|
Alice was so excited. She had never seen so many people, and what fine people they were. She had talked and talked and everybody had been so very kind and encouraging. 'Of course we'll be there' they said. 'Wouldn't miss it for all the toasted tea cakes in the world.' She was in such a frenzy she had to excuse herself for a moment. She walked down the corridor past the Queen's boudoir and into a massive black and white tiled bathroom. After splashing deliciously warm water on her face she returned to the party but no one was there! She rubbed her eyes, walked out of the room and back in again but still no one was there. 'Where has everybody gone,' she shouted. But answer was there none.
|
Another season, and what a season this promises to be. Never before has there been such hope, pre-season words of promised commitment and a squad of alarming strength and depth. In March a hard core of six noble men went out on the piss and agreed that tough choices would have to be made. Selection would be one of the more taxing problems facing your erstwhile skipper as he tried to steer a smooth course to all consuming victory around the villages, pubs and slaughtered cattle of Surrey. It looked like emollient words of encouragement would have to be dished out to the unlucky few each week. A thriving club reaching for the stars. And after all, what else are we in this game for but to win and win mightily.
The weeks leading up to the first game were a trifle disconcerting. Zoob had entrusted your skipper with the task of finding 7 for an indoor tournament on April 7th. No trouble thought Norcross. I've got at least 12 champing at the bit. In the end, 6 turned up at 10 a.m. followed by the hugely impressive Bhavish Patel who nicked his mother's car as she was screaming at him to do his homework and raced down to the gym the moment he heard of his late call-up, but others had prior engagements. "I'm moving in six weeks so it's probably not a good time" said one. "Oh I didn't realize you meant today" said another. In the end, thanks to Omar, Bhavish, Daud, Ralph, Phil Ryder, Greg Wilcox, a ringer and Norcross we scaled the very heights of achievement's steepest mountain to emerge as victors replete with trophy. A magnificent and auspicious start, but the warning signs were already there.
Two weeks later and the season is imminent. "Well, you know Danny, I quite fancy it but I'm getting on now. The pitch is crap, the 1sts are crap, the weather's awful. If you get some momentum going give me a call and I'll help you out," said a "committed club man." "It is the FA Cup Final" said another. I know, thought Norcross, an obsessed to the point of depressive Manchester United fan who has been forced to miss the last 9 FA Cup Finals four of which his team were involved in. "Sorry, gotta go to New York" said Khan and Kane. Nothing you can do there. "Sorry, wife is giving birth" said Mayers. "Sorry, got exams in June" said Bhavish, Sachin, and Mikshu. What is it about Patels and May? I think there's something more sinister going on myself, like a conference of all the Patels in Britain where they plot ever more outlandish schemes for world domination. Richard Evans has suffered a knee injury whilst playing rugby and Tredgett has cried off altogether so as to negotiate one final season of football with the missus. Oh well, never mind, we still have Ralph and The Legend. But wait, what is this. Oh of course it's the 1st XI and their diary challenged squad. "Is it that time of year already?" yes it bloody is. "Well Danny, the truth of the matter is that we only have 4 regular players. No-one could ring anybody over the winter because our hands seized up and anyway, don't you, Ditch and Zoob really organize the teams. We just turn up and play don't we? So….we'll have Ralph and The Legend." Cheers mate. No, honestly, thanks. I've put in around 250 phone calls this winter so you can nick my players and we can start the season just like last year doing atrociously and screwing up big time thus invalidating any good work that may be done later and consigning us to yet another season in a division that barely taxes some of our better players and galls us collectively.
In anticipation of the timeless rhythms of preposterous thoughtlessness and down right despicably self-obsessed behaviour breaking out in the upper echelons of the club once again, Zoob rather cheekily arranged a game for his thirds despite Potash being unavailable and so the mad scramble for 33 bodies regardless of size, gender, physical prowess, or familiarity with the laws of cricket began in earnest. Where two weeks previously Norcross had smiled himself to sleep with the thought of a line-up that included Khan, Kane, Ryder, Thomas, The Legend and Ansbro, instead he found himself in his hotel room in Bristol, for that is whence he has to co-ordinate this massive and thankless duty as he now works there three days a week, dreaming of chancing upon a Matt Bird in the lobby or Sebastian Aps (where are you you bastard? Last year's number is unobtainable) zoned out on the middle branches of a sycamore tree rather like Dylan the Rabbit. Off he toddled, in despair and close to suicide, to the hotel swimming pool for a pre-season warm up. After 8 very short lengths the exercise was suspended. Pain heaped upon pain. Into the Jacuzzi, it was the only option. Whereupon, as if sent by some malicious anti 2nd XI captain demon, he was goaded by the arrival of Angus Fraser, Marcus Roseberry, David Nash and that Strauss geezer that Charlie rates. As if on auto pilot Norcross asked sheepishly "doing anything Saturday? Fancy a game? Home one o clock, told." "If we're finished here early…" No then. That said it's my favourite excuse of the season so far; can't do Saturday, gotta play Gloucestershire at Bristol.
