Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Cuxham CC vs. Tetherdown Trundlers CC

Date: Sunday 22 June 2014: 2:00 pm

Match: Cuxham CC vs. Tetherdown Trundlers CC

Venue: The Old Pasture, Watlington

Format 35 overs; Full International

Result: Cuxham 99 all out beat Tetherdown Trundlers CC 65 all out. Match lost.

Skipper: Frais

Ducksman: Gordon succeeded unwillingly, but deservedly, by Bonfield.

London Pride, which goeth before a fall

Geed up by back-to-back wins against under-strength opposition, the talk in the wagons of Muswell Hill as they made their annual way out to Watlington was not whether, but how best, victory against the wily cricketers of Cuxham might be achieved. Cuxham is our longest standing fixture, and even with Mr. Morris’ regretted late scratching, fully half of our travelling ten had played in all three previous matches. None had we prevailed in, but each felt a better attempt than the last, and this felt like the year we might finally turn a profit.

What is more, midweek the Oxonians had admitted they were short of numbers. Come Sunday they had stitched together an eleven, so they claimed, from wounded, aged and infant reserves, so our brains trust thought only of how to press home the advantage we seemed to have.

Grainger proposed that we should bat up an imposing total and leave them to chase the game. Colley countered that we should howitzer their batsmen, leaving them demoralised and ourselves a mere trifle to knock off their total. After all, said Ulysses, the three people carriers (and one bicycle) from N10 were stuffed with only the finest North London gâteau de boeuf. It seemed a racing certainty we’d be in the Horatio Nelson by four, toasting our third straight victory.

Still we were not quite at full strength – it is hard to be with only ten in your party – and, in truth, Bonfield was looking a little drawn after his gruelling mountain stage over the Chilterns, his completion of which had been telegraphed to the Trundlers’ camp in Watlington by a murder of crows, visible forty miles away, wheeling over his head. So it was that our best analysts were still occupied by the relative merits of batting and bowling when Frais returned from the middle and announced he had, once again, lost the toss. We would field.

And “field” is right: pretty as it is, Cuxham’s ground started out life as a cow paddock, and it has kept some of that bearing. The grass on the outfield would, no doubt, appeal to ruminant beasts but is ill-suited to the speedy transport of a rolling cricket ball. There again, that is only a drawback insofar as you can get the thing rolling in the first place. This looked quite a job: the wicket declared a slope to leg. Its mangy thatch of perennial rye rather looked like it could use a mow. Getting bat on the thing at all was going to be the trick.

Cuxham’s innings

And so it proved. Even Cuxham’s openers, both of a sturdy and compact disposition and well used to the track, made heavy work of the conditions. They could do nothing about Gordon’s insistent line and impressive length but try to keep it out. By the end of his first over the old Gordon animal roar was back, by the end of the second the only statistics to his name were a couple of scratchy extras and the prized wicket of Atkins, trapped low in front for nought.

We might have muted our cheers had we known just how far Atkins’ was from being the last duck of the day. By the close the scorecard resembled a roadside menu in Peking. For now we took note: the bounce was variable.

Buxton was struggling with his line up the hill – for the second game in a row his only fun, involving Mr. Church’s off stump, was spoiled by an umpire’s call of no-ball – so Colley relieved him after a couple of overs and flew straight into a good line and length.

And here again we find that most distressing of journalistic scenarios: nothing much to write about. The bowling was tediously excellent, the batting carefully watchful. A tight, shapely maiden such as Colley’s second over is a rousing thing to behold, but dreary to write about. No catches were offered that a Trundler could entertainingly flub. Well, perhaps one: Colley caught a thick edge, also from Mr. Church, which bisected Bonfield and Phillips so perfectly that it would be unfair to rag either man for it, however much it would improve this report. But it was Bonfield’s fault. He missed it.

Elsewhere the fielding was immaculate, Kohler and Plimley getting to open their legs and show their class as they bounded this way and that around the area behind square to which the ball seemed determined to return. Eventually Mr. Church, who had been living a charmed life, fell LBW to a Colley yorker. Frais thought it might be time to try out the spinner.

The languid light of the English summer illuminates airborne pollen, dandelion fronds and pockets of midges like creatures from a magical kingdom. The air faintly shimmers with fairies. From abeam the wicket, immaculate flannels draped over his elfin frame, Grainger casually fingers the cherry. He seems a piece of this ethereal realm.

Under Mr. Newman’s careful eye, Grainger has worked on his off spin throughout the winter. It too exudes an otherworldly mystique. Nonetheless Mr. Tarry, Cuxham’s garrulous keeper, seemed interested only in getting it airborne.

