Scorecard

Tipton St John v Erratics Cricket Club Erratics on Sun 10 Jul 2022 at 2.00pm
Erratics Cricket Club Won by 93 Runs

Match report Erratics vs Tipton St John, Sunday 10 July 2022.
Match report by 'Babe'

It was a scene of quintessential English pastoral. The high-summer afternoon sun radiated upon the Tipton cricket field. Just out of eye- and ear-shot the River Otter slid by, not needing to make a fuss. A local herbalist tended her wonder-working plants in the adjacent allotment, happy in the knowledge that it was 2022 not 1682. Birds sheltered beneath the dark-green leaves of oaks and chestnuts, emitting the odd hushed tweet of anticipation. The wind whispered in the trees – and the rest of us whispered that it was Nigel's birthday and there might be home-made cake at tea, but that we mustn't let on we knew because it would remind him about tempus. Fugit.*

Into every florid cricketing preamble a little toss must fall – and, in short, Captain Fraser won it. He chose to bat. Partly on the grounds that it was far too hot to field, and partly that the wicket looked a bit dodgy and likely to dodgify further.

F. Chave and 'Babe' Yarde-Buller opened for the Erratics against an accurate brace of Tipton openers. Progress was slow. After three or four overs Chave had a go at a straight one that forgot to bounce. He was bowled. It was a slightly uncharacteristic dismissal, being much more the kind of thing you'd expect Yarde-Buller to do. Perhaps it was satire.

Mark Phillips now bounded, or at least strode purposefully, to the crease. Or maybe he did bound. I don't remember. Anyhow, he kept out some nasty, jagging deliveries (a high proportion of the afternoon's deliveries either jagged or grubbed) before being run out by Yarde-Buller just as he was getting his eye in. It may not have been good cricket, but the sportsmanship displayed by Phillips was of the highest calibre: before returning to the pavilion, he thanked his team-mate effusively for running him out.

At this point it wasn't looking too tidy for the Erratics, but first Gutha and then Crawford injected some much-needed vigour. Both were honourably caught in the outfield as they tried to pick up the run-rate. Meanwhile Babe had remembered that the point of cricket was to score runs rather than induce society-wide catatonia. He was joined by debut Erratic James Smart, a classy operator with the full repertoire of strokes, and the pair of them put on, at a guess, 75 runs for the wicket before Babe was bowled through his ever-widening gate.

Kirby, next in, found a less traditional way to get himself out, playing the ball onto the stumps with his own backside. I'm not sure how he did it, since presumably said buttocks were outside leg stump at the moment of contact. Did he somehow arse-deflect the ball forwards through his legs – and thence onto the stumps? Is his gluteus maximus inhumanly flexible? It might explain his weirdly agile wicket-keeping...

While Smart cruised to his 50, Oscar Cammack played a series of flashing off-drives en route to a charismatic 17. Birthday-boy Nigel put the icing on the cake, and the Erratics ended with a very decent 212 from their 40 overs.

Tea was drunk and delicious, non-metaphorical cake consumed, before play restarted. Rutherford and Lee opened the bowling against a Tipton pair who were bent on carnage. With neither bowler's accuracy quite what it usually is – and the ball apparently not quite as spherical as it usually is – Messrs. Tolley and Kidson zoomed to 40 or so off just four overs. Your correspondent heard the word 'nemesis' muttered by more than one of his fellow fielders – this in reference to Tolley, perennial scourge of the Erratics.

Well, not this time. After a string of perfectly-pitched, teasing away-drifters from Hailwood, Tolley fished at one he should have left alone and was caught behind by Kirby. Nemesis shmemesis.

Not long afterwards, Anuj Tiwari clean bowled Kidson, and from that moment the writing was on the wall for Tipton. Not least because Tiwari appeared to have paid a visit to the herbalist during the break in order to purchase some of her 'Malcolm Marshall Tincture'. He bowled fast and straight and was pretty much unplayable on a wicket that had, as Chave had anticipated, dodgified. He took five wickets for seven runs, with Rutherford, Gutha and Grant picking up the rest.

Victory by 93 runs! And, much more importantly, a wonderful day of cricket, cake and conversation (afterwards, at the Cannon Inn in Newton Poppleford).


*Surely the most pretentious, obscure and crap joke in the history of Erratics Match Reports.

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 2w 11b 3lb 
for 7 wickets
17
212		        
Fraser Chave b Birch 1 11 9.09
Ben Yarde-Buller b Buckland 86 83 14 2 103.61
Mark Phillips Run out  2 8 25.00
Rithvik Gutha ct Smith 9 22 1 40.91
Matt Crawford ct Channon 17 22 3 77.27
James Smart Not Out  57 47 9 121.28 1
Jonathan Kirby b Wright 3 3 100 1
Oscar Cammack b Kidson 17 30 2 56.67
Nigel Rutherford Not Out  3 7 42.86
Lee Grant  
Mark Hailwood   1
Anuj Tiwari  

Tipton St John Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
O Smith8.0126126.003.25
D Birch8.0323123.002.88
M Davies5.013800.007.60
M Channon4.0024124.006.00
P Wright5.0050150.0010.00
J Buckland7.0030130.004.29
B Kidson3.01717.002.33

Tipton St John Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
5nb 6w 9b 5lb 
for 10 wickets
25
119 (27.3 overs)		     
P Tolley ct Kirby B. Hailwood 18
B Kidson b Tiwari 35
D Thayre b Tiwari 12
M Davies ct & B. Tiwari 7
A Matthews lbw Tiwari 8
J Buckland ct Smart B. Gutha 1
S Stone lbw Tiwari 0
O Smith b Grant 5
M Channon lbw Grant 4
D Birch ct Hailwood B. Rutherford 0
P Wright Not Out  4
   

Erratics Cricket Club Erratics Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Lee Grant3.3122211.006.29
Nigel Rutherford6.0023123.003.83
Mark Hailwood6.0027127.004.50
Anuj Tiwari5.02751.401.40
Oscar Cammack5.012200.004.40
Rithvik Gutha2.01414.002.00