Scorecard

Lympstone v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Thu 21 May 2026 at 6.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Lost By 8 Wickets

Match report What could possibly go wrong? Well for starters the game against Lympstone clashed with the first day of the Devon County Show. Surely that meant biblical rain and if not then biblical traffic jams on the way to the nearby ground at Winslade Park. Well neither really kicked in this time (in fact it was a glorious warm evening and the traffic bearable) but something else did cause high levels of anxiety for arriving Erratics. There was a game already taking place on the pitch! Thankfully it was part of a student 8 over bash tournament and they promised to be done by 6pm. For the record the group stage match was won by ‘Getting it Wrong CC’ against the ‘Boundary Brewers’. And for those really interested the Finals are taking place at the County Ground on Bank Holiday Monday (25 May). A crowd of three thousand is expected!

So could anything else go wrong against a Lympstone side captained by Gary Abrahams (26 appearances for the Erratics and father of Ben (41 Erratics games and now resident in Cape Town)? Well no - as skipper Lee Grant won the toss. Well yes actually - as he elected to bat and things did not go to plan. To be fair the pitch seemed to be slow and low and all the batters found it hard to make really speedy progress.

Rick Lindsay was bowled for 6 with a colleague saying he looked “very bemused”. Rick confirmed this expert analysis adding “that completely bamboozled me”. Martin Wright also departed for 6 – given LBW by Ben Yarde-Buller who only minutes before the start had declared that he never gave LBWs. There was definitely something in the air!
Jonathan Kirby and Mark Phillips steadied the ship but found it hard to really up the run rate on what appeared a difficult strip. By the halfway stage we stood at 34-2. In the end it was another former Erratic, Oliver Creighton (8 games) who did for both Jonathan and Mark in a spell of 2-11.

Things got a little better when Fraser Chave and Ben Y-B came together and they plundered some decent runs over the last four overs, running well between the wickets and playing the most aggressive cricket of the innings. One straight drive from Ben was an utter joy. But all this effort only got us to 91-5. Better than it one time looked but surely not enough against a hard hitting Lympstone top order. It was one of those games where wides and no balls counted for 2 runs but no extra balls except in the final over. This did help the Erratics a bit as Lympstone bowled 6 wides and 4 no balls. So, twenty of runs came from this source.

The only hope we had was that the difficult track we faced would also cause Lympstone problems. It didn’t! After 5 overs they already had 40 on the board – a total the Erratics reached in their 11th over. The reality was that either there was a miraculous change in the conditions or some technical issues were being cruelly exposed. Certainly various Erratics thought that there must have been skulduggery and a secret switch of pitches at the interval.

Mark Hailwood, Nigel Rutherford, Ben Y-B, Lee and Fraser all battled away but Lympstone despite being slowed down comfortably reached their target in the 17th over. If there was a highlight it was the Erratics fielding with two superb catches by Martin Wright and Rick Lindsay. And best of all a brilliant bit of running and near boundary flip back by Matt Hewson to his tag team partner Fraser.
Whichever way you look at it we were well beaten. The self analysis was pretty instant and covered challenging concepts such as “did we over do the gradualism?” and then on a similar theme “does incrementalism work in T20?”.

So time for a trip for an after match drink in The Swan in Lympstone. What could possibly go wrong? Only that the much promised food did not appeared due to a breakdown in communication. This could have been the final straw for ravenous Erratics. But the Chef played a blinder. And soon we were tucking in to the most delicious and generously sized burgers and chips. The world rapidly became a much better place and the Rampant Unicorn contingent were quickly discussing great matters like Irish history and how we met our partners. Ben Y-B made a bit of a Horlicks on the latter subject but you will have to ask him about that!

Martin Weiler

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
8nb 12w 2b 2lb 
for 5 wickets
24
91		        
Richard Lindsay b Johnston 6 11 1 54.55 1
Martin Wright lbw Johnston 6 10 60.0 1
Jonathan Kirby ct O Creighton 18 23 1 78.26
Mark Phillips st O Creighton 3 27 11.11
Fraser Chave Not Out  17 20 1 85.00
Matthew Hewson lbw Hayward 3 8 37.50
Ben Yarde-Buller Not Out  14 15 2 93.33
Lee Grant  
Nigel Rutherford  
Martin Weiler  
Mark Hailwood  

Lympstone Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Johnston3.011025.003.33
Dan Gould3.00900.003.00
M Rendle3.001400.004.67
David Hall3.001200.004.00
Ollie Creighton2.001125.505.50
Hayward4.0021121.005.25
A Waite2.001000.005.00

Lympstone Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
2w 1b  
for 2 wickets
3
92 (1.7 overs)		     
W Hayler Retired Not Out  31 18 4 1 172.22
Kasim ct N Rutherford 10 21 47.62
A Waite ct F Chave 16 15 1 1 106.67
Hayward Not Out  6 21 28.57
Jamie Cooke Not Out  26 20 5 130.0
Dan Gould  
David Hall  
M Rendle  
Johnston  
Ollie Creighton  
Gary Abrahams  

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Mark Hailwood2.001900.009.50
Nigel Rutherford4.0011111.002.75
Ben Yarde-Buller2.002200.0011.00
Lee Grant4.011200.003.00
Fraser Chave4.0027127.006.75