By Friday night Ditch was ready to kill Zoob, only the intervention of Norcross preventing a blood bath. The 1sts still had only 9 and there was no-one with the possible exception of Ryder who could have possibly gone up. Then, out of the blue, a little angel called Waqar surfaced and was hurriedly dispatched to the 1sts game with the redoubtable Ditch as chaperon and confrere in a 1st XI line-up marginally less shameful than the previous week. As usual, at 11.20 p.m. on the first Friday before the first games of the 2nd and 3rd XI seasons we had scraped together the requisite bodies and would be able to fulfill our duties to the Gods of Cricket. The 2nds would welcome back the prodigal son, Dave Behar, fresh from 5 years spreading some message or other to the oppressed peoples of the second and third worlds, as well as promoting Paddy Porter and the extravagantly monikered Basil de Guingand after one game for the fourths on Founder's Day last year. Ramon would come all the way from university in a demonstration of singular and most welcome commitment. Greg Wilcox, laid low with a tricky case of cricketitis whereby he can't bowl in a straight line without a constricting net blocking off the hideous open spaces that one normally associates with a cricket match, would shore up the middle order. Dingwall was in fine fettle after changing pipe tobaccos in mid-winter and Dave Parkin, all experience and know how, would open the batting with Ryder. Eyles once more donned the gloves and Norcross would have to bat at three. Or would he? Last year's leading wicket taker, Nigel Walker, was available only on one condition; that he get to watch the entire FA Cup Final live on television. This presented a very tricky problem. Nigel felt convinced we should bowl first and he would have them skittled out inside two hours. Fighting talk but about as likely as OA's showing the merest understanding of how their absences from games of cricket really screw everything up and most especially their supposed team mates' chances of enjoying what can be a thoroughly pleasant but also more than equally god awful experience. As bad luck would have it, however, Norcross wasn't about to have anything as even chanced as winning the toss happen to him. No siree bob. Armed with a batting line up about as deep as Posh Spice's understanding of Young Hegelians and their effects on late 19th century political philosophy he determined upon a strategy that could just about give him maximum Walker usage. The Hofmeister bear was promoted to three in the order (still not good enough apparently) and Norcross would attempt to bat for 65 overs. Well, to be fair he hadn't alighted on that ultra defensive strategy from the outset but it was certainly an option.
Brook had arrived with a most unusual quorum of eleven players. They have apparently picked up some new blood in the 1st XI over the winter and had the luxury of dropping a few regular first teamers to the seconds. Oh yeah, that must be nice for you. Tell us, did they just turn up at the ground and ask for a game? I suppose they must have done. No other way to get players is there? Thinking about it, it's probably all Elsdon's fault. I mean what with all those people just turning up at grounds looking for games it must have been him turning them away that explained our current predicament.
