Muswell Maidens CC vs. Tetherdown Trundlers CC
Round two
Date: Sunday 22 July 2014: 18:00
Match: Muswell Maidens CC vs. Tetherdown Trundlers CC
Venue: North London CC
Format: 20 overs; Full International
Result: Tetherdown Trundlers 153/3 beat Muswell Maidens CC. Match won.
Skipper: Frais
Ducksman: None
The weather hardly
having been conducive to the expansive high-tempo cricket favoured by both
teams when they first met, and the Rhodes Avenue lot clearly fancying that the
Trundlers were theirs for the taking on a decent track, the skippers hastily
organised a rematch.
It was supposed to be a friendly, family affair:
when neighbour is pitted against neighbour in this Guardian-loving North London
enclave – particularly when the wives are not involved – the main risk to a
sporting competition is that consensus will break out and 22 beta-male husbands
will declare a truce.
No fear of that here: by the end of the second over
there was open warfare, and that was just within the ranks of the Trundlers.
A digression for the benefit of future historians
Now when anthropologists
of a future civilisation inspect our ruins in diagnosis of what can possibly
have happened to lay low such an enlightened, pluralistic and technologically
advanced society, for operating causes they will settle on three: religion,
social inequality and the application of the Leg Before Wicket rule. To the
preservation of tranquillity in our time greatest of these threats is the last.
For the second time in a year it threatened to tear our team apart.
A brief legal recap is in order.
The L.B.W. rule addresses the injustice which would
otherwise be suffered by a chap who has just thundered in from the boundary,
flung the ball with all his might at the wicket and been denied hitting it only
because some oaf from the other side, having failed to lay his bat on it, is in
the way. This is the cue for one of the most edifying sights on all of England:
eleven middle-aged men, in unison, leaping up, bellowing magic incantations at
the tops of their lungs and striking various poses in support of their application
to a little old man in a funny hat and a barber’s coat.
In theory – though it is a theory disregarded by
any follower of the game at any level – the physical characteristics of an
appeal have no bearing on its success: a delivery which meets the award
criteria will be given out as easily to a polite enquiry from the bowler as to
a full twenty-minute Polynesian war dance.
But in practice no umpire will consider
entertaining an appeal unless at least half the fielding side has leapt five
feet in the air and screamed themselves hoarse.
Especially not because, in our grade of cricket,
there are no independently furnished umpires. Seeing as the fielding side, even
where it has managed to scrape a full XI together, will be fully occupied
fielding, by inerrant convention the umpires and scorer in a given innings will
be supplied from amongst the idle batsmen.
The barristers, solicitors, accountants and bankers
and media relations professionals of our number are well acquainted with the
idea of conflict of interest. It is precisely that which arises when a man
standing in ostensible judgment of the batsman is also that man’s teammate,
drinking companion and possibly the godfather to his children.
But the
conflict only goes so far: in a social league such as ours a chap will have to
share a spot in the bar with his opposition later on and this will be
uncomfortable if his officiating has been truly mendacious. Furthermore, a
timely L.B.W. on a flat track means his other teammates get a go. Lastly, there
is the simple sport of giving a fellow unexpectedly out purely to savour his
reaction. Lord only knows we need some controversy to keep these reports at
folio length.
In any case, adjudging the hypothetical of whether
a speeding, bouncing projectile would have hit a small target it in fact did
not is not for the faint-hearted at the best of times, however stoutly
dispassionate he may be, especially when the peculiar rules of the game are
considered: the points, relative to the wicket at which the ball pitched, hit
the batsman, and was expected to pass the stumps must be taken into account.
How far forward the pad was at the time of intersection should also be
considered, as should the bowler’s action, his width on the bowling crease and
the amount of trickery he has applied to the delivery: a swinging ball,
spitting violently off the seam, bouncing energetically into a batsman’s
ribcage as he charges down the wicket at it will seldom be given out except for
the dastardly entertainment of it. All other things being equal, looping full
toss which pitches on the batsman’s back toe as he squares up in front of
middle is a harder proposition to resist.
