If you’re reading this in 2124, before the glaciers melted and England became sub-tropical, let me set the scene for this cricket game. It’s the middle of June and we’ve endured weeks of cool, wet, 20th Century weather. But Sunday turned out fine, with a stiff breeze and no rain. It’s Wandsworth Common, which in 15-years of playing cricket in South London I never knew was even a venue. But the pitch is fair to middling given the circumstances, no balls were lost in the brambles, and there’s a cafe that could’ve passed for an attractive pavilion in another setting. I would certainly return there.
Suggestions of using the adjoining artificial surface are dismissed – praise be! – and following the usual negotiations, we went into bat in our preferred time-game format. Sam B and Harry kicked things off with haste—no use waiting around for that one tricky ball, right? Harry made 51, and Sam B was with him for a good piece of it. Wahaj, our guest from Brixton Barbarians, played some solid looking MCC coaching manual stuff and fell only just short of the same milestone. Chris H contributed a swift 44, and after a flurry of mid-order wickets, skipper Hawkins called them in a few overs early at 180 for 5—a solid score given the pitch and a decent bowling attack.
Despite appearances, the surface had played well enough (a bowler speaks…etc.), and the mood in the camp was that 180 was “just right”. If we now bowled sensibly and didn’t expose the short boundary too often, it should have been enough to at least hold our own.
Ritin, our other Brixton import, made a swift early impression running into the wind. The full toss wasn’t his best delivery, but a superb reaction-catch at silly point dismissed their opener in the first over. And after 3 overs, we had Weekenders 2 for 0. Then some solid resistance and gentle acceleration up towards the 20-over mark left them needing 100-odd to win with two batsmen set and 8-wickets left. With all results possible, I recalled the boundary-edge chat about not wanting to score “too many runs…”.
It turned out that we had only to remove one support and, Jenga-style, Weekenders’ innings would suffer an “uncontrolled disassembly” (been looking to re-use that phrase somewhere). An optimistic quick single to your correspondent’s left hand turned unexpectedly bad, and the surviving batter whose call was the reason for the run out, fell the next over to Raki’s remorseless off-spin. This spurred a run of wickets from him (4-28 off 13), with ample support from Chris (3-8 from 5.2).
Weekenders might be said to have either, (a) folded by shedding 8 wickets for less than 50 runs; or (b) gamely kept playing for the win until the very last. Take your pick. Whichever way you look at it, our 59-run win probably exaggerated the real gap between the sides, and there seems plenty of enthusiasm for a rematch next year.
Andy Heard
Oh, and one final thing… you’ll have noticed that it’s batters’ inalienable right to halt play if they’re asked to face up to a delivery when some old chap shuffles past the sight screen behind the bowler’s arm. Well, on Wandsworth Common claiming this right was unfeasible, but did it throw anyone off their game I wonder?
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