Parkin and Ryder opened the innings and for a good 14 minutes looked safe as houses. True there was a fairly nippy bowler tearing in from the top end, but Ryder looked comfortable and Parkin was playing lofted straight drives with all the certainty, care and sure footed mastery of days gone by. So it was no surprise when he was clean bowled by a fuller straight one. This was Nige's moment. All last season he had told everyone whether they were listening or not, of the gross injustice that was his no.10 berth in the batting order. Now he would show us. Within an over he got one that popped up off the pitch and was brilliantly caught one handed at short mid wicket. He returned sad faced and angry to the pavilion and his captain strode to the wicket rather like a man who has traveled to India for an arranged marriage with a Benazir Bhutto lookalike only to discover she's been deposed in a coup and he'll have to make do with Thora Hird instead. Dispiriting is not a word your skipper cares to use too often, if at all (though a glance back at last year's May match reports would contradict such an assertion), but this was truly dispiriting. Eyeing the pavilion he realized there was little proven batting to come. So to Ryder he marched and stared deep into his trusted Lieutenant's expectant but worried eyes. We'll have to just bat and bat. Music to Phyllis' ears. For a good twenty minutes they did just that before Phyllis too was undone by the speedster's line and the awkward pitch that was playing slower and lower than ever before; 31-3 and big trouble. Greg Wilcox battled manfully for another twenty minutes before he succumbed to….the straight one from the speedster; 41-4. Now Behar emerged from the sun streaked pavilion, his hat carried in the manner of Richie Richardson and his gait that sloping, vain knowing lope of the class middle order batsman. Despite not having batted in anger for years he oozed confidence and class, and furthermore, turned out to be even more slothful between the wickets than his skipper, which was a welcome boost for a nearly broken man. For nearly an hour they defied the twin terrors of the wicket and the Brook bowling which was uncannily accurate; almost as if these people had picked up a ball and bowled it somewhere sometime in the last 8 months. It was enough to make you question your sanity. I mean, were they from the southern hemisphere or were there some strange pockets of cricket worthiness in Surrey, perhaps indoor facilities or something where they could play the beloved game between breaks in life for football, dinner parties, loft conversions, skiing trips, house buying, grandmother ferrying, car washing and all the other things that ensure May is not a time for cricket but rather to have a quiet word with muscles we had all forgotten existed? The strategy seemed to be working although the lack of runs was rather speeding up the over rate and any failure to bat the full 65 would impact negatively on getting Nige out onto the pitch from the beginning of their innings. This was a problem in itself; I mean it doesn't look too snazzy allowing one of your players to stay glued to the TV watching football whilst the rest of us are fielding in 90 degree heat, but then it was either that or not have him at all, and he had turned up after all, unlike the vast majority of the club.
Behar finally succumbed for a splendid twenty, easily the best innings by an OA on the day, and Norcross, whose vigil was taking on Athertonian proportions (without the glorious stroke play or calm certainty of success) was joined by Ramon. Gotta bat the 65, he tells Ramon, who nods purposefully and plays a wild cut to his first ball, but fortunately misses completely. Serious words are exchanged and the dull tedium of batting dourly for as long as possible is resumed. In the fifty fourth over, however, Norcross can take no more and after restraining himself for 122 balls and 2 and half hours in unseasonal heat, he limply pats back a long hop to the bowler for a thoroughly unwatchable but potentially crucial 38. It's 101-6 and we have to bat for ten more overs with two unknown quantities and the very known unquantity that is Eyles with the bat still to come. But that most reassuring of lower middle order sights is ensconsed at the wicket. None other than Dingwall and Ramon, a sort of cynical Roger de Coursay and Nookie bear if you will. They looked like they were about to take the innings towards he riches of 150 when disaster struck. Baker had a rush of blood and succumbed for a vital 20. The debutant Paddy Porter replaced him after 3 hours of rather puzzled watching and promptly played on second ball for nought. Basil joined Dingers and followed captain's orders to the letter, staunchly blocking everything in the 60th over and leaving the run scoring to Dingers. Sadly, Dingers failure to locate his glasses finally caught up with him and he was bowled, like most of the rest of the team; 128-9, 62 overs gone. However, we were still in with a chance if we could just bat through the 65. That would give us Nigel back and only about 40 overs to bowl on a sluggish wicket with a diabolical outfield. Eyles remarkably blocked out an over as did Basil. A couple of leg byes were scrambles and we made it to the last over before Basil understandably decided the time had come to show us what he was made of and promptly the innings folded for a gutsy and strangely gratifying 131. Better than usual this time of year and made all the more impressive by the time we had occupied the crease.
We gathered for tea only to discover that the FA Cup was still goalless. Disaster. If it went to extra time we would be truly stuffed. It was now that Norcross finally cheered up. I mean, what the hell is going on when the course of the (cricket) game is in no small part determined by precisely what happens in a game of professional football played some 200 miles away. Chaos theory? Not bleedin' half. So joy reined (almost, Nige excluded) unconfined when Arsenal took the lead in the 72nd minute thanks to a marvelous move involving Henry, Vieira and Ljungberg. Though why I'm telling you this I can't imagine since you were all either at the bloody game or watching it from home with your mates and your bottles of Beck's and Kettle Chips and cheesy nibbles and comfortable sofas so will also be aware that Arsenal were good for their 1-0 lead against a lacklustre Liverpool who seemed to be playing for penalties (amazing what you can pick up from highlights). It seemed that the master plan was coming off.
