Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Scorecard

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club v Muswell Maidens CC on Sun 07 May 2017 at 1.30 pm
Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club Won Imperiously by 9 wickets

Match report Tetherdown Trundlers CC v. Muswell Maidens CC
Date: Sunday May 7th 2017.
Venue: Wray Crescent, Islington Borders.
Status: 35 overs, full test.
Result: Muswell Maidens, 142/8 lost to Tetherdown Trundlers CC, 144/1.
Skipper: Frais.
Ducksman: None.
A local derby
FIRST RUN OUT of the 2017 season was against our old sparring partners the Muswell Maidens. This troupe is like our own in many ways: well-dressed in the field, garrulous in conversation; energetic in their self-directed remonstrations. It is a pleasure and an entertainment to umpire their field – something you could not say about every team we encounter.
As there would be no organised tea, between us we carried several dozen sandwiches1, two hundred chicken drumsticks, some lemonade and about fifteen foot of Tesco’s Finest Jam Roll.
But, with ten minutes until commencement 0f play, our pitch was occupied. Twenty-two athletic young men were playing football. They didn’t seem inclined to stop. At times they were animated, jousting amongst themselves in that alarming way young men do, flush with the sap of spring.
They didn’t look the sort to be trifled with, but Shurman thought they might like some cake. He marched into their midst with a tray of jam roly poly. This was just the ticket: the lads abandoned their set piece at once and gathered round.
Alas, Shurman had no knife to cut it with! He began to stammer an apology, but the young men waved him away: no fear! Each had brought his own. Morley wondered: How did they know there would be cake?
In a trice, all the footballers were sitting cross-legged on the sidelines, each with a glass of pop, munching away on Victoria sponge and skinning up for an afternoon spectating cricket. Shurman was their absolute favourite. They christened him “Georgie”, seemed to believe him Australian – a fact which greatly amused them – and roared with approval every time the ball went near him.
Wray Crescent is not the snooker table we are used to. The outfield is strewn with detritus from unspeakable inner-city activities. It is raked with divots from the football. The iron fence that encloses the boundary is calculated to let through cricket balls but not the fellows pursuing them. Beyond the fence is a thicket of long grass, nettles and bramble: lost balls seemed a certainty.
But fortune again smiled on us: “Morley’s Army” once again surprised their adopted patron with their resourcefulness. With machetes they’d had the foresight to bring with them, they happily retrieved any balls we sent there, all for the price of another wedge of jam roll. At the end of the day, not one ball was lost and all the pudding was spoken for.
1 Special mention here to Emilie Grays, who must have been employed for about three weeks making these delicious sandwiches.
The Maidens’ innings
THE MAIDENS HAVE the batsmen to torment us. In the past, Mr. Hansard has even tormented members of the local tennis club on our behalf.2 He likes to pull the short one if it rises above his navel. Mr. Spragg, who has supple wrists and a whippy backlift, can produce impressive things if he knuckles down in the early overs. Mr. Klerk can delight onlookers with his extravagant strokemanship.
It’s true that some of the Maidens’ gnarled old campaigners were away: Mr. Garske, who will devour any man who shows him a good length, was laid low with an upper arm injury (sustained skiing, he reports). Mr. Lee, possessed of a muscular bottom hand, would be late. (He eventually arrived in his Sunday best, having delayed by the vicar.) But his son, a dead ringer for the old man, only with a decent front foot technique, was there. The Maidens had the men for the job.
Being an artificial surface the wicket would be lively and true: ideal for batting. You wouldn’t know it from the early part of the Maidens innings. This you would have to put down – and it feels odd to say it, but there’s no way around it – to the calibre of the Trundlers’ bowling.
Buxton took one end and was frugal. He and Mr. Hansard were having an almighty struggle but nothing much came of it beyond excited cries of “Wait – NO!!”; “well played!”; “good work in the field there!” and “for heaven’s sake, put it on off stump, would you!”
Kohler took the other and broke through at once. His variation was so clever that an uncynical observer might have supposed it accidental. His first was short and wide outside off. His second was a low full toss on leg that beat bat, bad, return crease, wicket keeper and fine leg to run away for four wides. His third, an unplayable fizzer, hooped away and jagged off the seam.
Then Kohler pulled off his master-stroke: a disguised slow ball. It ballooned above the batsman’s field of view. Mr. Lewis took evasive action, only to see it plummet under his flailing bat, land like a beanbag on the crease and roll on to his wicket. Kohler moulded his expression to suggest this was his intention all along. Mr. Lewis moulded his into forlorn despair and departed, shaking his head.
In his place came Mr. Rose, a watchful cricketer. He took his guard and surveyed the field. He thought he apprehended a gap in the covers. He was mistaken. Kohler’s next ball sat up like a begging puppy. Rose drew himself up and thrashed it, a mighty blow, straight at that gap. It flew hard, downward and would have made quite a crater in the vacant ground, had it been vacant.
It was not. Gatward – not the kind of chap you’d normally miss – was there, by the look of him, no more expecting to receive the ball than Mr. Rose was expecting to hit it at him. Reflexively he snatched at the ball and held it, an inch above the grass. For a moment everybody froze, each man trying to process what he had just seen. Eventually, Rose concluded he had been caught out and trudged off, another quality Maiden on his way, Kohler again leaping about, as though this been part of his plan.
Two down. If Kohler thought he was about to tear through the Maidens’ order, Mr. Robinson (P.), had other ideas.
2 In the ensuing nuisance action (Highgate LTC v. Hansard & Anor., [2015] 2QB 360) Mr. Hansard joined Ritterband (then a bowler) to the proceedings, alleging contributory negligence. Ritterband said he was only doing what he was told, was therefore within the bounds of his authority, and so joined Buxton, the skipper that day, as the controlling mind and brain. Buxton cited Denning, M.R. in Miller v. Jackson [1977] QB 966. The case is currently on appeal.
Mr. Robinson is a singular man: no small feat for an identical twin. His Wikipedia page – he has one – discloses that his life has brought him into contact with “gangsters, pirates, special forces operators, despotic generals, corrupt cops, professional gamblers, fixers, Lear Jet repo-men and multimillionaire hedge fund brats”.
Now this is a fair description of the Muswell Maidens. But despite all this worldliness, in cricketing terms they are ingénues: in matches past they have struggled to get to grips with scoring, for example.
