Scorecard

Ide v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Fri 20 Jun 2014 at 6.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Lost by 6 wickets

Match report Match report by Martin Wright

The Day When We Were Bad.

If your correspondent had got his act together, this report could have acted as a nice little prequel to Hailwood’s epic account of an epic encounter at Clyst. In narrative terms, it would have been the dark before the dawn, the comedy before the cricket, the ridiculous before the sublime.

As it is, I was too busy lounging indolently in Cornish coves, getting fat on beer and pasties, and so this will now just have to serve as a sobering reminder of Erratics BC: Before Clyst. Back in the day. The Day When We Were Bad.

There were exceptions. Price, Weiler, Hayes and Chaves (plural) – you’re all free to go. Even among the rest – yes, well may we shuffle and look at our feet – well, it wasn’t as if we were all awful all of the time. It’s just that, between us, we were collectively so far below par that it verged on an Erratishambles.

And to think it had started so well. A gorgeous summer evening on Ide’s bucolic ground, buzzards circling high in the blue, swallows swooping over the square, and Fraser talking in riddles. “Cook’s out!” Is he? “No, I mean he was caught. Only he wasn’t.”

Fraser has finished his exams and is enjoying some rampant imprecision.

While Captain Forrester went out to win the toss, the opposition tempted us with pre-match lager. “If any of your lads fancy a pint, just put £2.50 in the tin.” I declined briskly on behalf of the team. Drinking before play? The very idea… On reflection, this might have been too hasty. We could hardly have played worse with the odd pint swilling around inside us, and with luck we might just have been too drunk to remember it.

Forrester opened with Heaton and Weiler, with Hayes at three, Wright four, Chave (D.) five and Ferro propping up the bar / middle order at six.

Like I said, it started well enough… Heaton and Weiler opened cautiously, running well between the wickets, and soon Weiler broke the shackles with a fine lofted off drive. Ide’s fielders were sharp, so it wasn’t easy pickings. One man in particular fired in a couple of sharp returns. “He’s got an arm”, commented a watching Erratic. “He’s got two”, corrected Fraser, keen to demonstrate he wasn’t entirely away with the fairies.

Weiler found his flourish, slashing boundaries through point and past cover, and we were 38 off 7. A decent, solid start on which to build.

The ground at Ide is bordered by two tall hedges, a grassy meadow and a stream. Plenty of opportunities for the ball to get lost / soaked: opportunities which it seized on numerous occasions. Sometimes the ball was retrieved, sometimes it made good its escape, prompting Hayes and Wright to speculate about the relative costs of a dozen replacement balls a game versus a couple of hundred metres’ roll of chicken wire…

There were some idiosyncratic local rules as well: into the far hedge at any height is four, clean over it is six. “Do you think it’s Narnia over the other side?”, asked Fraser. “No, it’s a field”, responded Ferro, concerned that the spearhead of our spin attack was losing his grip on reality…

“They used to have a dog which found the ball”, explained Annie. “But it died on Tuesday. Of a heart attack.”

It wasn’t clear whether it died in action, as it were. We can only hope so, doing what it loved. On the basis of this evening’s play, with ball after ball given up for lost, it was much missed.

Meanwhile, back in the middle, Heaton was run out by a fine direct hit, and one wicked ball which dipped late out of the evening sun cleaned up Weiler for a fine 29. We were progressing, but it was all becoming a little too stately.

The stumps had a pale, almost bleached tone to them.

Danny - “What are they made of?”
Annie - “They’re ivory”.
Danny - “Ivory?”
Annie - “They’re a very rich club.”

They’d have to be, with their ball replacement bill.

Hayes started cautiously but soon found his feet, moving into some powerful drives. He was joined by Wright, who missed his first ball, scampered a single off the second, then launched a huge scythe at a wide one, sending it spiralling into the skies above cover, who was far too solid a cricketer to be distracted by Wright’s customary last-ditch desperation cry of “Looking for two!”.

Enter Chave (D.). For a while, he and Hayes painted a rosier picture of possibilities, finding the boundary regularly and running well, too. Hayes drove and cut forcefully, hitting one towering four before retiring (compulsorily) on 33. Chave stroked a couple of fluent fours past cover, but then had his ivory tinkled, as it were, by Ash, at the start of a fine spell of 4-1-18-1. At the other end, Sharman, too, was proving hard to get away, closing with 4-0-17-1.

