Alexandra Park CC vs. Tetherdown Trundlers

Winter Preparations

hile England’s green and pleasant lands lay under a velvet blanket these past darkened months, the men of Muswell have not slept. Thoughts and deeds have been trained on the forthcoming cricket season; chiefly on how we might improve upon our habit of engineering entertaining but disappointing cricketing outcomes (2013 results: played 8, won 0, drawn 1, Lost 7).

All were agreed me must do better. While the grass has grown long and damp on the county’s wickets, bi-weekly trips to local academies of sporting excellence have been heartily attended. To school these willing postulants the club has engaged a coach, Mr Newman, lately of Middlesex and Surrey.

Mr Newman needed to draw on few of his 8,000 first class runs to diagnose the technical failings of our batsmen. He was able to do it in bulk, for we all have the same ones. Nor are they subtle: the simple correctives he issued can be found in the introductory passages of any half-decent coaching manual. Nonetheless his was a wholly benign and inspiring presence as we went about our drills. He tells good stories, too.

Throughout a wet winter, therefore, practice has been the watchword: practice, practice, practice. Not easy when half a foot of mud gilds the land as far as the eye can see but, while one can fault the Tetherdown Trundlers on many scores (and it is an enjoyable recreation doing so) for their resourcefulness they deserve only admiration.

Buxton found an artificial wicket, floating like an aircraft carrier on a rucked ocean of pureed fox excreta, on the corner of Highgate Wood, and captained it weekly, throughout the winter,  his son a willing first mate. Colley fitted Telemark bindings for his annual sortie to Val d’Isere and could be seen in his salopettes blazing cover drives and forward defensives with a ski pole as he negotiated the alpine backcountry. Frais, who found a couple of leathery old balls in his jockstrap at the end of the season, locked himself away in his shed for weekends at a time, banging away at his blade.

Mr Newman helped us with the mental dimension as well. Enough of this communal skippering, he said. Elect a leader and stick with him, at least until he has built a portfolio of results by which he may be judged. Then lynch him.

All agreed, as the net sessions wore on, the batting drills bore fruit and our balls flew more truly and came livelier off the track, that Frais would be that captain, and this would be the year the worm turned.

This early-season vim was further crystallised when our anointed captain, wielding a mandate he may not have previously felt, exhorted his players to make public declarations of their goals and aspirations for the year.

In the manner of repentant alcoholics, many of us did. Grand, delusional pronouncements flew across the ether like so many hostages to fortune being extraordinarily renditioned, just in time for a spot of waterboarding at the hands of the good gentlemen of Alexandra Park on the season’s opening weekend.

At last, our learnings could be validated. Or falsified.

Alexandra Park’s innings

nder sullen skies which threatened angrily but let us off with a few half-hearted spots, we were allowed full run of the outfield in our smart new Trundlers sweaters. The team had a less fragile look than normal, and while we welcomed debutants Sparks and Shurman, having assessed their credentials over the winter no one doubted they were composed of the right stuff.

The Racecourse Ground nestles at the foot of the damp slope atop which the Accursed Palace stands sentinel. It suffers at the best of times from water retention, and the groundsman’s off-season endeavours to correct this had left wide sand-filled furrows running transverse the outfield. Fielding was never less than interesting, and approaching the wicket to bowl something of a steeplechase.

Still, as we fanned out, for once on instructions to repair to specific parts of the field, rather than just “spreading out around the boundary” as we customarily do, we felt unusually organised; united psychically with some greater common purpose. It felt odd.

We knew that Alexandra Park made short work of us on this ground at the same time last year. Then they started faltering but, once underway, plastered us all around the pitch at nearly six an over. This time, they won the toss - fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis - and chose to bat on a track that looked, in a word, wet.

Again, their openers looked hesitant. As usual, the New Zealand contingent opened the attack and while Buxton saw a loosener belted for four otherwise he troubled the batsman and not the scorer. Gordon, generating a good yard more pace than was ever previously recorded, softened up the other man for five balls and bowled him with the sixth. A wicket maiden to start: clearly the winter coaching was paying off. This impression was only confirmed when in the fifth over Buxton had one divert off the seam, collect an edge and make haste directly to wicket-keeper Phillips’ glove. On purpose. A proper fast-bowler’s snare.