Perhaps now is also the time to remark about the
relative position of appellants and the defendant. The man with the best seat
in the house is the umpire, followed closely by the bowler. A few of the
fielders (in particular those stationed square on either side) should never
appeal on account of their poor view of events. There is only one man with a
worse view of proceedings than the man at square leg, and that is the batsman
himself.
There is a good reason a batsman asks the umpire
for his guard. Even were he of sound mind and tranquil disposition, his stumps
are behind while, at all useful times, the ball is in front. But no batsman at
any level, as he prepares to face his first delivery, is of a tranquil mind.
His mental state is an anguished chaos of anxiety. He battles demons of his
inner psyche which he will never encounter in any other walk of life outside
clear and present military combat.
“Middle”, he will falteringly request, and present
his planted bat, at an angle of about 70 degrees, for adjudication.
Having shakily complied with the umpire’s request
to straighten it up, he will be told, as often as not, “well, you’re about
three inches outside off.” This news is hardly calculated to ease his troubled
mind. But it is indicative of how poorly placed a man holding the willow is to
sit in judgment in his own Leg Before Wicket appeal.
Thus, on those occasions where ball should meet
pad, a batsman’s usual response is to stare determinedly at the floor. Eye
contact with the umpire may betray a sense of guilt. The present of mind (as
mentioned, they are few and far between in the confines of a cricket wicket)
will rehearse the shot they have just played, being sure to rewrite history as
they go, stretching their front feet as far down the wicket and towards point
as their groins will allow.
Trundlers’ Innings
So we come to the
present innings. Bonfield was to open with Grainger. Regular readers may recall
Bonfield’s travails of the season, and also that shoots – even shots – of recovery were evident in his
most recent innings. This might be his day for redemption.
The track seemed to be saying the same thing. There
was not a hair of grass on it; it presented as a dead flat expanse of
desiccated mud, offering little scope for bounce, seam, spin or other
perfidious variation. A front-foot specialist like Bonfield should have a field
day.
He may have been thinking that, but we should keep
in mind that any kind of optimism would assuredly be choked with the weeds,
aphids, algal blooms and all those other parasites of self-doubt and paranoia
that affect every cricketing mind as it makes its way to the crease. Bonfield’s
psychological interior must have been a spicy stew.
As the lads marched out they sought a volunteer to
umpire. Without a second thought (those were to come later) Mr Gattward stepped
forward.
A word, too, about Gattward. This was his first
competitive game in Trundlers colours and, but for a knock-about the week
before, his first game of cricket in a period of decades. For all that, he had
looked mighty handy in our friendly, both with a firmly swung bat but also a
keenly targeted and lively right arm medium fast action. Frais hastily drafted
him into the match day 11 to stiffen our middle order.
So there he was, yet untried in competitive
cricketing combat but all the same standing in sudden judgement of his peers.
The Maidens’ Mr Lee (whom, you may remember, had
snatched the key wicket of Gordon with his first delivery in our previous
fixture) opened again, and was immediately on his line and length.
If this afternoon was indeed to be Bonfield’s
redemption, you wouldn’t know it from the first over. He played and missed a
couple, and the third ball kept low, straight, and struck him, crease-bound, on
the ankle. The six Maidens with a fair sight of the delivery went up
magnificently. The Trundlers on the side-line, stationed almost directly behind
the bat, as a man winced: it looked a very good shout indeed. The Maidens
clearly felt so too, Mr Lee executing a series of spectacular gymnastic
manoeuvres in support of his application.
There are occasions when a man can betray his own
state of mind by a look, detectable even at sixty yards’ distance. Gattward
could not mask it. It was out. He knew it, they knew it, we knew it, and even
though Bonfield was insistently repeating the forward defensive he had not
played on a line wide of off stump he had not occupied, he knew it too.
Gattward looked up, and with a twinkle in his eye,
announced it was not out.
It being just the third ball of the day, Mr Lee was
sanguine, and asked whether it was missing leg. Gattward confirmed that it was.