Against all his instincts, Frais drew in his ring: one man three-quarters to the square leg boundary, one on the fence at midwicket and everyone else saving the single.

And so the silver conjurer threw down his beguiling baubles; this one with flight, the next one flatter; here a floated off-break, there a spitting arm ball.

The batsmen were entranced. They might have collected the odd run, but only through miscue and false stroke. Tarry shovelled one wide of Gordon in the covers. He squirted one down his inside leg. The pressure was beginning to tell. Bravely, Frais bade his deep mid-wicket come in ten yards from the fence, thereby issuing a challenge certain batsmen cannot resist. When Grainger’s next ball floated gently into his lap, Mr. Tarry announced himself as just one such batsman. He swung wildly at it. He made a solid connection, too, but such was the pedestrian pace of the delivery the stroke stood no chance of reaching safe ground. It flew matter-of-factly into Buxton’s grateful hands at midwicket allowing just enough time for the batsmen to cross and Plimley – and only Plimley – to bellow “CATCH IT!”

The on-strike batsman was Mr. McGahan, a veteran of at least two prior Trundlers encounters. He had accumulated five runs and looked, when he did connect with the ball, to be timing it as sweetly as anyone. Whether or not he did connect, though, seemed to have quite a bit to do with chance. He didn’t, on Grainger’s next ball, and found himself returning to the pavilion leaving the Trundlers’ slow bowler sitting on a hat-trick – the second Trundler to be so endowed in as many games.

All that stood between him and this Trundler first was young Mr. Parker. This was his third Trundlers encounter, but only the first time he had been called upon to bat, a fact which tells you more about us than it does about him.

I won’t tease you with the outcome: to a flighted leg break he played a bluff forward defensive and Grainger finished his over just two wickets to the good. He didn’t look to disappointed, and in any case wasn’t finished yet. And if Parker thought he had this avoided involvement in a hat trick for the day, he was in for a surprise.

Four down; much of Cuxham’s firepower accounted for, and the remaining specialist batsman, Mr. Whiteside, at the striker’s end. Whiteside had accumulated 29 runs, fending off all kinds of horror show skidders and bumpers, and had cracked one through mid-off for four, but was undone by Grainger’s wrong’un.

We didn’t know Grainger even had a wrong’un. Neither, for that matter, did he. Phillips certainly didn’t: as the ball left Grainger’s alabaster fingers and set off for vacant fine leg, Phillips scuttled across to the leg side, Whiteside planted his foot for a sweep. As the ball pitched an inch outside the line of leg, the bowler prepared to take his silver head in his hands.

All, therefore, seemed equally surprised to see the ball gibe violently towards off stump and clip the bail resting on top of it. Unexpectedly, Grainger found he had bowled the ball if not of the century then at least of the afternoon, and had three wickets to his name.

This brought Mr. Stile to the crease. He had shown some initiative against Frais at the other end but he also struggled with Grainger’s flight and was bowled the following over. Grainger’s allotted seven overs concluded before he could complete an inaugural Trundlers’ five-wicket bag, but the murmur of consent around the field as he completed his spell had none of its usual disingenuity.

Grainger now spent, Buxton was drafted back into the attack from the other end. The New Zealander had been complaining of tightness in a nether region, so Frais thought it kinder to let him roll down the hill rather than stagger up it. Parker took his guard. Frais and Buxton conferred on field placement until, from his station at fly mid-off Colley countermanded the suggestion that midwicket be moved a little straighter.

“He’ll pull you all day long,” warned Colley.

Mr. Parker stood up indignantly. “I jolly well will not,” said he. Nor, it can be reported, did he. In the end, Buxton managed to do this all by himself. Just three deliveries into his second spell he followed that long Trundler tradition of feigning injury. His hamstring, he said, was giving gyp. He was forced into an emasculating climb-down: the familiar, usually fruitless, bullocking run-up would have to go. The object would be to gingerly shuffle in, just to get the ball to the other end to complete his over.

And here we learn the converse of our usual mottos. Sometimes, out of greater tragedy, we take smaller consolation. The effect of Buxton’s disadvantaged circumstances was immediate, and striking. Literally. Without the usual hurricane of contradictory G-factors, vectors, angular momenta and centripetal forces that comprise his usual bowling motion, Buxton was suddenly aiming the ball straight. The first one hit the wicket.

Out came the next man, Master Donaghue, Cuxham’s second to last, and here I should warn you that we are approaching the choppy seas of irony.

