Scorecard

Stokeinteignhead v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 29 Jun 2014 at 2.30pm
Erratics Cricket Club Lost by 3 wickets

Match report Mark Hailwood would like it to be known that he has been reading “50 Not Out”, the first of two seminal works tracing the history of the Erratics. He would have read even more of it this weekend had Stoke-in-Teignhead not been in touch to offer us a last-minute fixture to replace our cancelled game against Marldon, and if Mark Phillips had not taken on the not inconsiderable task of sorting out a team at short notice. Thanks are due to both.

“In the 30s and 40s”, declared the learned Hailwood, “a score of 90 or thereabouts was regularly defended successfully.” Sadly for the Erratics, those days are long gone. A target of 103 to win never seemed overly challenging, but it has to be said that the Erratics made it as difficult as possible for Stoke to achieve it.

A seven-strong team including three wicket-keepers and just two bowlers was always going to struggle, even when the batting was augmented by 2 Stoke players and the fielding by no fewer than 3. And so to the first debating point of the day: do the Erratics fare better when batting first or second? “Second”, I ventured, after Captain Hailwood had opted to bat first.

The evidence, however, is inconclusive: so far this season we have batted first 8 times and lost 5, while we’ve batted second 10 times and lost 5. Chris Cook allegedly once said that a game of cricket was like a blank canvas on which the two captains and their sides created a work of art. Perhaps some of us are better at joining the dots painted by the opposition batting first than at creating something ourselves from scratch. Maybe that’s how it was today. I’m not going to dwell on the batting, other than to say that the last wicket stand (the 8th wicket) between our two Stoke guests was what gave a three-figure air of respectability to our score. Thank you, Will and John.

Tea was excellent, as it always is at this lovely ground. Messrs Hailwood and Prosser then began their shared 25 overs of bowling. In fact, they had begun 25 minutes before tea, the urn not having come to the boil by the time we were all out. The very first ball of the innings was dispatched brutally for 4, and the first ball of the second over went for 6. It seemed it would all be over very quickly. It wasn’t.

To the east, a Simpson’s sky. To the west, rays of sunshine pierced the grey and white clouds that covered all but a few pockets of bright blue, and as the sun got lower in the sky, the green of the rolling hills turned to shades of grey in a bucolic scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Middle Earth of Lord of the Rings. Beautiful.

To the north, we discovered in later conversation, there’s a sewage plant. Apparently, it can be quite unpleasant when the wind is in a certain direction, though I have to say that in 15 years of playing at this ground, my nostrils have never detected anything untoward. Perhaps I am simply not as perceptive as Andrew Forrester:

“Nice floater, Mark”, called Andrew to Captain Hailwood, without irony. This would have been one of several delivered by Mark during his spell.

Mark bowled for 13 overs, taking 2 for 40, while at the other end, Dominic bowled himself into the ground, taking 2 for 41. “Dominic Prosser bowled himself into the ground”, we decided later, could perhaps be the first line of a West County drinking song, maybe to the tune of “John Brown’s body”. The idea led to a series of witticisms which I am now strangely unable to recall. Perhaps that’s just as well.

With Stoke-in-Teignhead at something like 60 for 4, hope dared to flicker in our hearts. But in spite of a late flourish from Krupackar, taking 2 for 16 in 3 overs, there really weren’t enough runs on the board. Nonetheless, we went down fighting somewhat heroically. This was not the abject humiliation that it might have been, and was a credit to our fielding, the captaincy of Mark Hailwood, and to his bowling and Dominic’s. If only our batting had been made of stuff as stern as this.

Jonathan Kirby




Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 8 wickets
0
102		        
Mark Hailwood Bowled  0
Andrew Forrester Bowled  6
Jayakrupakar Nallala Lbw  27
Martin Weiler Bowled  7
Jonathan Kirby Caught  11
A.N. Other Not Out  31
Mark Phillips Lbw  0
Dominic Prosser Bowled  4
A.N. Other1 Caught  5
N.O. One  
N.O. One  

Stokeinteignhead Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.

Stokeinteignhead Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 6 wickets
0
103 (30.0 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Mark Hailwood13.0140220.003.08
Dominic Prosser11.0141220.503.73
Jayakrupakar Nallala4.001628.004.00
A.N. Other2.00900.004.50