Off, too.
Now you would think a chap in pads, after a
sequence like that, might feel some gratitude to his brother umpire for that
kind of clemency, and in any case ought to make jolly sure his bat is in the
road for the next few deliveries. But Bonfield, mind still dreadfully
scrambled, managed neither of these things.
So it came to pass that, not two overs later,
precisely the same thing happened. Mr Lee led his Maidens in a wild tarantella.
The chap at fine leg even pulled out a bongo. Bonfield, even more feverishly
than before, inspected the expanse of mud before him, and it seems, in his
meditation persuaded himself, though we know not how, that the appeal was
manifestly unjustified.
Gattward, whose view was as unimpeachable as it was
different, felt enough was enough, called time in the last chance saloon and
raised his finger.
What happened next was difficult to interpret from
the boundary, but we have tried our best to reconstruct it. Some of what
follows may indeed make no sense. As a reporter who takes his reporting
obligations seriously all I can say to those who complain is: just you try and
explain it. This is my best guess.
Having been dismissed from the field by Gattward,
Bonfield now purported to dismiss the umpire. It is doubtful whether this has
any precedent in all the colourful history of our magnificent game.
There had been some withdrawing of air through the
teeth along the boundary rope as Bonfield’s dismissal was announced – his
ordinary garrulous, impish personality quite disappears when he has lost his
wicket, but what no one was expecting was Gattward to return in Bonfield’s
place, bearing his discarded protective equipment in a neatly folded pile
(though he had been spared Bonfield’s box, it should be stated), whilst
Bonfield stayed in the middle, to adjudicate.
From the state of blank incomprehension betrayed by
his expression as he passed the incoming Buxton Gattward quickly moved through
the cycle of emotions and had arrived at the point where the better things he
undoubtedly had to do with that Monday evening became irresistible. As he
crossed the boundary he kept walking, dropped Bonfield’s pads in a rubbish tin
and carried on to the car park. By the time anyone had deduced exactly what had
happened and made it out to offer words of consolation, Gattward was in a bar
some miles away.
But one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity,
and Gattward’s unexpected departure – before he had partaken in any aspect of
the game – left a position open in the Trundlers XI. Before long, members of
the next generation would be along to fill it magnificently. In the meantime we
had some batting to do.
One thing of which those men now at the crease
could be quite sure was that they were not going to be given out L.B.W. Buxton
tested this out in his first over with a couple of quite hopeless swishes
across the line at which Umpire Freeman stood resolute, eyes clamped tightly
shut and head bowed, in denying a vigorous appeal. Buxton aspires to be taken
seriously as a batsman. But Grainger doubled up in amusement at the ineptitude
of his stroke.
Grainger certainly takes himself seriously as a
batsman and before long was commanding his balls to all quarters. Buxton, too,
started to make some connections once he cottoned on to the principle of
swinging your bat along the same plane the ball is travelling, and while the
Maidens bowling was admirably straight, the pitch offered nothing and the
Trundlers accumulated runs without incident.
Which, as hitherto noted, makes for dull match
reporting.
The departures of both Buxton and Grainger were
occasioned by retirement. Some one hundred now on the board, Shurman and then
Freeman came out to consolidate the innings. The memory now dulls somewhat but
the scoreboard suggests Shurman poked around attracting ones and twos before
being trapped leg before for four, while Freeman began to show some of the
expansive form his winter nets and expensive bat have been promising, stroking
a couple of handsome boundaries.
Succeeding Shurman was Mr Grays, about whose
batting nothing flatters or deceives. Here is a man for whom statistical
measurements converge uniquely. Of his four completed innings, all feature at
least one run, none more than two, and there are no not-outs to his name. Thus
his median, mean, mode and range are all between 1 and 2. Grays is a man for
whom the accumulation of runs seems at all times accidental, tangential, and a
by-product of some other industry (though of course quite what that might be,
when padded up and standing on a cricket wicket it is hard to imagine). Having
acquired his inevitable single he was bowled out by the Maiden’s parliamentary
reporter, Mr Hansard.