The track, to be fair, was not helping the batsmen at all: it is as well the kiwis had been working on their pace and gusto; more gently pitched deliveries might have stopped altogether. Still, at something like seventeen for two off seven, the consensus along the slips cordon was we could not have asked for a better start.

Frais and Colley relieved the New Zealanders and kept up with a disciplined line and length. Colley bowled four overs without reward but little expenditure either. Frais too was parsimonious (though, courtesy the locals’ scoring methodology, not as parsimonious as he thought when he first beheld his figures.)

Nonetheless, much as they had done a year ago, the home side’s middle order looked a trifle more assertive than its openers and, when Smith’s angular leg spin had accounted for a couple of them, the lower order more confident yet. The tail, whom Trundlers so merrily aspire to get amongst, bore the aspect of an angry rhinoceros.

So it is I find myself obliged to report that familiar aspects of the “old Trundlers” began to seep through this new veneer of cricketing acumen. Lofted strokes began bouncing off, rather than being cleanly snatched by, trundling fielders. By a kind of Brownian osmosis, fielders began inching ever closer to the boundary: by the thirtieth over, nine were posted at equidistant points around the rope with only the wicket-keeper to save the single.

Wickets continued to fall but they bore more of the hallmarks of low comedy than heroic combat.

Sparks, another who boasts an admirable cricketing pedigree from junior school (some time in the late 1960s) but little involvement subsequently, came thundering in for his first competitive over in four decades. His opening missile pitched not quite as he anticipated; his second yet further afield. His third didn’t pitch at all, until it augered into one of those drainage furrows a few dozen yards beyond the midwicket boundary.

You could see in his eyes a kind strangled panic, but this vanished at the sight of his next delivery – a long-hop, pitching in front but heading at an obtuse angle towards wide fine leg – being ladled magnanimously to Colley at mid-on. Suddenly Sparks jumped up, clapping, bearing the knowing smile of a master cardsman whose elegant bluff has just been called.

Skipper Frais, no stranger to post-facto rationalisation from a Trundler wicket-taker, was not taken in by it and continued regardless with his plan of rotating his bowlers. Now the other debutant, Shurman marked his run.

Buxton trotted over to offer the new man a few encouraging words: don’t panic, bowl straight and let the batsman make the error. Shurman needed only the last of these entreaties to be heeded for his reward. The batsman did as bidden and galloped after his first delivery as it bobbled its way across the square in the direction of third man. Ultimately in confusion rather than vigorous intent, he spooned it to Smith at point. Looking quite startled the umpire abandoned the cruciform pose he was in the process of striking and instead raised a finger.

Shurman, whose complexion had already started to redden, found himself unexpectedly mobbed by his team mates and wielding all-time Trundlers’ figures of one ball for one wicket and no runs: an infinite strike rate against an economy rate of absolute zero. Creditably pragmatic, he announced his retirement from all forms of cricket with immediate effect and had to be bodily restrained from going home. By the end of the over he had picked up another favourite Trundler trick: feigning injury. In an effort to field his own bowling the new man sustained a nasty case of “Grainger’s Thumb”, (also known as “Fuengirolan Finger”) and withdrew from the attack, alas not in time to prevent his fine figures being cruelly compromised.

Smith’s tidy leg spin continued to create trouble, Gordon and Buxton chipped another couple out, and at 120 or so for eight it seemed to be all over bar the shouting.

But O, perfidious tail-enders!

The Alexandra Park 9 and 10 both batted cunningly. When we brought the field in they hit over it; when we dropped it out, they accumulated singles. Not even Smith’s slow guile could wrongfoot them.

Frais turned to his secret weapon.

Now the last time Mr Kohler featured in these pages it was a matter of some solemnity. He was carted off an Oxfordshire paddock for lower limb reconstruction without having completed the single he set out on.