Not all men take to scoring: it is a subtle pleasure, but a devilish task. In seasons past, the Maidens’ attempts at it have been dismal. There has been no rhyme or reason to their notation. Extras would not tally amongst themselves, much less with the bowling or batting totals. Players were misnamed; some appeared twice; others were absent. Construing wides, wickets, byes and no balls in the bowling ledger was impossible. Whole overs floated freely, apropos nothing, in the bottom right hand corner of the score sheet. It was a disaster.
For the 2017 season things have improved. The score book from Wray Crescent was immaculate. Every ball accounted for; every extra audited, reconciled and recorded, every run marked by triple entry, in a careful spidery script.
Whoever this scorer was, his work is well appreciated. He recorded everything, down to the balls faced, even the extras encountered, by each batsman. This greatly assists the composition of match reports.
A correspondent may appreciate all this information, Mr. Robinson probably won’t: it reveals, in a way that “c. Ritterband b. Grainger, 19” cannot, how he struggled. Several Trundlers can thank him for boosting their economy rates as he methodically lunged to, swiped at and missed 66 of the 75 balls bowled to him: eleven full overs, in a 35 over match, without scoring. Truly, a maiden among Maidens.
Just as remarkable is this: over that third of the innings, the Trundlers put not one ball on the stumps. The can’t have: res ipsa loquitur3. This is a testament to the consistency Frais has drilled into his bowlers. Kohler, Shurman, Gordon, Gatward and Grainger tirelessly plumped Mr Robinson’s corridor of uncertainty. They interrogated it, strip-searched it, water-boarded it, renditioned it, tested out ambiguities in The Hague Convention on it, but Robinson would not crack. The Trundlers came away with nothing but a shapeless Cartesian void.
Robinson’s lonely vigil would have hypnotised a cricketing purist, were any of them about. More casual fans found more interest in proceedings at the other end, where at least something was happening. Fortunes ebbed and flowed.
The danger man, Mr. Hansard never quite settled before yielding to a dastardly Yorker for 1. The Trundlers rejoiced.
Next man Mr. Spragg turned the tables. He was watchful to good balls, clever with ordinary ones, and devastating with the rest. His partnership with Mr. Robinson, the backbone of the Maidens innings, was a yin and yang affair, Mr. Robinson being as exacting as Mr. Spragg was cavalier. The two men faced a similar number of balls (Robinson a handful more) but Spragg scored fully five times as many runs. But for a couple of thick Robinson edges through the slips, Spragg’s scoring rate would have been an order of magnitude higher.
Suddenly, every other ball was in the thicket beyond the midwicket boundary. Having polished off the teacakes and tired of fetching our ball for us, the friendly
3 A principle of the law of evidence: “Things speak for themselves”.
young footballers decamped. Play continued. As Gatward thundered in towards Mr. Robinson the lads cut a small corner of the long-on boundary.
Mr. Robinson theatrically abandoned his guard. “Halt!!” he cried, “STOP! STOP! I CAN’T GO ON!!”
Gatward, landing gear down, pulled back hard on the steering column and soared away.
The umpiring Mr. Rose looked up quizzically. “What is it, Phil?”
Mr. Robinson is a hardened figure, as his Wikipedia page tell us. The company he keeps is spicy. But he has a tender side.
“It’s the lads,” said he. “I don’t want to hurt them.”
Behind the stumps, Ritterband had just gloved his forty-seventh consecutive dot ball, and made some dry remark. Frais demurred, we vouchsafed the lads’ passage and Gatward returned to the top of his run to continue the hypnotic sequence of dots.
Mr. Spragg continued to burn brightly. He opened a credit line against Gatward, made short work of Francis and manhandled Shurman. But could not get Gordon’s measure. The Karori offspinner was flawless in his line and length, bowling four overs of his seven without conceding a run, the last accounting also for Spragg’s wicket.
Spragg’s removal did not stem the runs. His replacement, Mr. Klerk, picked up where Spragg left off only, to Francis’ great chagrin, with more gusto.
Francis withdrew, and the silver surfer came on. Grainger removed Robinson with his very first ball. For all Grainger’s glee, this categorically made the situation worse: While Robinson remained, at least one end was pinned down. But with Master Lee joining Mr. Klerk, the walloping started in earnest from both ends.
Then Grainger deceived Master Lee with a faster one. With time running out, Klerk, succumbed to an inswinger; Mr. Lee the elder, fresh from the vicarage, to a catch taken cleanly at deep third man by Gordon (no; not a typo) and following a brief undefeated appearance from Mr. Robinson (A.), which you may be unsurprised to discover yielded no runs, the Maidens’ overs were up.
The Trundlers’ innings
THERE ARE CERTAINLY more daunting challenges in sport than chasing 142 off 210 balls, but equally, better men have failed at lesser tasks. The scoreboard pressure was not great, but keeping the runs ticking over would be Frais’ priority. The Maidens needed early wickets.
Plimley accompanied Frais out to open. This Trundler has worked hard on his technique in recent years. He has a natural ability to focus. Far from being simply a good foil for Frais while the skipper picked off the runs, Plimley was the senior partner: barely a ball did he not meet erectly, on the front foot, and he clobbered as many as eight of them to the fence.
Frais’ wagon wheel, as ever, resembled a CND logo, which irritated the Maidens bowlers, but never enough to set a field for it. This at last flared up when that man Mr. Robinson was bowling.
Frais spooned a leg stump full toss meekly into the air. It ballooned behind down leg and alighted about 15 yards from the boundary on the “45”, whence it rolled to the fence. Mr. Robinson (whom we learned is sometimes styled “P-Rob”) motioned at the nearest fielder – by coincidence his own brother (“A-Rob”) – who, having been a good 40 yards from the ball when it landed, had made no attempt to field it and even now looked put out to be expected to go and get it.
“You see?” wailed Mr. Robinson (P.), “he’s useless! He may as well not have been there!” (In Mr. Robinson (A.)’s defence, he wasn’t there, which was why he hadn’t fielded the ball.)
“Can’t we put him somewhere else, where the ball isn’t likely to come to him?”
“Like where?” asked Mr. Hansard.
“I don’t know. Square leg or something.”
“He’s already at square leg, Phil.”
Eventually, Mr. Robinson would have his reward. Hoping to massage a fair length, Plimley hurried his stroke and lobbed it to Hansard at long-on. Just six short of a maiden half-century, Plimley quit the arena, nevertheless grinning from ear to ear. Grainger joined Frais when the total was at 63, with twenty-five overs left to score eighty runs, the result was never in doubt. The final tally revealed a fine, unbeaten half-century from the skipper to mark his half-century of caps: the first man to reach that mark in Trundler brown. The season was underway on the front foot.

