A round-up of recent Mandarins matches, rather than a classic Richard Curtis romantic comedy
Mandarins lost to Peper Harow – 20 April 2025
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Mandarins lost to HM Treasury and Cabinet Office – 1 May 2025
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Mandarins lost to Graces – 11 May 2025
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Mandarins lost to Millfields – 18 May 2025
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Mandarins drew with Brixton Barbarians – 25 May 2025
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For the record, a brief summary of four defeats, stopping only to dwell on the highlights, which itself won’t take too long. Especially as Healey has already written elegantly about Peper Harow here:
https://mandarinscc.blogspot.
So that’s that done. We only hope to see him back on the field for us soon, writing his own redemption song for us.
The Treasury game only had one real talking point (or should that be honking point?), when a Chiswick goose deprived us of a much-needed boundary. Wisden’s actual cricket writer of the year 2025, believe it or not, did his best (or should that be worst?) with that here: https://mandarinscc.blogspot.
Some might say that actual ECB-qualified umpire Hawkhead also deprived us of a much-needed batter when he triggered t20 specialist Vijay, but the light would have probably defeated us anyway, even if the Treasury’s excellent bowlers hadn’t. The game will hopefully also be notable to future club historians as the debut of Kishen Rangarajan, in which he scored his first and took his first of what promise to be many Mandarins runs and wickets.
Graces and Millfields can perhaps be combined to say that we batted well in one and bowled and fielded brilliantly in the other. Unfortunately, well, you know the rest…
In our defence, Graces was a bad toss to lose on a rock hard pitch on a hot day with a short boundary. They had good bats who got away from us (not helped by dropping all of them at various points). And we kept it under the club record worst runs conceded with Abhijit, Saad and Chanath all also making encouraging debuts. Thanks to Ramani’s career-high score of 87* we also scored a credible 206/9. And the oppo themselves recognised that it would have been a very exciting finish in a timed game, which is what we agreed to play next year.
Millfields also had a very good bowler in Callum Hughes who swung it in later than we were able to get our bats down onto. And we got it over the club record worst score thanks in part to debutant Eddie Hyde. And we really did bowl and field well. Rakesh’s catch at point to get the dangerous Collis was as good as any you will ever see on a Sunday. The highest compliment I can pay it is that I'm not even sure Baxter would have got a hand to it. Rob was superb with the new ball, and Abhijit showed himself to be a very skilful leggy, while Wahaj got his rewards in his second spell for putting in a fine first shift. It was just such a shame that having kept them to an in-the-game-here 142 we didn’t really stay in the game at all… but let’s not dwell on that.
Let’s dwell instead on a lovely first game against the Brixton Barbarians, played in true Sunday spirit and showing the best of declaration cricket in allowing everyone to play a role and going down to the very final ball. After arranging to bat we soon rued giving them Kishen to make up their numbers when he clean bowled all four of our top four. In fact, all nine of our first wickets fell to capped Mandarins bowlers, with Adam Eastaway accounting for Stan Forman in the offspringoff, and Abhijit, Saad and Wahaj accounting for the rest. But it took a good while to account for our ninth wicket stand. The 88 partnership between Raki and Rob was a new club record, first rescuing us and then taking us somewhere past respectability towards even what you might call dominance.
It was a dominance that Rob then helped continue with a typically miserly opening spell of 8-3-13-1, with Owen Jackson also getting a quick three-fer at the other end to put us right on top. But Wahaj and Kishen put up an outstanding rearguard action, with a 50+ partnership that took 14 overs to separate and kept the Barbarians in the hunt themselves for most of it. But the returning Jackson trapped Wahaj lbw, which left an exciting six to bowl with three to get. There were appeals aplenty, there were oohs, there were aahs, there were increasing numbers of men around the bat, as Adam came and went and Owen got his first five-fer for the club. Nikhil pushed at one just in front of Stan. Kishen refused to be moved until the big man eventually got him with four balls to go, to give Owen 6-39 and the best figures of his life.
Could he go one better again with three to bowl at their number 11? He gave it his all and gave himself an eight-ball over with two wides that were sportingly signalled by the Brixton umpire, despite some barbarian barracking about dots being more helpful to them at this point in proceedings. On Owen’s very final effort he dug it in and got one to lift. Did he catch an arm, a glove, or was it even a bit of bat? Was it enough for the umpire to give it or the batter to walk? Alas, we will never know as, slightly unsighted, keeper Wilmot put down the ‘chance’. But let’s not dwell on that…
Although, if Richard Curtis is asking, it was glove, actually.
Dan Forman
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