Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Scorecard

Highgate Irregulars v Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club on Wed 31 May 2017 at 6.00 pm
Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club Lost by a proper trip to the headmaster's office

Match report Highgate Irregulars CC v Tetherdown Trundlers CC
Venue: Highgate Cricket Club
Date: 31 May 2017
Format: 20/20
Result: TTCC 180/5 lost to HICC 183/4
Skipper: Frais
Ducksman: None
A trip to the headmaster’s office
THE IRREGULARS, AGAIN. Our old friends, complicit twice already this season in The Trundler’s Progress1, lined up for a third encounter. Per earlier dispatches, we have turned the tables on previous seasons: having never beaten these crafty old codgers before, in 2017 we are two comfortable wins from two.
Mr Elwes, the Irregulars’ midweek captain, is not the kind to take a reversal lying down. He warned Frais he was out to make amends.
Frais was not about to come up short either. He called in some favours. Achilles was coaxed back into the fold. Ball, Grainger, Roberts, Francis, Phillips and Plimley: this, with the odd amuse-bouche, is prime Trundlers batting beef.
We had some bowling too: Binns presented for the first time in the season. The kiwis were there. Grainger and Frais were on hand, and Colley can hiff it at a commendable rate, if you ask him nicely.
The venue would be Highgate Cricket Club, a pretty ground at the heart of the Shepherds’ Cot. It has a renowned batting track and feeble boundaries, a state of affairs which seemed, for the first half of the game, simply capital.
In the second half, it felt like that kind of punishment.
Frais lost the toss. We would bat.
Trundlers’ Innings
THE SKIPPER RETURNED to his men. “One hundred and eighty!” he cried. Not a reminiscence from the Christmas trip to Alexandra Palace, but his target score. Nine an over: if our bowlers came up to brief, we should be able to defend that. Whether our batsman could manage it was another question: they never have before.
Out went Colley and Phillips to give it a go.
The Trundlers had set off allegro. There was no sign of the caution that sometimes afflicts Achilles’ batting. The third ball of his innings cleared the scorer’s pavilion: presto. Phillips took an over to get his eye in, but then joined in the fun: affrettando.
When Colley was bowled on 29 Ball kept up l’itsesso tempo. Aside from a brief but otherwise uncharacteristically andante passage from Buxton, all our men were going
1 Bunyan’s famous cricketing allegory, framed as a dream sequence related by an omniscient narrator, written while in county prison awaiting trial for violations of the Conventicle Act, which prohibited secretly fielding more than three men behind square on the leg side.
at it lively, briskly, fortissimo, with strike rates well above one hundred.
When Ball fell, Roberts and Francis, and then Plimley carried on con brio. Despite a tight line from Mr. Singh at the death, wherein he picked up three wickets in three overs, Roberts and Plimley returned after the twentieth over on exactly 180. Grainger, padded up but not required, muttered darkly about the grave injustice of the world, lacrimoso.
Now all we needed was to shut the stable door before the horse bolted.
Irregulars’ innings
THERE IS NO mystery as to how one best defends a good total in short format cricket: one bowls tightly. Every over in which the chasers miss their target amplifies the pressure on them. The higher the ask, the more risks they must take.
By temper, Irregulars opener Mr. Patel is a careful batsman, but not above having a swipe at anything short or wide. He played true to his type. His partner, Mr. Ramani, is positively at home with the notion: he rode his luck with the good balls and pulverised anything loose. Buxton gave him plenty to pulverise.
Buxton eventually winkled out Mr. Patel, but chipping out the fellow who wasn’t scoring didn’t really help.
Mr. Singh came to the wicket. On his day, Mr. Singh can be a destructive batsman. For all we know, he may have been destroying things on Wednesday, but such were the apocalyptic scenes at the other end, no one noticed. For the most part, he operated as a foil. Whenever he found himself facing he took a single and put Mr. Ramani back on strike. This was the most effective thing he could do.
In the seventh over, as the score passed 60, Binns bowled Mr. Ramani. Good news, you might thing, but no: it categorically worsened the Trundlers’ prognosis. It brought the younger Mr. Gray to the wicket.
With his father, young Mr. Gray is a stalwart of the Irregulars setup.
In every other respect, however, the two men differ: Gray Senior is loquacious; Junior, taciturn. Senior is stately about the field; Junior, a dervish. Senior returns his fielding with an underarm lob; Junior has an arm like Steve Backley. Senior is of unremarkable build; Junior, a brick shit-house. Senior bowls; Junior bats.
And how. Over the course of the afternoon this young man shot our proudly parsimonious economy rates to bits. Not one Trundler was immune. The harder you bowled it, the further it went.
When he is on the wrong end of a shoeing, any bowler likes to find fault with the batsman’s technique, by way of cold comfort.
Binns, at deep extra cover, loudly remarked that not a ball had come his way, or anywhere on the off side, all afternoon. (There’s a working definition of irony for you: a bowler complaining at another man’s disinclination to play proper cover drives.)
In any case, the idea that technical shortcomings are a riposte to a batsman who is using them contravene Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties with your bowling is a low kind of wit. If the idea was to fox Mr. Gray into playing strokes at which he was less practised, it didn’t work: he was happy enough putting every other ball into the trees behind long on. Every now and then he would paddle one over his shoulder to
fine leg, for variety.
Frais tried adjusting his field. He put a cordon of seven men, at five feet intervals, around the boundary from the straight hit to midwicket. But field placements on one pitch are little use when the ball is clearing the boundary of the adjacent one.
So it goes. When the wickets we needed came, it was far too late. The Irregulars had plenty of batting to come: when Mr. Singh eventually chipped a Gordon off-break to Ball at long-on off, their usual opener, Mr. Mitchell, wasn’t even padded up.
Mr. Gray, too, finally miscued. Plimley took a good catch at backward square leg off Gordon in the 14th over. There were plenty of overs left; just not many runs required.
It is worth reviewing Mr. Gray’s innings. He only played 25 scoring shots, but amassed 85 runs. Forty-eight of them touched no part of the playing field after leaving his bat. Only 12 of his scoring shots obliged him to leave his crease. By the time his wicket fell, it was almost a pity to see him out – thirteen more were required to win, and you fancy he might have made 15 out of those to see him to a century. A wonderful innings to watch, but a gruesome one to be the wrong side of.
But we must look on the bright side: it sets the rubber up nicely. We have a decider on July 17.
The venue is a pretty ground at the heart of the Shepherds’ Cot, with a renowned batting track and feeble boundaries.
What could possibly go wrong?