At 81 off 14, we were in need of an Erratiburst, so it was reassuring to see Ferro head for the middle, joined by Forrester, who had leapfrogged Williamson in pursuit of quick runs. (“Take it as a compliment, Danny”, a kindly Erratic assured the youth. “It just means he thinks you’re too much of a stylist to slog ugly runs.”)

But ugly or elegant, the runs weren’t flowing. Ferro, looking increasingly out of sorts with that Alan Partridge favourite, the “niggling groin strain”, struggled uncharacteristically to put bat on ball, and his normally silky scamper between the wickets was replaced by a brave limp. Just two runs came off the 18th over, bowled by Sharman. Forrester managed an elegant clip through square leg for four, and in the final over, Ferro timed a fluent whip through midwicket, and crashed one past cover.

We closed on 123 – so setting the opposition a little over six an over.

Thirty or forty short, perhaps? For a while, it seemed far from certain. We opened with our Brace of Chaves, and, backed by some sharp fielding, they kept it impressively tight. Fraser in particular was positively stingy, his first two overs going for just four runs. Ide were choking, and when they tried a sharp single, Penny swooped and ran out Boxworth with a direct hit. Five overs in, and they had just 18, and suddenly it felt like we were sitting on top of a decent sized mountain, looking down on the tiny, clambering figures of Ide’s batsmen, labouring up the nursery slopes far below.

Chave Major and Minor both struck in their final overs. In a touching father-and-son combo, Fraser induced an edge which was duly snaffled by Duncan at slip to dismiss Cloak for a threatening 20; then Duncan tempted Ash into an early drive, which flew mercifully straight to Ferro – as motionless as a subbuteo table cricketer, but with better hands – at mid-off.

At 30-3 off 7, we could have been forgiven for labouring under the delusion that we were in the game – all the more so when Hayes, in a Swann-like early strike with his third ball for the Erratics, bowled Bell for 17.

The illusion wasn’t to last. Defending six an over meant sustaining the pressure, and slowly but surely, Sharman and Ruthers began to open the valves. Hayes tightened things up for a while, but line and length wavered under an increasingly confident Ide assault, and Williamson’s loopers, quite effective elsewhere, were no match for Sharman’s blunt aggression.

The bowler had cause to feel hard done by, though, when one short ball was pulled, knee high, straight at Wright at midwicket. The batsman was already turning to leave as the ball slapped into my hapless hands and fell harmlessly to earth. The next two deliveries – despatched for six and four respectively – tested Danny’s key qualification to succeed as an Erratic (the ability to shrug off misfortunes, especially those inflicted by team-mates, with a smile and a shrug). He passed with flying colours.

As the Body Erratic started to slump, the batsmen dealt out the mortal blows with increasing violence. One mighty pull cleared fielders, stream, adjoining strip of meadow, and the hedges on either side of the lane, to land in a garden – apparently owned by someone who doesn’t like cricket. (What do estate agents say to these guys? ‘Do you like cricket?’. ‘No.’ ‘I’ve got just the house for you then, it’s over 50 feet from the nearest ground.’)

Penny Price, brought on as Erratics teetered on the edge of the open grave, restored some sense of pride, conceding just five off her solitary over. But by then it was too late, and Ide cantered home by six wickets with 20 balls to spare.

In The Huntsman afterwards, we were treated to the local Ide speciality of poppadoms, curry and chips. On the board, it stressed the locally-sourced nature of most of the menu – potatoes from this farm, spinach from that one, and so on. All good stuff. But on an evening like this, it just served as a reminder that, faced with the ferocity of Ide’s locally-sourced attack, we had crumbled like a cracked poppadom.



Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 5 wickets
0
123		        
Jan Heaton Run out  8
Martin Weiler Bowled  29
Rob Hayes Retired Not Out  33
Martin Wright Caught  1
Duncan Chave Bowled  13
Chris Ferro Not Out  17
Andrew Forrester Run out  8
Fraser Chave  
Jeff Haynes  
Penny Price  
Danny Williamson  

Ide Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.

Ide Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 4 wickets
0
124 (16.4 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Fraser Chave4.0013113.003.25
Duncan Chave4.0021121.005.25
Jeff Haynes2.002400.0012.00
Rob Hayes3.0030130.0010.00
Danny Williamson2.403200.0012.00
Penny Price1.00500.005.00