Scorecard

Tedburn St Mary v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 10 Jul 2011 at Unknown
Erratics Cricket Club Won by 7 wickets

Match report
Match Report: Nigel Rutherford

Humid, overcast, oppressive.... What was the word I was looking for? Then reminiscent of the opening scene of “Throw Mama From A Train” (Billy Crystal, Danny Devito 1987) Chris Squire came up with ‘Sultry’ which perfectly encapsulated the conditions when the Erratics took to the field on Sunday at Tedburn St Mary.

Gareth Oughton, having completed the opening bowler’s warm up routine consisting of Ibruprofen, a coating of Raljex and hit of nicotine, was ready for the first over. With pace and bounce he had the batsmen hurrying into their shots, playing and missing regularly and was unlucky not to have picked up a couple of wickets early on. Jeff Haynes opening the bowling from the other end had the batsmen in trouble from the off. Unsure whether to go forward or back to his armoury of beguiling flight and turn, wickets started falling regularly. The first wicket came in his second over with a cunning delivery that delicately flicked the bail from the off stump. The second relied on Matt Cook taking a splendid catch low down at mid off from a ball that had whistled off the middle of the bat and may have caused less committed fielders to take evasive action. A few balls later Jeff had the batsmen coming down the pitch to a ball on a teasing length and having been deceived, some sharp glove work by Andrew Forrester had the bails off in a flash. Loud appeals from around the bat were to no avail as the umpire, having missed his recent appointment at Specsavers, failed to spot the gulf between bat and popping crease as the stumps were broken. Justice was served, however, when the next ball tickled the leg stump and Jeff’s fine spell came to an end.

Gareth, still running in hard from the other end finally got what he’d been working for; a clear, unequivocal edge through to the keeper. There followed an “axis shifting” appeal of such magnitude, that the skies briefly darkened and the cows and sheep in neighbouring fields searched frantically for cover. Calm was re-established when someone tapped him on the shoulder, mid appeal and pointed out that the ball had spilled from the keepers’ gloves. (I’ve just remembered that Gareth asked for this not to be mentioned in the report – apologies). He did pick up a well deserved wicket later on when Matt took his second show stopping catch, this time at deep cover.

Rutherford bowled out his overs in one go and picked up the fourth wicket with a Yorker length ball which crept under the batman’s defences. His spell only came to an end when one ball onto his ninth over a reminder came in from the scorers that under limited over rules, his time was up. Chris Ferro was the other bowler to pick up a wicket which he did with a crafty slower ball knocking back middle stump. The other two wickets came from run outs: Ferro who had spent his time in the field swooping eagle eyed onto anything within reach and firing it back over the stumps was instrumental in the first of these and Matt Cook completing his trio of exhibition cameos threw down the stumps to take the eighth and final wicket. Special mention goes to Chris Squire, who intuitively feeling that the opposition were not likely to make a competitive enough score sneakily helped a couple of balls over the boundary to give Tedburn the round figure of 200 after their 40 overs.

Duncan Chave and Jonathan Davies opened the innings for the Erratics after tea and got off to a good start. However, with about 30 on the board the openers were both out. This brought Chris Ferro, wielding his newly acquired and menacing looking ‘Redback bat’ to the crease followed shortly by Matt Cook. Fresh off the back of the mother of all collapses the previous Sunday ( 8 wickets for 17 runs) Erratics batting pride was at stake; at least this time Matt was playing for the right team! Both batsmen took to the bowling with relish and began carving the ball to all parts of the ground in a succession of boundaries. Having tired of hitting fours Matt decided to utilize the aerial route to the boundary and the score started moving along in increments of six.

The first of these was cheered enthusiastically, but, as the balls started raining down on the playground adjacent to the ground where future generations of the Erratics team were playing unaware of the imminent danger, parents started shifting uneasily and fearful yelps and gasps could be heard as the reality of their children’s mortality became evident. Cook, perhaps aware of the panic setting in, changed trajectory and locked his sights onto the tennis court next door where he launched the next ball for the shot of the day landing comfortably within the tram lines of court number 2.

At this point Tedburn brought on their secret weapon; a bowler who appeared to be aiming at a phantom set of stumps approximately 30 feet above ground level. However, even this metaphysical tactic couldn’t deliver them the breakthrough they needed and before long Cook had hammered his way to an exhilarating century with Ferro having made a cool 40. With only four needed for victory Cook holed out for 109 allowing Rutherford to come in and with the least elegant shot of the day drag the ball round to the leg side boundary for the winning runs with only 3 wickets down and plenty of overs to spare.

Of course there was only ever one candidate for the “star of the day” award and that was the steaming vats of slow cooked pork belly casserole and crunchy roast potatoes served up gratis in the lovely pub at the end of the day.

Tedburn St Mary Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
2nb 14w 6b 4lb 
for 8 wickets
26
200 (40.0 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Gareth Oughton7.0127127.003.86
Jeff Haynes8.032137.002.63
Nigel Rutherford8.0040140.005.00
Duncan Chave5.011800.003.60
Martin Weiler4.002500.006.25
Chris Ferro3.0114114.004.67
Phil Ellis2.002500.0012.50
Matt Cook3.002100.007.00

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
7w 10b 4lb 
for 3 wickets
21
202		        
Duncan Chave Lbw  20
Jonathan Davies Bowled  7
Matt Cook Caught  109
Chris Ferro Not Out  41
Nigel Rutherford Not Out  4
Chris Squire  
Andrew Forrester  
Martin Weiler  
Phil Ellis  
Jeff Haynes  
Gareth Oughton  

Tedburn St Mary Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.