Scorecard

Clyst St George v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 24 Apr 2011 at Unknown
Erratics Cricket Club Lost 67 Runs

Match report Match Report by Martin Wright:
A.N. Other: T. Neal

So, the bare bones of a heroic performance first.

Clyst St George 268-10. With their backs to the wall, Clyst struggled to survive 40 overs, but were undone by the brilliance of Matt Cook’s final delivery, and crashed to a dismal 268 all out.

Erratics 201-9. Despite Clyst hurling the full-blown fury of their attack at us, including an Aussie Pro (theoretically outlawed under the same international convention which bans cluster bombs, incidentally), the last pair of Erratics clung on heroically to the end, and marched back to the pavilion heads held high and colours flying…

Match Drawn!

Er, or not… Apparently due to some bizarre technicality, this counts as A Loss. And to think some people still question the need for electoral reform…

And so to the grisly detail.

Easter Sunday dawned grey and muggy, but the sun soon burnt off the clouds, and with it came the promise of a resurrection of Erratics’ season, after something of a false start at Newton Poppleford.

Rather than do anything as traditional as toss a coin (far too redolent of the discredited first-past-the-post system), Skipper Ferro “negotiated” choice of innings with the Clyst captain – thereby showing worrying early signs of fraternisation with the enemy – as a result of which Erratics took to the field.

Rutherford opened with a businesslike maiden, hitting a nagging line and length from the start – an attribute he maintained through 10 luckless overs, deserving a good deal more than 0 for his 54. At the other end, Kothamchu offered a more diverse array, mixing testing little induckers with somewhat generous full tosses.

Openers Du Boisson and Welsh played and missed often enough to give the impression of frailty, but punished bad balls from the start, and after eight overs had already put on 45. Skipper turned to the wiles of Cook, who was almost rewarded first up. The batsman’s forward lunge sent the ball looping tantalisingly towards Wright at extra cover, who dived forward in impressive style, clutching the ball millimetres from the turf, only to rather less impressively spill it.

And that, as Mitchell and Webb’s superannuated snooker commentators would put it, was “a baad miss…”.

The openers began to find their stride, and, increasingly the gaps in a rather too porous field. The 100 came up in the 15th over.

At which point Skipper found inspiration.

It came in the form of the tall, even willowy, Tristram Neal, a young man lured down from London by what was clearly a honeytrap carefully set up by Kirby’s daughter, only to find himself ruthlessly press-ganged into the team by her father. (Apparently the hapless youth was flung a set of whites by Kirby, who growled something to the effect that if he ever wanted to see the girl again, let alone be in any condition to enjoy the experience, he’d better get these on, and be quick about it. Or something along those lines.)

Young Tristram had both the name and the air of a romantic poet, and perhaps something of the same approach to bowling: intense and varied, with scant regard for meter, but telling in its impact. The first few lines – balls, sorry – are best glazed over; the fifth, a slow yorker on a perfect length, took Welsh completely by surprise, and he could merely ping it straight to Wright at mid-on. Neal repeated the trick next stanza: serving up a couple of flowery four-balls before slipping in a quicker one slap on middle stump: Knight played all over it and was bowled.

115-2, and Clyst were wobbling.

The fact that they righted themselves to devastating effect owes a lot to the aforementioned Aussi Pro, one Steve Rourke. Not since the Polish cavalry charged the advancing German Panzers has there been such a flagrant mismatch between romantic endeavour (us) and clinical brutality (him). He started slowly, watchfully even, a little phoney war of cautious forward defensives and occasional stroked singles. But that didn’t last. Within a few overs, he was hammering innocent straight balls on a good length ferociously back past the bowler, cracking others off the back foot through cover, and, as the innings wore on, treating a wilting attack to his trademark: moving forward to a decent delivery on or outside off, and flicking it disdainfully, with surprising power, to the midwicket boundary. The sort of shot which haunts a bowler’s nightmares.

Only Ferro, who with customary if possibly inappropriate modesty had held himself back until third change, was able to apply the brakes. He did so enough to lure Du Boisson, who had just reached a robust 50, into driving over the top of a straight one: 190-3. A few more bullying blows from Rourke, and then he too fell to Ferro, attempting a flick too far, with Neal taking a good sharp head-high catch at square leg.

It rapidly became something of a procession: May snapped up by Molins behind the stumps for a duck, again off Ferro; Laverick pummelling a full ball from Kothamchu straight to Wright at what was beginning to look worryingly like a specialist position at mid-on; and then Aldridge bowled by one of Kothamchu’s induckers.

220-7.

After staring a score of over 300 in the face during the height of Rourke and Du Boisson’s barrage, we now had hopes of restricting the run chase to under six an over. Sadly, some late and uncomplicated hitting from Weatherhead, Johnson and Rosser saw Clyst to a chunky 268.

