Scorecard

Tipton St John v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Thu 12 May 2022 at 6.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Won by 9 Runs

Match report “80 should be more than enough on this wicket” declared Nigel as we were half-way through our innings. While, given our struggles with the bat, this might have seemed a reasonable point of view, it followed his earlier declaration that he would not bowl on this occasion. For captain Fraser to lose his fifth bowler (and one of our most parsimonious) was a bit of a blow, and most people would say that a target of only 80 would be easy pickings for the Tipton batters if they didn’t have to face Nigel. Lee was one of "most people", and his contribution of 13 from the last 4 balls of our innings would turn out to be rather helpful.

We finished on 88. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we scored at Tipton St John on 16th May 2019. Coincidences don’t stop there. Lee and Krups ran 3 on the final ball, which is also what happened in 2019. I remember because it was Ben Pullan and me who ran 3 in order to tie the match. You can read the report from 2019 here:
https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_678731/Erratics-v-Tipton-St-John-16-May-2019.aspx
Fraser recently said that there should be more cross-references in our match reports. There’s one to get us all started.

The scorecard tells the story of our batting, but special mention should go to Krups. When he swung the bat, it wasn’t just the ball that he struck, he also struck terror into anyone standing at the non-striker’s end, be it the non-striker, the bowler, or the umpire. I can testify to this personally. The Tipton players were seriously impressed – when they weren’t in the firing line.

But Krups wasn’t alone in putting runs on the board for us, as you can see below. It was certainly more of a team effort than out performance at Tipton on 9th May 2009 when Chris Ferro scored 97 of the 137 runs we scored with the bat that day. He single-handedly took us to the brink of an unlikely victory, and earned the rest of us serious chastisement from Peter Thomson in his report:
https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_517397/Erratics-v-Tipton-St-John-09-May-2009.aspx

Back to the present: would 88 be enough? Possibly not. After all, the Bride single-handedly took out the Crazy 88:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upwg6JMtyCg
(But perhaps I should stick to cricketing references?) Indeed, the Tipton openers looked like they would make short work of overhauling our total, until some clever bowling by Fraser led to a stumping that took some of the wind out of the Tipton sails.

On 28th July 2012, a stumping at Tipton St John had had a more dramatic effect, taken, as it was, while Martin Wright was gardening with the bat, presuming the ball to be dead. Returning to the pavilion, Martin’s bat arrived significantly earlier than he did himself, travelling through the air like one of Krups’ straight drives from 12th May 2022. How Martin didn’t win the Wobbler that year is one of the great mysteries of Erratics’ history – perhaps because Martin Weiler tactfully failed to mention it in his report of that game: https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_510294/Erratics-v-Tipton-St-John-28-Jul-2012.aspx

Rage definitely appeared to be in vogue a decade ago at Tipton St John. The previous year had seen a game that had been tempestuous at times, as chronicled by Chris Fear: https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_513663/Erratics-v-Tipton-St-John-21-May-2011.aspx

In 2022, however, this was one of the friendliest of friendlies, despite being keenly contested. Our bowlers were brilliant, our fielding not at all bad (we took 5 catches), but the 9th wicket served to bring back Buckland, the opener who had retired not out after a powerfully-hit 30. There had been mutterings in the field on the lines of “should we drop a catch if it will bring him back in?” but we did the right thing, of course.

With two overs remaining and only 10 runs needed to win, we feared Buckland would make short order of the task. But Buckland went Route 1, high and mighty to the long on boundary, where the capable hands of Anuj took a vitally important catch and won the game for us.

This put me in mind of a game played just down the road, in Newton Poppleford, on 26th May 2019. Our total of 204 had looked unassailable when Newton Poppleford were 8 wickets down and 100 behind, but an individual performance emerged in the mould of Chris Ferro 10 years previously. Enter George House, who scored 94 runs, but who holed out to an utterly brilliant diving catch on the boundary by young Duncan Chave with 6 overs remaining and only 12 runs required to win.
https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_678735/Erratics-v-Newton-Poppleford-26-May-2019.aspx
I wondered then whether House might have done better to knock the ball around more safely – 2 runs per over would have been easy pickings, perhaps – and in this game I wondered whether Buckland might have done better to take a similarly cautious, accumulative approach? But this is cricket. It was by throwing caution to the winds that they’d got to where they were, so why change? It’s only a game, after all, and it’s all the better for being played in the right spirit.

Ale, not spirits, was the order of the day in the Rising Sun afterwards. And we can all look forward to our next meeting with the excellent cricketers of Tipton St John – Sunday 10th July. They’ll be providing tea 😊

Afterthought: Tipton were all out for 79. Was Nigel therefore right? Would 80 have been enough?!

Jonathan Kirby

Footnote: final cross-reference to the Tipton St John report on this game, and photos: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/tiptonstjohn/teams/119302/match-centre/0-5288961/report

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
5b  
for 7 wickets
5
88		        
Sivaraman Subramanian b Birch 2 5 40.0 1
Matt Crawford b Birch 10 19 1 52.63
Mark Phillips ct Birch 3 8 37.50
Richard Lindsay ct Robinson 13 14 2 92.86 1
Jonathan Kirby b Davies 1 3 33.33
Nigel Rutherford b Williamson 14 32 1 43.75 1
Jayakrupakar Nallala Not Out  21 30 2 70.0 1
Fraser Chave b Williamson 6 5 1 120.0 1
Lee Grant Not Out  13 4 2 325.00
Anuj Tiwari   1
Ben Youngman  

Tipton St John Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
D Birch4.001234.003.00
M Davies4.0111111.002.75
S Robinson4.0111111.002.75
P Wright4.001500.003.75
J Buckland2.001400.007.00
P Williamson2.0020210.0010.00

Tipton St John Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
2nb 7w 2b  
for 10 wickets
11
79 (18.1 overs)		     
B Kidson st Kirby B. Chave 11
J Buckland ct Tiwari B. Crawford 31
D Thayre b Chave 5
A Matthews b Youngman 1
P Williamson ct Lindsay B. Youngman 1
S Robinson ct Subramanian B. Chave 8
L Koner ct Rutherford B. Youngman 0
M Davies b Grant 9
S Stone ct Chave B. Crawford 0
D Birch Not Out  2
P Wright Run out  0

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Fraser Chave4.002438.006.00
Anuj Tiwari3.001800.006.00
Ben Youngman4.001836.004.50
Lee Grant4.0112112.003.00
Jayakrupakar Nallala2.00500.002.50
Matt Crawford1.11020.000.00