Broadclyst v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 22 Jul 2018 at 2.00pm

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Broadclyst v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 22 Jul 2018 at 2.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Lost by 3 wickets

Match report The Erratic Ark
by Chris Cook

Being ascribed to match report for the Erratics reunion fixture at Killerton may either be seen as drawing the long straw, or as drawing the short straw.

Long straw, in that one is able, alongside recording perforce the on-field events of the day, to muse upon the glorious history of the club, and to celebrate players past and present, and players’ families and supporters past and present, those in attendance and those not physically here, but with us in spirit.

Short straw, in that all this might take a bloody long time.

So, to begin - it was a day typical of what will no doubt become the legendary summer of ’18, hence the brown wicket, the straw-like outfield. Birds sang. Quintessential summer, still point of the turning world. A cricket match set against the tranquil backdrop of Killerton gardens, no sound of modern life, not a cloud in the sky, not the slightest chance of rain…and yet

…and yet here they come (cue music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuQjR2lsYl0)
Thomsons two by two, Hurrah! Hurrah! Hitchcocks, Parkers, Robertshaws too, Hurrah! Hurrah! Burrows and Foxes, Hurrah! Lykiards, a rare pair of Searles; (chorus: and they all went into the shed, for to get out of the sun). And yet more: Thomsons, three by three Hurrah! Hurrah! Parkers, four by four, (etc etc). Broadclyst’s modest wood pavilion is transformed into an Erratic Ark (imagine it overturned if you wish, floating serenely past an inundated country house). Here comes a Somers, a Salter, a Hanson, Hurrah! a Discombe and a Horne, (with apologies to anyone left out). There were murmurings of swabs for a DNA bank, for future cloning. Nick Discombe thought he espied Stephen Fisher, which caught everyone off guard, but then Nick is fond of dramatic fiction and, as Roy Harper once cantillated “when an old cricketer leaves the crease, you never know whether he’s gone/…if sometimes you're catching a fleeting glimpse, of a twelfth man at Silly Mid-On”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt1C00e__5c

From amidst this panoply, the players emerged, dazzling. Captain Fraser elected to bat, and opened the innings with his father, doubtless to celebrate the intergenerational success of the club – his plan soon cruelly strangled down leg side. Duncan delivered some fierce pull shots, but was then also returned to the Ark after playing over a yorker. Erratics in a spot of trouble. Danny was ring-rusty due to injury but bravely marched his shot out to the middle - in modern parlance it would be termed the slog-sweep – and was here deployed to almost every ball he received (Mark Searle’s photographs do catch a cover drive I must have missed). When the ball happened to be in the right place ‘the shot’ produced a crunchingly effective blow to the square leg boundary, but more often the ball was not in the right place, and an audible swish of air was accompanied by the agonised groan of Jim the Broadclyst keeper as the ball missed the stumps once again. At the other end, Martin had roused himself to cavalier mode, risking an aerial strategy that fortune favoured, and once in his stride, struck some imperious crowd-pleasers, including a straight drive for six. A valuable fifty partnership developed, until Danny was finally bowled. Your scribe arrived to support Martin who, on reaching his fifty, over-relaxed and was snaffled in the deep. Nevertheless, the developing innings was promising a competitive score, and with seven overs remaining and wickets in hand I tried to push the score along and was caught at Long On (to the consternation of Fox, claiming “Bill Parker would never give his wicket away like that!”). Geoff proved as ever a wily critic: Erratics wickets ‘in hand’ are not in any way like a bird in the hand, and these ones turned out to be very much in the bush, as the final five fell for just 9 runs. 178 scored. Probably not enough.

But then at least there was tea. Broadclyst served up a feast to fit the occasion and the erratic throng descended on it like endangered animals with the prospect of a long voyage ahead. Unaccountably, the DNA mouth swabs had not yet been taken, and with that splendid repast came the spectre of contamination, in which, for instance, a Salter swab would contain a few cream scone molecules, or Parker’s a hint of quiche lorraine, with horrid consequences for their future clones. (Someone thought it might work the other way around.)

Teatime drags pleasurably on in the sunshine, and as the team picnics by the boundary, Annie gives a stirring pep talk which I can’t quite recall. Fox and Somers compare dramatic notes, Thomson listens on professorially (throw Discombe and Rudlin into the mix and it’s easy to see why Drama lies perilously close to the Erratic bosom). Mark Searle and James Burrows reminisce about opening the bowling together in the 90s, “with the new ball sting in their tail” (Harper R. ibid). Maggie and Meg circumambulate, Bill and Bill chortle, Nick enjoys the sting in the ale, Alexis dreams a sonnet, younger Parkers and Thomsons cavort. Still point.

Out of the blue begins the Broadclyst innings, and begins shakily at that, with Nick Walding and Mark Hailwood producing accurate early overs, bagging a wicket apiece. Siva conjures a spectacular run out from the deep. But then Matt, the host team’s South African batsman, with several recent centuries to his name, starts setting about our bowling, and the run rate rises rapidly; clearly no one had translated the reunion script into Afrikaans. Fraser brings on himself and myself to try to stem the tide with some arrowed off spin, and we induce a couple of miss-hits, one a skier off me that Shiv, unusually for him, can’t hold onto, and another off Fraser that escapes punishment due to the proximity of sightscreen and boundary rope, which puts Phil off the catch. Those were our best chances to seize the game, even though inroads were being made at the other end, including one that should have been caught & bowled by Phil, but in misjudging the ball’s lazy parabola he palmed it over his head to me, loping in behind the umpire, to run out the batsman who called for the run to put pressure on Phil’s catching. Back at the business end, Matt completed his powerful century and promptly retired, whereupon the whiff of potential hollow victory filled the air. Thankfully what remained of the Broadclyst team made it across the finishing line with two wickets to spare – I say thankfully partly because of that whiff, and partly because on crossing the boundary rope, the centurion had been informed by various Erratic Elders that he was ‘retired out’ and would not be able to return if all wickets fell. The image of a dozen doyens of the club struggling to restrain an irate Wildebeest was not one to savour.

In plain sight of their astute, if amicably distracted, audience, Erratics had not done too badly, nor had they done too well – but had played the game with pleasure and passion and good spirit, offering glimpses of what, on another day, in time past or time future, might have been. The day was already etched by bright sunlight and bright conversation into the folk memory of the club, and as the heat finally began to subside, and past presidents, captains, players and families left for that tormented life beyond the spell of Killerton’s silence, the players of the day were left to share a cold drink and to ponder upon the extraordinary, unruly family they had inherited.

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting

Player Name		Runs	4s	6s	Ct	Ro
extras TOTAL :	for 10 wickets	0 178
Duncan Chave	Bowled	21	3	1	1
Fraser Chave	Caught	1
Danny Williamson	Bowled	25	4
Martin Wright	Caught	50	7	2
Chris Cook	Caught	22	2
Jonathan Kirby	Caught	15	2
Nick Walding	Bowled	0
Phil Power	Lbw	0
Sivaraman Subramanian	Bowled	1			1	1
Mark Hailwood	Not Out	0			1
Ben Youngman	Not Out	4

Broadclyst Bowling

Player name	Overs	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	Average	Economy
No records to display.

Broadclyst Batting

Player name		R
extras TOTAL :	for 8 wickets	0 180 (30.4 overs)

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player Name	Overs	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	Average	Economy
Nick Walding	6.0	0	34	1	34.00	5.67
Mark Hailwood	5.0	0	39	1	39.00	7.80
Chris Cook	8.0	1	24	2	12.00	3.00
Fraser Chave	5.0	0	45	0	0.00	9.00
Phil Power	4.0	0	19	0	0.00	4.75
Ben Youngman	1.4	0	15	1	15.00	9.00

Photos and video of Broadclyst v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 22 Jul 2018 at 2.00pm

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