Here, some twelve months later, he was back, charged with closing out the opposition innings. It was an emotional moment for all when he trotted in, like other Trundler bowlers showing clear signs of diligent off-season rehearsal. Lively, well-targeted, and in his second over he struck, a sharp chance flying low to Phillips behind the stumps for his second caught behind of the day.

We still had to contend with a number 10 determined to outscore the rest of his team-mates put together. He had just made his half century when the skipper, still frugal (but not as frugal as he’d hoped) angled one across him, he feathered an inside edge off his hip, and Phillips executed a flamboyant somersault to retrieve it before it could set off for the sight-screen. Three catches to the wicket keeper, and to this most unusual experience Mr Phillips had another: that of leading the field off the ground before the completion of the allotted 40 overs.

For the first time in the recorded annals of this club, the Trundlers headed to the pavilion having dismissed, entirely, the opposition.

Alexandra Park: all out for 185.

Trundlers’ Innings

till, no match is won or lost by the break between innings. Colley and Bonfield, our new designated openers, marched out to knock off the runs, a required run rate from the outset of 4.65. I hope it does not unduly spoil the story to advise that we would not attain that rate at any point during the innings. Alexandra Park’s bowling wasn’t devastating, but it was keen, straight and insistent.

Comparisons have been drawn before between Mr Colley and great military leaders of history. There are days when he marshals a phalanx like Leonidas and wields his blade like Achilles. Other days he can be more watchful and withdrawn, a taciturn Coriolanus. Today was one of those days.

The pitch was as treacherous as Sicinius’ Senate and as slow as a Shakespearean second act. Colley was not about to be drawn into a false stroke, and allowed eight balls to pass him untroubled before collecting a run. By his thirtieth he had just three more. Bonfield fared little better, with four runs to his name off 20 before his twenty-first stayed gruesomely low and accounted for his leg stump. It was one of those days.

Smith at first drop looked stylish and a little freer with his shoulders, but still had trouble picking up more than the occasional ones and twos. Colley amassed a further seven before also being upended by a low delivery. The brightest light of the day, again, was Phillips. Often tryingly pedestrian as an opener, the Trundlers’ keeper seems to have found himself at number four. By comparison with the openers he took to the bowling like Erroll Flynn. He took ten from his first over. The pavilion broke into muffled cheers twice as balls crossed the rope. Then Smith, on 17, shanked one into the covers and was caught. Phillips, still gleefully maintaining his rate of stroke, was joined in the middle by Roberts but was then deftly bowled on 24.

Nonetheless, the spiritedness of Smith’s and Phillips’ efforts led the lower order men to think there might be something in it for them after all. Buxton joined Roberts. Both subsequently reported feeling they had run back and forth quite a lot in their time at the crease, and were a little let down to have been credited with just seven runs between them. But it’s all relative, as Frais and Shurman might have said, for that was seven more than the next pair got, Frais being trapped in front to re-gain the Duck shirt, Shurman clean bowled not long after, also without adding to the score.

This led to our own tail. Even the most wilful optimist would be painting his canvas in greys and blacks by this time. Sparks – if you’ll recall, making his first competitive appearance since the moon landing – strode out, wind-milling his bat. Well, Bonfield’s bat, anyway. There wasn’t a great deal of orthodoxy about his strokeplay but plenty of bravura, and he was more effective than most of his more practised teammates’, acquiring six valuable runs in short order before getting one on the sticks. When Gordon made his way through the picket gate at 10 he looked a little wounded to see his team mates already packing their bags, arranging taxis and making ready to leave – he too hard worked hard on his technique over the winter – but (and with dear old Gordon it’s always “but”, isn’t it) his anchored back foot and willing front one earned him only an artful single before he skyed a short ball to a close fielder.

Mr Kohler, already a welcome returner to the side and ticking along on four runs, each completed without trauma, from just five balls, walked back undefeated with Gordon, his mind fixed on a beer. All out for 96 with ten overs to spare: some refinement yet required of the new batting skills we have obtained.

It is always worth looking on the bright side: we significantly restricted their runs compared with last year; then again, so did they ours. The margin in each game was about the same. The Trundler’s beaten run continues for another game. Fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis.