This year, due to persistent precipitation on Saturday, on
Sunday morning we received word that we would be playing at West Chiltington’s second
oval – about a mile away from the ground we normally play at.
I was slightly disappointed at this news as the usual
ground is a glorious location, and the nomenclature ‘second oval’ was giving me
strong ‘Sainsbury’s carpark’ vibes. However, I need not have worried; the
second oval (formerly Thakeham CC, with whom West Chiltington merged in 2000)
was gloriously picturesque and even featured a bank for spectators to sit on.
Freddie Broster-Turley was nursing a sore knee, so sought
advice from physio Jake Helsby about how best to limber up in the 15 minutes
prior to the game beginning. What followed was a parliament of Strollers
stretching beyond the boundary rope in one of the most impressive displays of
team flexibility seen since the Fanny and Puss-led post-match beer yoga
sessions on the 2023 French tour.
Freddie blamed his batting heroics at Bray for the soreness
(he’s not used to spending that much time at the crease), but others suspect
the absence of George Love might be to blame. Zooming around London while
holding hands on their matching ten speeds is more than just a way of life and
way of making people think you’re in a biker gang; it’s a great way to stay in
shape. And now that George is no longer vvvrrrrrroom vroom
vvvvrrrrroooooommmming his motor around town alongside ‘rederick there is a
strong chance that Freddie’s lower leg muscles have atrophied.
Anyhow he managed to recover from his ailments well enough
to take the new ball against West Chilts’ strong opening pair. From the other
end our Lord and Saviour James ‘Dela Ruebanger’ Dela Rue was also in recovery
mode after a week-long junket in Paris watching tennis, attending conferences,
enjoying rooftop canapes and champers, and even slipping his way into Aryna
Sabalenka’s box at Roland Garros.
Wicketkeeper Rob Wall, resplendent in his brand new
XXXXL-sized claret helmet, opined that Freddie bowled well but lucklessly,
while the Lord bowled like a demon (who is good at bowling. While demonic
fallen angels are generally accepted to be malevolent and able to influence
human behaviour to make them undertake immoral activity, it’s not a given that
a demon would be good at bowling. But in this case Wall was positing that the
Lord was a demon knowledgeable in the cricketing arts, and bowled well).
West Chilts’ opening bats put together an initially steady
opening partnership, before Ben Van Noort began to up the ante by advancing
down the wicket, unfurling reverse sweeps, depositing people into the pavilion
and other such questionable displays of home team hospitality!
Having made an excellent hundred against us last year, we
knew what van Noort is capable of and it was beginning to feel like it could be
a long afternoon indeed. Enter Blair Travis, who is very tall. Using his
height, and also his fingers, Blair defeated Van Noort through the air and
induced him to edge an attempted sweep, which was safely pouched by Wicketkeeper-Wall
with the score on 97. Not long later, Travis skidded one through first drop
Hugo Gillespie to bowl him for 13.
The Strollers then unleashed a Gillespie (of sorts…) of our
own in debutant James Allan, who Jack Le Serve met in a pub and (demonically?)
influenced to join us in West Sussex.
Tall and athletic, but more importantly rocking a shaggy
mullet and glorious moustache, James bears more than a passing resemblance to
Jason ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie in his pomp. Playing cricket for the first time in
seven years, Jizzy spent his first over attacking a fourth stump line – albeit
on the leg side – and giving Wicketkeeper-Wall a workout collecting the ball.
Wicketkeeper-Wall is now attending the gym 2-3 times per week (ask him about it
on the extremely off-chance he hasn’t already told you – it appears to be one
of those cultish crossfit types of gym), so was up to the task.
Jizzy quickly thereafter settled into a line and length,
particularly effective back of a length and getting appreciable bounce – not
unlike Bryden Carse – and bowled opener Strefner off the splice to leave West
Chilts 116-3. A wonderful debut and an excellent piece of recruitment from
Le Serve.
Enter Stevie the Rogerer, who bowled with drift, flight and
guile on his way to ripping out the middle order in a superlatively high
quality and economical display of bowling (3-16 off seven overs including three
maidens, and half of his runs conceded coming from mid-offing errors from your
scribe. For more tales of my fielding ineptitude be sure to check the Match
Reports section for Jordans Taverners which Broster-Turley will no
doubt have finished and filed anytime between now and the LA Olympics opening ceremony).
The highlight of Stevie’s haul was arguably
Wicketkeeper-Wall displaying the hands of a florist (who in his leisure time
also assembles and paints model trains and ships in bottles in a small room
above his garage) in effecting the sharpest of stumpings to dismiss one of the
two Barnes brothers playing for West Chilts.
At the other end Jake Helsby was bowling well and warming
into his work, nipping one through the defences of West Chilts’ No 5 for
a tidy return of 1-20. Along came Stair to mop up the tail, finishing with
figures of 3-14 including West Chilts’ skipper, the dangerous Alfie Reeves,
caught in the deep by Travis, and Stair’s kindred spirit ‘Beeksie’
spectacularly pouched by Helsby flying horizontal to the ground at short
midwicket.
Restricting West Chilts to 180 (bowled out after 37.5
overs) felt like a significant win after we shipped 306 to them last season –
testament to a fantastic bowling and fielding effort. Several highlights from
the field:
*Captain Oliver – possibly inspired by the pre-match yoga
session the youngsters were undertaking – rolling back the years and saving
many runs in the field by running (sometimes even appearing to sprint!) when
chasing balls – activities he more commonly reserves for batting only.
*Our Lord James Dela Rue not screaming “DOWN!” even a
single time (and being out-“DOWN!!!”ed) by his teammates at least 65-0.
*Our Lord dropping a (fiendishly difficult) chance at mid-off,
allowing Wicketkeeper-Wall to delight in calling him a flog. The Lord
retaliated by sending a tweet informing the world that Wall appears in the
Epstein files. Watch this space for the next step in the feud.
*A very friendly black and white cat patrolling one of the
boundaries.
Tea was a heavenly affair. As I always say, it’s not just a
coincidence that the ‘Thake’ in West Chiltington and Thakeham Cricket Club
rhymes with cake. This year there were two varieties of cake, plus scones,
sandwiches, berries, chicken, sausage… to borrow an analogy from ‘the
plane game’ which Simon Brodbeck enjoyed playing so very much during the
Roehampton match a few weeks ago, by the time I’d finished I would have been a
heavily-laden yellow DHL freight Boeing 747 Neo wobbling my way into Heathrow.
Skipper Oliver used the half-time break to present a cap
and tie to Le Serve, everyone’s favourite French Australian, in celebration of
his ten matches for the club. Jack was meant to be playing but had badly hurt
his arm in a cycling accident the day before so attended in a supporting
capacity only. Qualo team man behaviour, that!
Travis and Wall sauntered out to open the innings and got
things under way in typically flourishing and stodgy fashion respectively. To
Blair’s consternation, the scorers were attributing some of his runs to Wall
via the electronic scoreboard. Play was eventually allowed to resume when Blair
had personally inspected the scorebook and looked into the whites of the
scorers’ eyes and received satisfactory promises that such mistakes would not
be repeated.
Blair was the first to depart, bowled by the darker-haired
of the brothers Barnes for a run-a-ball 18. Wall followed several overs later,
undone by the same bowler in the same fashion, as he nipped one down the slope
and through the gate.
Wall was so shocked at the appreciable movement generated
in the storming of his castle that he briefly paused on his way off in an
impression of Mike Gatting after the ball of the century (but slimmer – he’s
been in the gym. And as much regular readers of these missives will know that I
very much like to use this platform to point out Wall’s ample weight, he’s
still nowhere near as portly as Mike Gatting was).
Wall’s dismissal caused panic in the Strollers’ ranks, as
34-1 quickly became 36-6. Wall’s stodge had obviously been doing a real job of
work holding the innings together – and/or the middle order correctly deduced
that now that he’d been dismissed Wall would quickly be up at the bar, so
hastened to join him.
Brad ‘Trebley Webley’ Trebilcock gave Barnes a third
wicket, before Hugo Gillespie (West Chiltington’s fake Jizzy) nicked off Oliver
to a screaming catch at second slip by Reeves, then bowled Allen in a Dizzy vs
Jizzy showdown that nearly rivalled the theatre of Stair vs Beeksie earlier.
It was Helsby who stopped the rot for the Strollers,
joining Pittams in the middle after Steve had lobbed a catch off Beeksie to
square leg. Beeksie bowls with a similarly tantalising loop and lack of speed
to Stair. Surely Strollers should be fine against such bowling, having watched
Stair in action so many times!?? Apparently not. There’s just too much time to
think!
With a wise head on his shoulders, Helsby read the
situation and prescribed caution and patience. It was a case of ‘do as I say,
not as I do’ as Helsby larruped 24 (dealing solely in boundaries) off 17
deliveries before missing a straight one from Beeks, bringing to end a
restorative partnership of 61.
The situation now called for heroics, and who better to
provide them than last week’s hero Broster-Turley? In lustily boshing his
second delivery into the sightscreen for a maximum, Freddie got the crowd
immediately on the edge of their seats. As anyone who has golfed with him will
be able to imagine, Freddie started his lusty blow towards deep midwicket to
allow for his customary ‘baby power fade’ into the sightscreen – but they all
count.
Broster-Turley and Pittams added another 50 to get the
Strollers within range of a long-distance model train or ship in a bottle of
the total – only for our regular nemesis Van Noort to cast aside the
wicketkeeping gloves and mark out his bowling run-up. Van Noort required just
seven deliveries to defeat both set batsmen with swift nip-backers.
Dela Rue then batted like a demon (who wasn’t overly
certain how best to play spin) and ambled past one from Bill Barnes (the less
dark-haired of the brothers Barnes) to be stumped, leaving the Strollers 30
short of West Chilts.
Captain Glenary made appropriately statesmanlike and
gracious remarks in defeat before handing over the Marshall Cup to opposite
number Alfie, befitting of the regard both sides hold the fixture in, and the
spirit in which it is always played. Winning it back will only feel sweeter
after this latest setback – plotting begins now!
A wise man wrote in last year’s West Chiltington match
report “the safest recipe for a pleasant journey home from West Chilts is not
to start it too soon”. The Strollers did their best to follow that sage advice
this year but were to a small extent scuppered by the bar running out of lager
(Wall and Trebilcock’s innings ending prematurely not necessarily being
unrelated).
After saying our adieux, Strollers Broster-Turley,
Trebley-Webley and Wicketkeeper-Wall clambered into the Pittams mobile and were
safely and without incident chauffeured first to The Owl (a darling country pub
which tragically was closed), and then to the Red Chilli – a roadside
curryhouse outside of Dorking.
After a lengthy journey and dinner with Trebley Webley I
believe there is now nothing I don’t know about him – his ability to converse
without taking breath had the added benefit of making the absence of George
Love slightly less keenly felt. Indeed, I am now considering Trebley as a
candidate to collaborate with George and I on a series of coffee table books I
plan to publish – Bon Mots by Brad could be just the sequel to follow
the instant bestseller that Gibberish with George will undoubtedly be.
Capt: Glen Oliver. Wkt: Rob Wall.
Match report: Mike Pittams. Match fees: Alastair Macaulay.