Muswell Maidens CC Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
7w 1b 2lb 
for 8 wickets
10
142 (0.0 overs)		     
Hansard b  Buxton 1
Lewis b  Kohler 0
Rose ct  Kohler 0
Robinson P ct  Grainger 19
Spragg ct  Gordon 70
Klerck b  Buxton 32
Lee D b  Grainger 15
Lee G ct  Buxton 1
Korbo Not Out  2
Robinson A Not Out  0
   

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Olly Buxton6.03632.001.00
Joe Kohler7.0320210.002.86
Morley Shurman5.012400.004.80
Marcus Gordon7.0111111.001.57
Jonathan Gatward5.003400.006.80
Jon Francis2.002700.0013.50
Guy Grainger3.001829.006.00

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 1 wickets
0
144		        
Adam Frais Not Out  69 48 13 143.75
Jon Plimley ct  P Robinson 44 38 8 115.79
Guy Grainger Not Out  18 19 2 94.74
Rob Grays  
Jon Francis  
Olly Buxton   1
Jonathan Gatward   1
Marcus Gordon   1
Joe Kohler  
Morley Shurman  
Simon Ritterband   1

Muswell Maidens CC Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.
 
Photos and video of Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club v Muswell Maidens CC on Sun 07 May 2017 at 1.30 pm

maidens 1.jpg

TTCC innings. Always nice to end with 9 wickets in the hutch. Unless you're one of the seven men actually still in the hutch. In which case it's annoying.

Maidens 2 their innings.jpg

the Maidens' innings, including Robinson's heroic resistance (... of the temptation to play a scoring shot on purpose)