This lad would have been quite similar in age to the young man who acquitted himself so bravely upon his cruel dismissal in Chigwell. This, too, was his first match for the senior team. His mother watched proudly from a deck-chair next to the scorer. His father, padded up, was the last man in. Never has a man been less anxious to make his way to the crease. He silently watched his son facing the (admittedly crocked) opening bowler of a London side in his Cuxham debut.

To prime the irony: this is the same opening bowler who fancies himself as a cricketing commentator. Who writes match reports, laced with judgments on his fellows. Who, in these very pages, has sounded off on the importance of indulging participating infants with at least a token accomplishment before they are exposed to the brutish reality of a man’s game. This is all well enough from the comfort of mid-on. But how things change when a man marks out his run-up.

The young man took two legs. He took two offs and two middles too, for good measure. He counted out the fielders, jabbing his bat at each. He marched down the track and attended to some imperfections short of a length.

Finally he settled into his stance. Buxton shuffled in and let the ball go. It wasn’t especially fast. It wasn’t especially dastardly. But it was straight and it came, as all of Buxton’s deliveries do, from that blind spot on the on side that left-armers bowling over the wicket inhabit. It drifted in and then nipped back off the seam. It struck precisely the same part of the off stump as had the previous ball.

O, heartless world! O, perish the auguries of innocence!

Young Donaghue stood for a moment, transfixed. He blinked; re-checked his guard. He went to recount the fielders, and only now did this most unkind primer in Man’s cruel existence rear up at him, for the fielders were no longer at their stations. They were gathered around the bowler, hopping about excitedly and throwing spastic high-fives at one another.

All, that is, but one: Grainger stood aloof, staring fixedly at the bowler. For an instant, their eyes met, and Grainger looked deep into the well of the New Zealand man’s soul searching for some hint of regret, or even understanding of shared shame. But he saw only one thing, and it wasn’t that. What he saw was this: “I’m on a hat trick!”

The young man sloped away and had to deal with the solemn business of cautioning his own incoming father to keep bat and pad together.

Mr. Murphy is an experienced cricketer and, one imagines, was only batting at eleven because he wasn’t present at the ground until the tenth man had been called to the wicket. Nevertheless, the end of Buxton’s over meant he was spared the second hat-trick ball of the match.

That was saved for Mr. Woodrow, at the start of Buxton’s following over (Mr. Kohler’s only over, in between, having been a tight, attractive maiden). Mr. Woodrow is undoubtedly a man of majority, having played in the inaugural fixture in 2012, though the record suggests the 2014 fixture was his first time “at bat”. He met Buxton’s next ball, pitched precisely where the last two had landed, with a vigorously-thrust front pad. The team would have gone up had it pitched a yard down leg, but it was as good a shout as you’ll see – even Bonfield at square leg was squealing – and Mr. McGahan raised his finger without hesitation.

The team made its way off the field feeling it had the upper hand: a first ever four-wicket haul, a first ever hat-trick, and a Cuxham side bundled out for fewer than a hundred. Surely this would be our year.

Trundlers’ Innings

Murphy opened the bowling with a run-up of remarkable dimension in light of atmospheric and his own physical conditions. Colley and Bonfield dug in. Colley literally so: he took a bail from his wicket and hammered it into the turf a few inches outside the popping crease. The foundation these men built was, as a good foundation should be, below ground and out of sight. A bunker. It produced no actual runs to speak of (at least not that the batsmen had anything to do with). Extras are usually our top scorer: here, for a good few overs, they were all we had.

Bonfield’s mood, already dark with knowledge that the vultures had followed him out to the ground, worsened as he took his guard. A great bird of prey alighted on his off stump. Colley, a great fancier of exotic birds, identified it immediately as a red kite. It flapped away after a couple of deliveries, when it realised the mortal danger it was in if it stayed put, from which the Trundlers’ no. 2 offered meagre protection.

Murphy began to find his range. He zeroed in on off stump. Bonfield’s agitation, and the row of dots next to his name, grew. An air of inevitability, punctuated by sighs, gasps and muted appeals from the field, settled on proceedings: Murphy creasing Bonfield up at one end, Colley stoutly rebuffing Parker from the other. Relief from the tension came intermittently, as a wayward ball glanced off a pad and bobbled down to fine leg.

On the thirteenth time of asking, Bonfield’s luck ran out: a fuller ball from Murphy kept low and cleaned him out. The look on his face as he departed the crease suggested a duck, however patiently compiled, was not the reward he’d had in mind for a four hour cycle ride. The air was thick enough that no one yet brought up his new shirt, but there was a gleam in Gordon’s eye.

