satisfying to finally win in this inter-civil service contest.
Overall, it was a fine team performance with plenty of individual highlights, notably from Dan with his club best bowling figures, Stan for his fine all-round performance including 23 runs, and Baxter with his stupendous catch.
It was a surprisingly enjoyable evening, given the inauspicious early season conditions. Many of the Mandarins savoured a well-earned pint in the clubhouse. Venky and Arvind also raised a glass in congratulations from New York City to toast the Mandarins starting May undefeated. Blimey! Neither the Treasury or us had budgeted for that…
Jamie Brockbank