Scorecard

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics v Stokeinteignhead on Sat 07 Jun 2025 at 1.30pm
Erratics Cricket Club Won by 23 runs

Match report Where to begin? There are so many stories to tell about today:

Followers of the Erratics WhatsApp group will already know the result. We scored 80 for 9 off our 30 overs, with Extras almost top-scoring with 16. Stoke-in-Teignhead were then dismissed for a breezy 57 from 19 overs and we had yet another win on our hands. With 9 wins from our last 12 games (and one of the others a draw), people are wondering how long it will be before someone suggests that we might be winning too many games? After all, it’s not only about winning, is it? Today certainly wasn’t.

Where to begin? With Chave jnr and Crawford finding my wallet, which I had carelessly left on the roller after groundskeeping work Friday? With Chave showing me the red button that needs to be pressed on the wicket-mower if you want the cutters to engage, thereby explaining my lack of success with it the day before? (Others, please take note of this…) With the return to bowling of Nigel Rutherford? With the rain?
No, let’s begin at the pub. Before the game.

The start of the match was to be delayed because of the rain, of which we saw plenty. Perkin and Crawford (chief troublemakers) therefore suggested a visit to the Manor Inn, handily located near the entrance to the lane leading to the ground, but still a drive away. I’m not a lunchtime drinker, but somehow “alehouse and sociability” felt like the order of the day, and Perkin offered to drive me there. Cut to later, and as I got back into the car I tried to offer some thoughts to my driver on the prospects of play. Somehow, the words didn’t come out in anything like the right shape or form, and having exposed my inebriation, I concluded with “oh fuck.” The words “oh fuck” were repeated back to me constantly for the next hour or so. And I repeated them. “Oh fuck”, when Perkin deposited me back at the ground and Chave told me I would be batting at 3. “Oh fuck, as our first wicket fell before I’d even got my pads out of my kit bag. “Oh fuck…”. The John Curtis dictum, “5 and drive”, proffered by Power in the pub, would seem to be of questionable wisdom. But maybe I had simply not drunk enough?

Earlier, in the pub, the bantz had been of a similar calibre to that of the Blindwell Bunkhouse back in 2018. https://erratics.hitssports.com/scorecard/fixtureID_631709/Erratics-v-Lynton--Lynmouth-30-Jun-2018.aspx Well, it seemed that way at the time. You probably had to beer there, of course.

Power informed us that Perkin now wants to be known by his middle name, Henry, rather than Jon. So, there we were, the three of us in a row, JP, PP, and JPK, but now JPK, PP and HP. Hilarious! In fact, HP sauce is what you ask for when your meal needs Perkin’ up! Cue gales of laughter. From me. Amid a stony silence from everyone else. Except Crawford. “What’s HP?” I felt old. Crawford then put a handbrake turn on the conversation by telling us about a guy who had walked the entire west coast of the Americas, from southern Chile to Alaska, which brought us neatly to Satish Kumar, who walked from southern India to Dartmoor and is an acquaintance of Perkin. Kumar’s book about his journey, “No Destination” is well worth a read. Unlike this match report, perhaps, which might be given the same title. Then Perkin got yet another round in. Had he really wanted a drink, or was it just a contrived opportunity for him to attempt to press his business card on the reluctant landlord? Maybe it was both. It was all a bit confusing.

The cricket was pretty straightforward, however. The choice for batters seemed to be between crease occupation with no run-scoring, or attempted run-scoring and a fairly quick dismissal. Our first boundary came in the 13th over. Our second in the 20th. Crawford then struck four in quick succession, but that was clearly the beer talking. Our captain had apparently asked for 80. We delivered, and we defended. After a sumptuous tea, the Stoke-in-Teignhead players clearly wanted to get the game done. Going at a brisk pace, it seemed at times that they would overhaul us, but attempted run-scoring didn’t align with crease occupation and the Erratics’ win was, in the end quite comfortable.

But none of the above are the real stories of the day. Here it is:

The Erratics took 7 catches, all of which were, in the words of Tiwari, “world-class, from the first to the last”. It’s true that several of them were breathtaking (Crawford, Chave, Rutherford), and they included Mather’s first catch for the Erratics, and a brace for Goswami.

And now I think I need to go and lie down somewhere calm, quiet, and out of the rain.

Meanwhile, Perkin and Crawford have repaired to the pub. John Curtis again: “5 and drive. Or units of 5. So not 6 pints, 7, 8 or 9. It’s got to be 5 or 10. Or perhaps 15.”

I wonder how far they got?










Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
5nb 6w 4b 1lb 
for 9 wickets
16
80		        
Matt Crawford  
Andrew Forrester  
Dhruba Jyoti Goswami  
Jonathan Kirby  
Jon Perkin  
Phil Power  
Nigel Rutherford  
Fraser Chave  
A.N. Other  
A.N. Other  
George Mather  

Stokeinteignhead Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.

Stokeinteignhead Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 10 wickets
0
57 (19.0 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.