Not to worry: the Trundlers had a long batting line up and only eighty odd runs yet to knock off. Out came Freeman, another four-match Cuxham veteran, resplendent in a full armour of new gear and just a month ago the recipient of “Newman’s Most Improved”, a recently inaugurated annual Trundlers’ prize for Faint Praise.

Freeman looked correct and orthodox – shoulders square on, bat nice and straight – in requesting his guard. He asked for, and was given, Middle and the real pity is he didn’t just leave the bat there where he first put it, for that’s precisely where Murphy aimed the first – and last – ball of Freeman’s Innings. 

No batsman yet had a run to his name. Thoughts turned to that unfortunate team from Wirral who got nine wickets through their innings in before notching a run. Could we go the whole way? Not if Phillips, the form batsman of the summer so far, had any say in the matter. He arrived at the crease and put paid to this idea with a forceful cover drive to backward square leg. With this cleverly disguised “batsman’s wrong’un” the Trundlers were underway.

However cavernous Colley’s excavations, the above ground edifice looked wobbly. Phillips, who showed great enthusiasm for getting his foot to the pitch of the ball, was curiously It was a shame that he didn’t put his bat there, and after a while the sheer accumulated number of good appeals for leg before wicket overwhelmed umpire Buxton, who sent Phillips on his way, LBW, for the second time this season.

Now Grainger arrived. By the time he took strike Murphy had completed his allotted overs, and the tall Mr. Whiteside, Cuxham’s top scorer, was approaching the wicket. For all his height, Whiteside does not throw the ball with any great alacrity. No doubt surprised by this, Grainger spooned his first delivery up to mid-on and found himself following Messrs. Donoghue and Freeman back to the pavilion having faced just one ball.

Sometimes, as next drop, you know you have to get your pads on sharpish. When the only thing between you and the crease is Mr. Plimley there’s no time whatsoever for dilly-dallying. Mr. Buxton frantically fumbled with his thigh-pad while Plimley prodded and poked in that rough patch outside off. By the time Mr. Whiteside got one on target his innings was four times longer than either Freeman’s or Grainger’s, almost a third of the length of Bonfield’s, and had equalled them all both in style, effectiveness and accumulated contribution to the total.

It was just enough time for Buxton to get his jockstrap on and he was out to the middle. As the incoming and outgoing men passed each other, Plimley eschewed the usual words of wisdom an outgoing batsman imparts to his replacement, and stared grimly at the ground.

Colley, by this time not out on 7, looked far from impressed. He delivered, to the word, the same speech he had given Buxton at Chigwell. This time Colley’s words had less effect. The New Zealander at least got off the mark, and even spirited one to the boundary, but swiped and missed dreadfully on a dozen occasions until Mr. Stile accounted for him in precisely the same fashion as he had done the previous year, for precisely the same score.

Not many aces remained in Colley’s hole, but the next man to join him from the pavilion was surely one. If there is one man other than Colley who deserves the name “Brave Achilles” it is Mr. Kohler1. It was on this ground a year ago that the shot was heard around the world. Since then Kohler’s rehabilitation, both physical and cricketing, has been remarkable. He bowls faster, hits straighter, and is even more lively around the outfield than he was. He’s also funnier, more gregarious, and more attentive of his wife and children. His timing is true: immediately the ball flew sweetly off the bat even if, for the first over or so, it made its way to a fielder.

For the first time, a Trundlers pair had a solid look about them. There were plenty of overs left, and only fifty odd runs to get. If Kohler could only show the Herculean concentration of his senior partner, all would be well.

And do he did. If only Colley could have matched him. Stile, ever insistent and on a length, eventually got one to slide through low, Colley could not clamp down on it fast enough, and his heroic stand was over. However warm our applause for his defiant knock you could tell it was cold comfort for him: still more than forty required, and for all Frais’ inestimably patient qualities, you felt the game was slipping away from us now. Frais could not get a start and he too was bowled for three. (Stile has taken six wickets in two years; five of them clean bowled. A lesson for 2015). This left just old Trigger Gordon to knock off the winning runs. He was the first man to face the off-spinner, Woodrow, and pulled handsomely in front of square on the leg side for two. He then tried it again with less satisfying results, and we departed the Old Cattle Pasture once again inadequate to the challenge of the Cuxham locals. Our post-match commiserations were high-spirited indeed, and we look forward to the fifth anniversary fixture.