Scorecard

Lympstone v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Thu 02 Jun 2016 at 6.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Lost by 9 wickets

Match report Mark Phillips reports:

Here was a match of borrowed players, two alternative endings (although with the same result) and a court martial. Hopefully, all will become clear as the report progresses.

The match looked in doubt as we were showing only six or seven players available up until 48 hours to go. However, Lympstone helpfully loaned us three of their potential players, one of whom Ben Abrahams is, of course, also an Erratic, and the match went ahead. That was welcome as it was a glorious evening, marred only slightly later on by the local biting midges who started to feast on the take-away menu of cricketers for the last few overs.

Erratics batting first, opened with Ben Abrahams and Fraser Chave. From the boundary, from where all sound judgments are made, for example, the rightness or wrongness of an LBW decision, the bowling appeared very strong. But a good start was made until Fraser was unfortunately run out. Well, I suppose, it’s always unfortunate. Ben was joined by Danny Williamson and a good partnership ensued, with Danny kicking off with two soundly smacked fours to the leg side boundary. After Danny was bowled, Mark Phillips joined Ben hoping to support him in his developing innings. But a good shot from Ben went straight into the hands of backward square leg. Mark was then joined by one of our borrowed players, “Bill”, who scored quickly and retired at the agreed 25. He was ably supported by another loanee, “Ian”, who got a steady 12 for us. Mark, Jonathan Kirby and Paul Molins were all caught for low personal scores and the innings finished with Gareth Oughton and Ben Youngman putting some very useful extra runs on the board, with Gareth playing some strong shots and being 13 not out.

So, the bowling had been good throughout (especially when observed from the crease, not just the boundary) and so, if that was anything to go by, the opposition batting was likely to be so too. It felt as though 95 was possibly a difficult total to defend. Nevertheless, Captain Kirby set about it in his usual thorough and carefully thought out manner, mixing up the bowling as much as possible, no bowler having more than two overs consecutively. Also, and this is a key point, he was vigilant as to field placings, moving fielders tactically as the situation demanded.

The closest that Erratics came to restricting Lympstone was probably in the very first over, which included a missed chance and an actual wicket – the only wicket to be claimed, in fact! On the third or fourth ball of Gareth’s bowling, the opener put up a catch to midwicket. Your reporter ran to get his hands to it, juggled the ball up in the air, got his hands to it once more and it fell to the ground. This batsman went on to score and retire on 25. The batsmen had crossed during the attempted catch and then the no.2 was trapped LBW by an excellent ball.

Regrettably, after this seemingly semi-auspicious start, the rest of the match became largely one of Erratics watching Lympstone piling on the runs at a faster rate per over than they needed. Also, four batsmen apparently reached the retiring total of 25! When fielding, I tend to be geekily aware of how many wickets have fallen and often find that the scoreboard has not kept up. On this occasion, there was only one wicket, but seemingly many batsmen retiring at 25. Several of us doing the mental tally, felt that there had been four retiring batsmen and what with the odd few extras as well, then surely Lympstone had got well past their required total? (Four times 25) + x = > 95? Sure enough, when the scorers signalled that we could all leave the field and we challenged the scorebook, it was found that one whole row of the cumulative score had not been checked off and the scorers were ten runs behind! And so, the requisite total had, in fact, been reached an over or two previously. This brings us to the point about the captain’s tactical field placings.

Mark had been fielding at midwicket throughout and apart from the missed catch had apparently served no useful purpose there except perhaps to prevent the ball being intentionally hit in that direction. And so, when Gareth was brought on for a second spell the captain asked Mark to field at slip for the final two balls of the over. Both batsmen were successfully driving the ball forcefully to the long-on and long-off boundary, but a mishit might be expected. However, at the start of his next over, Gareth moved Mark to mid-off, whilst the captain was far away patrolling the long-off boundary. Lo and behold, the next ball went straight through slip with no-one to catch it. In the captain’s opinion, Gareth had deprived himself of another wicket by moving a fielder without authority. On the journey home, a lengthy court martial was conducted by captain Kirby into this offence, with your reporter unsure whether he was an innocent bystander or an accomplice. No formal punishment was awarded at the end of the proceedings but the captain left us in no doubt of the strength of his feelings on the matter!

To finish the story on a lighter note, all this actually took place after Lympstone had, in fact, probably already reached their requisite total and so the extra wicket is academic. But let all Erratics fielders be aware of the moral of this story – be wary of instructions from anyone except the captain!

So for the two alternative endings. Erratics 95 for 7 after 20 overs. That is definite. Lympstone were either 98 for 1 after 15.5 overs or 108 for 1 after about 17.3 overs. Either way, they won!

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 7 wickets
0
95		        
Ben Abrahams Caught  11
Fraser Chave Run out  1
Danny Williamson Bowled  12 3
Mark Phillips Caught  2
A.N. Other Retired Not Out  25 4 1
A.N. Other1 Caught  12 2
Jonathan Kirby Caught  0
Paul Molins Caught  0
Gareth Oughton Not Out  13
Ben Youngman Not Out  4
A.N. Other1  

Lympstone Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.

Lympstone Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 1 wickets
0
98 (15.5 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Gareth Oughton4.0014114.003.50
Fraser Chave3.503600.009.39
Ben Youngman2.001800.009.00
Ben Abrahams2.001000.005.00
Danny Williamson2.001700.008.50
A.N. Other2.00300.001.50