Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Scorecard

Fuengirola CC v Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club on Sun 13 Oct 2013 at 11:30
Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club Lost

Match report Day 3: Fuengirola CC vs. Tetherdown Trunders CC, Match 2

Dateline: Sunday October 13, 2013: 11:15 am.

We returned to Cártama on Sunday morning under the leadership of Everett. It was a solemn moment: a popular player’s last match, for the time being, as a “town member” of the club. He has been a loyal servant and, on his day, a devastating strokesman. He will be sorely missed and warmly welcomed back when eventually he has had his fill of Wellington’s wind and rain. We expect this to be in time for the start of next season.

Everett’s first act of captaincy was even more triumphant than Gordon’s of the previous day, and that was to ensure that this time we field first. Harnessing formidable negotiation skills acquired over two decades in the city, he achieved this without even a coin-toss. (He pointed out it meant the Fuengirolans would at least get a proper chance to bat. They appreciated the offer.)

Grainger, perhaps observing how the Shackleton analogy worked out, felt some evolution was called for in his pep-talk. So he started babbling about Darwin, beagles and continental philosophers. Heidegger got a look in (the possible ranks higher than the actual), as did Nietzsche (that which does not kill us makes us stronger) but with Kierkegaard (every human being is spirit and truth is the self-activity of appropriation) we began to lose the thread a little. Nevertheless, it was an arousing speech, and we took the field with stiffness to our bearing and a great sense of ardour.‪

***

Fuengirola’s Innings

Speaking of evolution, it is an axiom of that theory that mutations happen only between generations. A single organism can only adapt. Having been traumatised by Nushan from the uphill end, Buxton thought he’d have a go from the other, and this time pitch the ball on the batsman’s half of the wicket.

Alas, for this wanton boy, the Gods were still in playful mood. In his first over, on nought, an in-swinging yorker creased the opener in half and feathered his leading edge, spooning the cherry twenty feet in the air in a gentle arc back to the New Zealander. The bowler saw it early, made good ground to prepare for receipt, only to find the Iberian sun stationed exactly the other side of the ball which, like a diving Zero in the Pacific theatre, was nowhere to be seen. Still, Buxton held out his hands out in blind hope – the ball must drop somewhere, after all – and was so overcome when it fell into them that he quite forgot to close his fingers and complete the transaction.

As his sun blindness cleared, his keeper strode toward him. “When you said,” remarked Phillips drily, “that you’d drop everything to be on this tour, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.” Nushan didn’t seem awfully bothered, and went on to complete an unbeaten century over the next 35 balls he faced. Fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis.

Gordon, chastened by his previous day’s fielding experience (short, but nasty and brutish too), had contrived another injury, so our trusty Champion opened from the downhill end, as he did on the Sunday last year in Mallorca. (This year, however, our efforts to find a local minstrel with a whippy right arm action to tear through the top order – and be assured, we scoured all kinds of establishments in search of one – was fruitless.)

As Nushan and his fellow opener Kason hit their straps an optical illusion took hold: out on the field we seemed to be faring much better. If I do say so, the bowling was tight and, by the odd ball, the batsmen were genuinely troubled. But the scoreboard persisted in ticking over like a dicky fruit machine anyway.

Out in the middle, Buxton even recorded his first maiden of the day.* Yet no matter how niggardly our bowling, the runs kept piling on.

As is so often the way (and I will spare you one of my bitter treatises on the cosmic injustice to pace bowlers) it required a bowling change to make a breakthrough. The agent of change was Bonfield, and the delivery was a pie.

Bonfield’s action may have been cribbed from Battle Picture Weekly. It owes much to the hand-grenade lobbing technique depicted therein. He breaks cover with a crabwise shuffle, pulls the pin out with his teeth, growls “have a pineapple, Fritz” under his breath and flings the ball skyward. The innocuous look of the parabola it describes tends to be borne out when (and if) it pitches, but every now and then one goes off unexpectedly, and with devastating effect. It took an over or so of pyrotechnics from the batsman before one of Bonfield’s devices finally exploded. To this day, none of the implicated parties has been able to explain how it broke Kason’s wicket, but it did and he departed the theatre of conflict with 26 to his name. The arrival in his stead of Asad, however, suggested we had a little way to go before we were “knee deep in the tail” as we devotedly aspire to be.