Erratics took tea with some foreboding.

Skipper approached Wright as he tucked into a sausage, offering him the choice of Nos 2 or 3. Wright, never one to shirk the chance of an extra 10 minutes (or more, of course, no aspersions meant to be cast on colleagues here) with a cuppa, promptly opted for No. 3 and loaded up with more sausages. These were a long way from being digested when Skipper returned to announce A Change of Plan: Clyst were not, after all, going to open with their Antipodean Weapon of Mass Destruction, and so Wright could take first strike.

The batsman was still puzzling over whether this was, at best, a highly qualified endorsement of his talents, or at worst a none-too-veiled comment on same, when it was time to take to the middle. So off he went, accompanied by Forrester, sporting his forest ranger’s hat. (Some puzzlement among spectators about this choice of headgear had been put to rest by Peter Thompson, who explained that during the week, Forrester was in sole charge of hundreds of square miles of wilderness, which he watched over on lonely patrol, which explained the hat, and probably the beard as well.)

A word about the spectators: there must have been at times at least 30 – an excellent turnout. It was great to see a massed array of Thomsons and Kirbys, and there was a strong showing from the home team too. So much more fun to play cricket before an audience, and a knowledgeable one too.

Forrester and Wright started cautiously against some tight, skiddy bowling from Rosser, and teasing legbreaks from Welland: young, occasionally wayward, but with some nice flight, and surely destined to improve. The odd loose ball went for four, but then Welland found his length. Five decent deliveries in a row in his fourth over led a reckless Wright to attempt a messy swing across the line, holing out for 17: 29-1. Kirby started brightly, coinciding with Forrester’s discovery of third and then fourth gear, and the pair motored along nicely adding 42 before Kirby failed to keep the ball on the ground and was caught off Johnson for 14: he’d promised much, unleashing a couple of trademark “clear the front foot and leather the thing” drives through the covers. Forrester followed soon after, for a nicely paced 30 which also held out promise of more as the season moves on, and it was Erratics turn to wobble.

Cook and Chave steadied the ship, both playing their shots against the odd loose ball from Johnson, and keeping things moving even as Clyst turned to their main men in the form of Wetherhead and Bourke – who seemed slightly less scary in the flesh than by repute. But maybe he was just playing nice. (Do Australians play nice? Are bears catholic? Does the Pope sh….?) Anyway: they took us past 100, and the game was still poised. But five tight, wily overs from Laverick went for just seven runs, and the initial asking rate of 6.75 had by now climbed to around 9 an over. A testing target, and one which would have been dismissed in pre-20/20 days as a lost cause. But in these more IPL-ish times, the general feeling on the boundary was that, as long as we had wickets in hand, it was far from impossible. Cook in particular was looking well set; a couple of leg glances to the boundary drew something approaching gasps of admiration from what can feasibly be termed a crowd, and he was quick, too, to latch onto anything short.

But just as the partnership was looking promising, Chave was bowled. Molins took up the fight with a gutsy 13, fending off the best that Rourke and Wetherhead could fling at him before he, too, heard the death rattle. An over later, and Cook was bowled, cruelly cut off on 49 attempting an expansive drive against Wetherhead.

Enter Ferro, with a mountain to climb. With no time to play himself in, he hit the ground running, sending Erratics’ sole six into the long grass and threading some silky shots to the rope. But the noose was tightening. Rutherford made a brave nine with a couple of well struck fours before falling to Rourke; Kothmachu launched himself optimistically at his second ball and was caught off Wetherhead; and Ferro, searching for consolatory glory, was cleaned up by Rourke for a robust cameo of 28.

Neal and Heaton held on for a couple of overs at the death, to salvage some pride, along with the consolation prize of a double century, and the curtain descended at 201-9.

Under the utterly discredited first past the post system, this technically counts as a loss, by 67 runs.

But the sun shone throughout, the applause was generous, the beer cold and the chili (a pinch at a pound a plate) hot.

You can’t ask for much more from England in April.

Clyst St George Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
6nb 12w 8b 8lb 
for 19 wickets
34
268 (40.0 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Nigel Rutherford10.015400.005.40
Varun Kothamachu8.0059319.677.38
Matt Cook6.0036218.006.00
A.N. Other3.0034217.0011.33
Chris Ferro10.0035311.673.50
Duncan Chave3.003800.0012.67

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 17w 4b 4lb 
for 9 wickets
26
201		        
Martin Wright Caught  17 3
Andrew Forrester Bowled  30 6
Jonathan Kirby Caught  14 3
Matt Cook Bowled  49 7
Duncan Chave Bowled  8 1
Paul Molins Bowled  13 1
Chris Ferro Bowled  28 4 1
Nigel Rutherford Caught  9 2
Varun Kothamachu Caught  0
A.N. Other Not Out  4
Jan Heaton Not Out  1

Clyst St George Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.