Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Scorecard

Fuengirola CC v Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club on Sat 12 Oct 2013 at 11:30
Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club Lost

Match report Day 2: Fuengirola CC vs. Tetherdown Trunders CC, Match 1

Dateline: Saturday 12 October, 2013‪: 11:15 am.

Our first game was at the Cártama Oval, some 30 miles from our base, to which we were escorted at an ungodly hour (I believe it was 11 or even earlier) by Previn, the opposition’s voluble captain.

Cártama is a splendid cricket ground: a little piece of England, to go with all the other pieces of Little England which adorn the Costa del Sol. We were surprised to find grass beneath our feet not only on the outfield but on the wicket too, freshly laid a month ago. This was quite a change from the layer of compacted aggregate on which we were asked to work our cricketing magic a year ago in Mallorca.

Cártama boasts outstanding umpiring capability too. Whilst the frisson arising whenever a man is asked to referee his brother is to be welcomed – the odd terse exchange over a bat/pad decision is part of the fun of it – there are limits and, over two sweltering days in Andalucían sun, they are short.

So we were grateful that umpires were to be supplied, and in Fernando at one end and Ray at the other we found an agreeable yin and yang. There were many things for Trundlers to rue over those two days but the quality of the officiating was not amongst them.

Fernando is laconic, jovial and happiest with a beer in the hand that isn’t holding his ball-counting pebbles. You sense his main motivation is to get a good view of the cricket. He acquitted himself admirably, adding a good deal of levity in the field.

Ray is the technician’s umpire. Girded with ball clickers, walkie-talkies, bulldog clips and all manner of umpiring accessories, he gave of himself and his cricketing acumen tirelessly. He missed no detail, overlooked no protocol and, with the aid of his radio, ensured the scorers and scoreboard operators remained constantly attentive, a job usually assumed from deep long on by Mr Colley.

There was, therefore, none of the usual post hoc revision that follows from a batsman’s grandiose recollection of his own innings. If the score book said you got three, off one hundred and nine deliveries, then that’s what you got.

As various Trundlers experimented with the outfield ablution facilities, Skipper Gordon (not for the first time, the Ducksman leading the team) resoundingly won the toss and chose to bat.‪

Now the arrow of time points only one way. We cannot unwind the clock to find out whether another choice might have served us better. All the same, it is hard to see how it could have been much worse.‪

***

Trundlers’ Innings

The wicket was showing a bit of “pop” in early exchanges: something to do with the dew. Openers Phillips and Bonfield adopted a watchful outlook. There was the odd squirted single, but Phillips’ resolute forward defence seemed ill suited to testing the outfield, which we had been assured was lightning fast. We will never know.

We could not know, either, whether our run rate (when, eventually, we began to register one) would be competitive ‪but the appearance of vultures overhead and wild dogs in the cacti beyond the far boundary suggested not.

Bonfield and Grainger fell before they could get a start. Colley poked around a bit, but couldn’t take root. Nor could Frais. Everett got in and then out again as if the wicket was a scalding bath. As ever, there was a bit of tail-end resistance: Your correspondent tried again to bull’s-eye Grainger as he reclined in his hammock behind the scorers. Binns, with his comedy running-about behaviour, made swift double figures before falling to the most spectacular dismissal in Trundlers history.

In fact, let’s play the whole episode out in super slow-mo.

A lively ball was dug in short and rising to Binns’ ribs. Never once taking his eyes off it, Binns swivelled, planted both feet and pulled magnificently through square, sending the ball with a furious report towards Grainger’s hammock. The umpire didn’t move a muscle – it may be he simply didn’t see it, for it was travelling like a Pershing Missile – and Grainger was already beginning to take evasive action when the home side’s short backward square (a small fellow with a banjo and flared trousers) launched himself to his left, flew horizontally twelve or fifteen feet with his hand held out before regaining the ground again with a spectacular judo roll, the ball safely held. It must have stung like hell, but he hung onto it.

Binns had already started that token trot down the wicket that batsmen affect after playing a shot they know is off to the boundary, only to turn in disbelieving horror at the sound of jubilation in the field. Binns is ordinarily an affable chap; it was disquieting to see him in such visible distress: his bat tumbled to the turf; he raised his gloved hands to his head. Although his he had his back to the pavilion I fear uncouthness may have escaped his lips. For a moment the local hyenas, increasingly bold on the far boundary, retreated behind a tree.

If that was the final nail in a coffin which really didn’t need fastening, no one told the lower order. As a team we’ve always had a great enthusiasm for the tail, and we were not stinting in our support here, no matter how hopeless the circumstances seemed. Messrs Hayward, Grays and Gordon rose impressively to the occasion and threw the bat around, scurrying between the sticks as if there was something to salvage other than the pride of lasting our allotted 35 overs.

Fate would deny us even that small satisfaction (now there’s a motto for the team – my classics advisor tell me it reads as follows: fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis). Gordon was cruelly run out on the penultimate ball when his bat, which he was sliding in the manner recommended by the coaching manual, caught an edge and dug into the turf an inch short of the crease.