Asad quickly made it clear it was to be business as usual. Before long he had 31, accumulated through spectacular hitting.

And that was about it. No sooner was he out then and even more lyrical striker of the ball arrived. The field worked tirelessly, as did Morris, uncomplainingly trotting around the perimeter with water for exhausted fielders, rather pleased, I should say, to be spared the aggravation of having to actually field anything. By a quirk of our “rotating 12th man” system, Morris was in the luxuriant position of getting a bat without having to bowl, while poor old Grays, who spent much of the afternoon scuttling halfway up a gorse bank to prise the ball out of the sod it had just augered into, got what looked like the rough end of that trade. By the time stumps were drawn he had a different view of it.

It seems churlish to abbreviate a fine innings from the opposition, but on the other hand it is painful to give much more detail. The metaphors that come to mind all invoke extreme weather or armed conflict. We tried in vain. We suffered an afternoon of prolonged aerial bombardment, studded with paltry nuggets of consolation for persistence. Binns was rewarded for consistent line and length (& he would be the last person to blow smoke up his own behind – let alone anyone else’s – but we should not forget he is our club’s leading wicket taker), as were Colley and Bonfield, and eventually even your correspondent, who saw a wayward ball dragged back onto the stumps, but – fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis – we could not even contain three hundred runs, and eventually returned after the longest thirty five overs in history to a fine lunch facing the absurd prospect of sustaining a run rate, from the off, of just under nine an over to win.

Our only solace was, through serially careless running on the wicket and fastidious umpiring, (in other circumstances we may have found this patronising, but in this one were overjoyed by it), Ray had kindly penalised the locals to the tune of 25 runs, so we at least had them for a brief moment at the start.

***

Trundlers’ Innings

Everett, ever a leader out in the front, marched out like a fearless wartime General. Custer, for example. Or Lord Cardigan. Riding with him into the valley of death was ever-optimistic Lieutenant Gordon, who had looked lively with his blade amongst the tail the day before.

Now at this time Gordon was the prevailing holder of three inauspicious Trundlers’ batting records (current Ducksman; absolute number of ducks achieved; highest ducks-per-innings batted), none of the kind you’d want your opener to have. That said, he carried on with the same brio as on the evening before, and raced quickly to 13 before getting one right up the block hole. Everett, in his last innings, was no less swashbuckling, but our hopes of a fast Launcestonian double ton were dashed when he was caught short on the pull on 8.

This time we had stacked our order for maximum impact.

“Go hard or go home”†, muttered Grainger to himself as he made his way to the middle, where he was to form the backbone of our token resistance.

Grainger is an elegant stroker, and in the Andalucían heat compiled a fine 43, pairing delicate singles with brutally-meted boundaries, along the way mentoring those agricultural types such as your correspondent as we briefly joined him, to set about hoiking the bowling. With Buxton making 17, Colley 23, a happier and more expansive Phillips at 6 putting on 32, our batting card looked healthier than ever before.

In any other circumstances 190 would be a good total on 35 overs – nearly 5 and a half an over, after all – except when your opposition has already compiled the best part of double that.

In any case, eventually Grainger’s long resistance ended.

We pick up the story at the conclusion of the prologue. There were wild cheers, of course, at our hero’s return and great expectations as Morris embarked, pausing like von Richtoven for a photograph before climbing aboard his kite, ready to light up the skies.

“Lucky” Morris has always looked a compelling proposition with bat in hand, yet often has been cruelly deprived by fate of the chance to flash his balls about. Perhaps this would be his day.

A brief digression, if I may. I have been asked by Trundler Freeman (on a toad-eating tour of the East and thus unable to be present) if there is any truth to the rumours that the tour included a trip “to watch a poor animal get brutalised by some camp Spaniards”.

I chided him: That’s no way to talk about Trundler Morris.

It is true, though, that as part of the cultural odyssey which every Trundlers tour constitutes we do like to educate ourselves about local customs. Andalucía is famous – or, according to our wives and liberals infamous – for la corrida, the bull fight; romanticised by Hemingway and dressed up by locals as an honourable tradition, but in reality an accretive form of ritual torture.