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
3nb 25w 4b 8lb 
for 5 wickets
40
180		        
Liam Colley b Gray 30 18 3 2 166.67
Steve Phillips b Singh 46 37 6 1 124.32
Sam Ball b Singh 24 13 4 184.62 1
Olly Buxton ct Singh c. Elwes 5 6 1 83.33
Justin Roberts Not Out  12 11 1 109.09
Jon Francis b Mitchell 22 14 157.14
Jon Plimley Not Out  1 1 100 1
Adam Frais  
Guy Grainger  
Marcus Gordon  
Simon Binns  

Highgate Irregulars Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Gray0.0430130.000.00
Mitchell0.0426126.000.00
Elwes0.043200.000.00
Patel0.044500.000.00
Sharma0.011400.000.00
Singh0.032137.000.00

Highgate Irregulars Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
3nb 10w 4b  
for 4 wickets
17
183 (16.5 overs)		     
Patel  
Ramani  
Singh  
Gray Caught  84
Mitchell  
Elwes  
   
   
   
   
   

Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club TTCC 1st XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Olly Buxton4.0053153.0013.25
Guy Grainger4.002700.006.75
Simon Binns2.0021121.0010.50
Marcus Gordon3.0043143.0014.33
Adam Frais1.001900.0019.00
Liam Colley2.502700.009.53