This brought Aylott, LJ to the crease, to the great
merriment of all, to see out the remaining over or so. this he did, dispatching
a pair of characteristically elegant boundaries, and when Freeman returned to
their brethren not-out, the Trundlers’ total of 153 for just three wickets,
presenting the Maidens with a target run rate of approaching eight per over,
looked defendable and defensible, even without one lively right armer in the
field.
Maidens’ Innings
As he did in the
previous Maidens match, Frais rested his usual New Zealand opening pair (one of
them wasn’t playing, and the other had already had a good old go with the bat).
Smith and Grays would open.
Much as he did in the earlier fixture, Mr Pope
started with a hiss and a roar, lofting Smith’s fourth ball into the practice
nets at Long On for six. Mr Smith isn’t a man to take that sort of thing lying
down, so bowled Pope out on his next ball. This brought Mr Gorski, who had
carried his bat in the last fixture, to the crease. Immediately he looked
likely to do that again.
He and Mr Williams set about accumulating runs and
there seemed little Messrs Smith, Grays, Colley or Frais could do could stop
them, at least until Colley took out Williams’ leg stump for 28.
Mr Lee, next in, similarly made light work of the
benign track though did his level best to run himself out on a number of
occasions, at one stage executing a spectacular two-and-a-half forward pike to
deny acting wicket-keeper Aylott his first competitive stumping. An over later
Lee attempted a reverse 4 and a half somersault piked with a three-quarter
twist, slightly mistimed his launch, over-rotated and while he comfortably made
his ground, he took out all three stumps, Aylott and Grays at leg fly slip in
the process.
The question arose as to whether this amounted to
some kind of dismissal – hit wicket, or something – but there were on hand men
knowledgeable enough (or at any rate forthright enough in their own opinions)
about the laws of the game to reject this idea out of hand. Mr Lee was allowed
to stay, and was only finally removed from the equation when his leg stump
copped some shrapnel from a Bonfield pineapple.
The hole left in the Trundlers’ bowling attack by
Gattward’s untimely departure was filled by the new generation. Young Alfred
Buxton and Sam Gordon – passionate young Trundlers who had independently
prevailed on their guardians to transport them to the oval to watch their
heroes – had guilefully talked their way into the fielding eleven, between them
sharing Gattward’s spot. Frais had little hesitation in asking them to bowl and
each boy had none in agreeing.
Certain things are precious to an eleven year old
boy as he contemplates a cricket delivery. One is a fulsome, meandering run-up:
it need not be designed to impart any particular speed, as long as it has the
feel of a middle-distance event about it: as often as not the youngster has all
but expired through physical exhaustion by the time he gets to the bowling
crease.
All the same, both boys bowled with vim, direction,
and a pace which bodes well for 2015 and beyond; indeed, they had occasion to
regret the lack of comparable acuity in the field. Master Buxton deceived Mr
Williams, then well into his innings, with line and length, prompting him to
gently balloon a false shot to mid-on, where Buxton senior was watching his son
with brimming pride. It would have been a beautiful moment – a first senior
wicket for the boy, with his old man’s guiding hand in cooperation – had the
bumbling old cretin not spilled it onto the turf. It was a sitter, too.
Though no fault of their own therefore, neither lad
snared a wicket, but both can be expect to be welcomed back for selection
should the need arise in future games. Meanwhile Kohler had come into the
attack, and Gorski had decided he’d better get on with scoring some runs. This
he did, quite literally at his own peril, by whirlwind. He launched himself so
hard at one delivery that he left the ground altogether, propelled into the
lower atmosphere by the momentum of his bat and when he had, as gravity
dictates, returned to the mortal coil in a big heap, his hamstring was spoken
for and Mr Gorski was obliged to retire hurt. Suddenly, the Muswell Maidens
were close to the Trundlers’ total, but when young Oscar Robinson was cruelly
run out by a direct hit from their supply of recognised batsmen had, largely,
imploded.
All that remained was retirement to the bar on a
glorious North London evening.