Eight minutes of the match left and we take to the field. Should manage to spin it out so only two overs get bowled and Nige's absence is less costly than otherwise when suddenly a short, rotund unshaven figure emerges from the bar running up and down the balcony shouting "YES YES YES you bastards, YES." It couldn't be Nige could it? It was going far too fast and seemed jollier in every way than the beast we had come to know as Nige. Please be an Arsenal fan instead. But no. How could it be other than? Bloody extra time a virtual certainty when the first over finished and Paddy Porter, on his debut and up the hill took the new ball. Before he had delivered his third consecutive strangely effective long hop a sound so sweet that Odysseus and his men would surely have strode zombie like to its source came echoing across the deep green pastures of Potash. A sound your skipper on any other day would have wretched at its triumphalist throaty roar; a sound that signified something so awful and yet simultaneously so beautiful that Norcross briefly fainted at its dichotomous messages. Liverpool had grabbed what would surely be a late winner thanks to Michael Owen. Put clean through by an excellent Patrick Berger long ball he held off Dixon and Keown before planting it past the hapless…..Oh sorry you already know of course. Liverpool. I hate Liverpool, but I love Nige's twisting weird mystical turners so for the first time in my entire life I was truly celebrating a win for those mawkishly sentimental, inane, squeaky voiced, unfunny Scouse gits. Ah cricket, in all its finest glory.
Nigel to his everlasting credit rushed straight on to the pitch at the sound of the final whistle and we were eleven once more. He had missed only three overs. That in itself was a testament to our gritty display with the bat, but if we were to get out of this game with our unbeaten record in tact it was going to take a Herculean effort in the field. Ramon obliged with the snaffling of both openers, both bowled; the first outrageously from a full toss that knocked the stump out of the ground ("I've never done that before"), the second to an excellent ball that swung back into the right hander and clipped his leg stump. We were really in it at 21-2. Porter was removed from the attack and replaced by Basil who began well before losing it slightly in his third over. Unfortunately such was the state of play that he had to be taken out of the attack and the rest of the innings saw Walker and Dingwall initially in tandem. They continued to chip away at the Brook line-up and when the last twenty started they needed 72 to win 7 wickets in hand. That soon became six as Dingwall snaffled his first of the season and the rate began to creep ever upwards. All the time, however, the Brook number four, Haslam, was playing himself in carefully and beginning to show some signs of coming to terms with a truly terrible pitch. He gave Dingers a torrid time in his eighth over hitting a crucial four and a six just as the rate was 5.5 an over from the last 10 overs. Nige was beginning to tire and now Norcross made his fatal mistake. Not wishing to remove Nigel who was still getting plenty of turn, he switched Ramon to the bottom end, took off the tiring Dingers and everything went pear shaped. True we picked up another couple of wickets and pressure was mounting, but Ramon couldn't get his length right from the bottom end and Haslam was well and truly in now. He bludgeoned a few fours despite being largely kept off strike and saw Brook home with 16 balls to spare. He was without question the difference between the teams at the end and was the only batsman to come to terms with a slow low wicket. He ended 61 not out. Ramon, Nigel and Dingers shared the wickets between them, but in the end we were about fifteen runs short. Basically one bowler who could bat would have done it.
On the positive side this performance was infinitely better than anything we produced at the same stage last year. Instead of capitulating like headless chickens, we kept out opponents in the field on a stifling hot day for 3 hours 20 minutes, batted for 64.1 overs and gave them one hell of a fright when they lost their sixth wicket with thirty still to get. My thanks go to all concerned and especially Paddy and Basil for turning up, barely batting or bowling and having to deal with my foul mood all day. On the negative side we have done precisely what we promised ourselves we wouldn't do, i.e. start the season badly. Until we have a large pool of players (late June), every missed availability is an absolute nightmare. We have scarcely 25 cricketers of league quality available before the students and schoolboys come back in the reckoning so any absences are hard to cope with. This week there were 14 missing. The firsts are largely, but by no means wholly, responsible for this for not having faced up to the situation over the winter and expecting everyone else to fill the gaps. The problem is that as a club we inevitably will have to help them out whether we think it just, desirable or whatever. If anybody knows anybody who can play a bit let me know and we'll palm them off on the 1sts for a couple of weeks. They won't know until it's happened and it will buy us another week while we wait for availabilities to pick up. Next week Ansbro, Kane and Mayers are available but prising Ralph back to the bosom of his beloved Phil is going to be tough, so please get cracking if you have any ideas. Daud can't make it after all; he's just got tickets for the meaningless test against Pakistan at Lord's along with half the 1st XI, but we should get him back for 2nd June. I'm off to construct 14 voodoo dolls and brush up on my witchcraft.
|