When all was said and done defending 120 for 35 overs, at less than three an over, felt a faintly absurd objective.‪

***

Fuengirola’s Innings

Still, with our matching caps and shirts we do look the part and we have the best motivational speaker in the business. Grainger is a master. His thematic synthesis, his effortless weaving of locale and playing conditions into his material, is matchless.

There we were, Englishmen out in the midday sun and our toastmaster-in-chief was rabbiting on about polar explorers. He waxed enthusiastically about how the wastelands below the 42nd parallel could inform our catching. Looks around the circle suggested some were struggling to see it.

By the time we took the field Grainger was having trouble seeing it, too. For all Colley’s familiar exhortations (and everyone is getting into the act now: each time a ball is struck above the plane the field explodes like a puffin colony during mating season) Grainger spilled a crisp pull from the opener Nushan at midwicket. As has also become common, he smartly feigned injury, rising from the turf clutching his fingers. On the park, though, the damage was done. Nushan, who was to have similar luck the following day, was on his way. He didn’t look back.

In cricket there is the ever-present possibility that you might not get much of a bat, for reasons cheering or dire: the other side could obstinately bat all day; your openers may carry their blades so you are not needed; you might get there, but sky one before properly getting your eye in; having stewed in the sun all afternoon ferrying water round the boundary to thirsty fielders you could be outrageously run out at the non-striker’s end without facing a ball.

Usually, though, one has no such qualms about fielding: however it unfolds you’re sure to get a decent opportunity to broil listlessly under an unforgiving sky, periodically retrieving balls whence they have been walloped especially if, like the Trundlers, you’re not inclined to catch them on their way past you.

Fuengirola’s openers made us doubt that truism. They launched a blitzkrieg from the first ball and it was soon amply clear we wouldn’t contain them for anything like thirty five overs. Gordon, ever the pragmatist, called his men together to impart an adjusted goal: we must last to the drinks break.

It was like bowling in a highlights package. The first ball of the innings was cut savagely through point, and Morris, for four. When Morris picked himself up he had to check he wasn’t holed. We learned the Fuengirola opener is the head chef at a swanky restaurant: he bats like a butcher in an abattoir. At the other end Previn chattily tormented our charging kiwis. The usually parsimonious New Zealanders were belted out of the attack.

Now it is true it might have been a different story had we held a catch or two – with all their fireworks the batsmen gave us generous opportunities – but until Hayward started his master class, nothing whatsoever was sticking or stopping.

A word about Hayward. He has spoken many times over the past year of this mystery, debilitating injury; some of us speculated that his playing days might be over, but if we are to take a cricketing positive from the tour (and lord only knows, we need one) Hayward’s reintroduction into the playing XI is surely it. He was magnificent throughout. Word has it he once trialled for Scunthorpe, and his fleet-footedness around the playing arena – crocked Achilles tendon and all – suggests this to be no exaggeration. Nothing got past him and when finally a lofted stroke floated in his direction Hayward covered a league or so to take a comfortable catch and provide Colley with a consoling wicket.

As the drinks break neared we had from the umpires a solitary concession to pragmatism. Ray proposed we delay drinks, it seeming a bit pointless, seeing as the batsmen were about to pass our total.

“Pointless? Speak for yourself,” thought Gordon, for whom it represented the only measure of achievement left to his captaincy. Fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis. But then it dawned on him: this would bring forward a longer and altogether more agreeable kind of drinks break. Gordon’s disappointment vanished. All it would take was another couple of crashing boundaries. No doubt thinking the same way, the Fuengirolans obliged, and before we knew it the beers were flowing.

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 23w  
for 10 wickets
24
131		        
Duncan Bonfield ct A Shah 5 1
Steve Phillips ct Previn 32 4
Guy Grainger b A Shah 5
Liam Colley ct Crooks 6
Adam Frais b Suri 6
Olly Buxton ct Previn 16 1 2
Rob Everett ct Zaheed 4 1
Simon Binns ct Previn 10 1
Bruce Hayward Not Out  8
Rob Grays ct Assad 2
Marcus Gordon Run out  8 1

Fuengirola CC Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Barrett4.00900.002.25
A Shah5.001728.503.40
Assad6.4024212.003.60
Tom4.00600.001.50
Suri4.0013113.003.25
Crooks3.0010110.003.33
Zaheed0.00000.000.00
Previn3.00030.000.00

Fuengirola CC Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
2nb 20w 4b  
for 4 wickets
26
128 (0.0 overs)		     
Nushan Alwis ct Binns c? 55
Previn Menon ct Binns c? 18
Tom ct Binns c? 0
Mark Not Out  25
Nick ct Colley c Hayward 8
Assad Not Out  4
   
   
   
   
   

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Olly Buxton4.003200.008.00
Marcus Gordon3.002400.008.00
Adam Frais3.001800.006.00
Simon Binns4.002137.005.25
Rob Grays2.00600.003.00
Liam Colley1.4013113.007.80