It starts with mere humiliation of a rutting beast and ends with unspeakable acts perpetrated on a wounded and defenceless animal by, as Trundler Freeman intimates, an effete Spaniard (the torero) wearing pink tights, arse-gripping pants and a bolero jacket (his “suit of lights”, or traje de luces) and his similarly-attired chums (los banderilleros).

There is certainly some style in how this is carried out (a favoured move is la Veronica, whereby the cape is drawn over the animal’s passing head in the manner of St. Veronica’s veil, while the torero strikes an effeminate pose) but it is positively barbaric to the bull. It is also a dying art. Opportunities to witness it first-hand are rare indeed. But, on the Saturday night, the ever-resourceful Phillips had found tickets to Fuengirola’s one corrida of the year.

News of our outing was mixed. Some instinctively celebrated; others fretted about what would happen should their wives find out. When we got there, reactions amongst the watching Trundlers similarly varied: one or two passed out and were obliged to take airs: we found them later reviving themselves in a local cantina across the street. Others were better able to dissociate: it takes undisputable skill for a man in the saddle (a picador) to coax a filly into acts of athleticism while a raging horn is thrusting just inches from her tail.

We comforted ourselves with that faint “roadrunner” hope, that a bull would one day get his man, though any chance of that was snuffed out by the blessed bandilleros running out to save the their boss’s backside – fatum nos privamur parvis victoriis. Those of us with a journalistic bent steeled ourselves and stayed to record this all for posterity: personally, I found la Veronica a quite captivating spectacle, and was glad to be able to take home some camera-phone footage for my collection.

Digression over. When I left you we were watching Morris make his way into the plaza de toros. He didn’t fare well. Before so much as enquiring about his guard, Morris found himself treading the familar camino de deshonra back to his brethren, by his expression still not entirely clear what had just happened.

Phillips had egregiously run him out is what had happened.

Bonfield passed, grinning impishly on his way out to bat, but resisted the temptation to enquire after the bowling.

At the boundary, Morris’ return was met with sympathetic sniggering and chortling from most, but with beneficent delight by a bare-chested Gordon, waving a certain emblazoned shirt before him in his own serviceable impression of a Veronica.

Proving it is not just Grainger who can be philosophical, Morris collapsed in a chair and sighed: “well: at least it can’t get any worse than that.” He was not to know his travails with a gang of louchely dressed bandilleros weren’t yet over, nor that we hadn’t seen the last of la Veronica.

Not long afterwards Phillips, his sun-kissed fizzog perhaps sparing blushes, relinquished his wicket and Hayward joined Bonfield to see the innings out. Another masterful show yielded a further 5 not out a piece. As a result Hayward joins Trundler Ritterband in our most exclusive club: men never yet dismissed in Trundlers colours.

We may have finished 125 runs short of the required total, but we had at least wickets intact at the end of our allotted overs: this counts as what our learned friends might call a “constructive” draw – a result that, by all rights, should have been a draw but by strict application of rules wasn’t: fatum nos privamur parvis victoriis, once more with feeling.

Fuengirola CC Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 5 wickets
0
305 (35.0 overs)		     
Nushan Retired Not Out  105
Kason b  Bonfield 26
Asad ct  Binns ? 31
Ward b  Buxton 4
Barrett Not Out  50
Previn ct  Colley ? 44
Andy Run out  13
   
   
   
   

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Olly Buxton7.0141141.005.86
Liam Colley7.0045145.006.43
Duncan Bonfield3.0040140.0013.33
Simon Binns7.0066166.009.43
Adam Frais5.003700.007.40
Marcus Gordon3.003000.0010.00
Bruce Hayward3.003400.0011.33

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 7 wickets
0
190		        
Rob Everett ct  Shaheed 2 8 1
Marcus Gordon b  Shaheed 1 13 1
Guy Grainger ct  Shaheed 1 43 4
Olly Buxton lbw  Assad 17 1 1
Liam Colley st  Previn 23 3
Steve Phillips ct  Sunny 32 5
Richard Morris Run out  0
Duncan Bonfield Not Out  5
Bruce Hayward Not Out  5
Simon Binns  
Adam Frais  

Fuengirola CC Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Shaheed 10.00000.000.00
Shaheed 20.00000.000.00
Morley0.00000.000.00
Tom0.00000.000.00
Assad0.00000.000.00
Barrett0.00000.000.00
Mark0.00000.000.00
Previn0.00000.000.00
Sunny0.00000.000.00