Whitchurch (A) – 28.6.14

Match called off due to rain

Friday

17:48

Me:  It’ll rain

17:49

AE:  May be one of those days!

Saturday

11:04

Me:  Rain

11:51

Me:  Update: more rain

11:58

AE:  Tomorrow looks nice

11:59

Me:  That’s good.  Have they called today off yet?

12:00

AE:  No, OK there.

13:11

AE:  Game off.

13:13

Me:  Well fuck me what a surprise.

13:14

AE:  Quite

13:44

Me:  That was a pointless 45 minute round trip to Caversham Bridge for a game I would have cancelled by 11am.  It’s been shitting it down for the last 3 hours.

Highmoor (A) – 22.6.14

RUASCC 202-7 (40 overs)

Rafiq 60, Jas Singh 44, Zia 27 not out

Highmoor 82 all out (25.1 overs)

Saad 2-2, Zia 2-4, Daman Singh 2-19

RUASCC won by 120 runs

Every time RUASCC are asked to bat first I spend the first 45 minutes praying that the game won’t be all over by five o’clock.  We lose a couple of quick wickets, the runs start to dry up and all I can see is us getting bowled out for 64.  It’s not that I’m a pessimist by nature, you understand; it’s just that I’ve seen us bat before.  In truth things usually settle down a bit and then I can relax, even begin to enjoy watching for a little while, before it’s time to pray that I won’t be required to bat.

I needn’t have worried this week, even at 22-2.  Zia brought along another new recruit, Rafiq, and moved him up the order; Rafiq obliged with the most accomplished half-century I’ve seen all season.  Jas Singh made an excellent fifty on this ground last year and could have done the same again but managed to send a full toss straight to deep backward square leg on 44.  Saad hit two sixes in an entertaining 23, although the less said about his reverse sweeping the better, and Zia kept the scoreboard ticking over at the end as RUASCC added 100 in the last 15 overs.

One imagines there are very few less enjoyable ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than having to face Saad bowling quickly, but watching from a safe distance at fine leg it can be rather thrilling.  (Plus his lengthy run up gives a fellow opening bowler plenty of time to recover between overs.)  New ball in hand, Saad tore in for three savage overs and with two wickets to his name was withdrawn from the attack for reasons of diplomacy by a captain who likes to win but not maim.

Unfortunately for Highmoor the first change was Zia who proved equally effective and at 16-5 the game was effectively over; the rest of the afternoon was practice.  Daman Singh and Waqar bagged a couple of wickets each, Ward looked every inch a competent wicketkeeper and we even held on to a few catches, but the highlight of the fielding was Chan Malde - stationed at square leg he saved countless runs and almost took the catch of the decade diving to his right.

There was some gutsy hitting by the opener who carried his bat for 45 not out but the other ten batsmen managed just 19 runs between them.  RUASCC’s 202, our biggest total of the year so far, never looked like being troubled.  I should probably learn to relax more.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Tough call this week, shared between Rafiq and Saad.

RUASCC Team:  Ward (wkt), Eagle (capt), Jas Singh, Murphy, Rafiq, Saad, Zia, Malde, Daman Singh, Waqar, Withers

Farley Hill (A) – 15.6.14

Farley Hill 183-8 (40 overs)

Withers 2-17, Waqar 2-22, Dip Patel 2-63

RUASCC 182-7 (40 overs)

Loader 57, Greenhalf 33 not out, Ward 33

RUASCC lost by 1 run

It’s taken me a while to write this one up because I haven’t been quite sure how to approach it.  I don’t think I’ve ever lost a cricket match by one run before – I’ve seen a few last-over finishes go either way but to lose by just one run out of 365 brings its own particular level of frustration.

A single run in the context of a whole afternoon of cricket is a pathetically small unit.  It’s not like losing by a single goal at football; you lose 2-1 and your opponents have scored twice as many as you have, of course you shouldn’t win.  One run is a no ball, a wide, a streaky edge through the slips or, more pertinently on this occasion, a dropped catch.  By no means the only culprit, Withers perhaps had the most to be ashamed of as he put down what Boycott would call “an absolute cuckoo” at short mid-wicket that would have given Waqar the key wicket of Jalil.  Result: one run.

Earlier Withers had opened the bowling with four consecutive maidens, but in the fifth over a bottom edge squirmed through the gully area, certainly not where the batsman intended but safe nonetheless.  Result: one run.

Every time a fielder failed to pick the ball up cleanly, every time a bowler’s line drifted slightly down the leg side, not to mention that chance that Waqar dropped off Tranter’s bowling, each and every time the result was a single run.

The point about cricket of course is that it’s the accumulation over time that really matters.  It wasn’t just one catch dropped, it was half a dozen.  It wasn’t just one wide ball, it was 23.  It wasn’t just one casual misfield, it was a few overs of not quite reacting quick enough to prevent ones turning into twos.  We’d given away, at a conservative estimate, 30-40 more runs than we should have done.  After the first seven overs Farley Hill had just one run on the board but went on to score 183.  That one run proved vital.

The home side’s insistence on playing a 40-over game meant that two teams with barely six bowlers between them had to figure out where a significant number of overs were coming from.  For RUASCC it was good to see Jagesh and Greenhalf bowling their first spells of the season, and very respectably too, but the use of Dip as a fifth bowler is not something we would have called “Plan A” before the game.

In reply Ward and Eagle added 39 at four runs per over before a mini collapse brought Loader and Weeks together at 56-3.  In a particularly stodgy period of the game the pair added just 10 runs in eight overs – it is apparently quite difficult to time the ball when the pitch is slow, the bowling is tight and your name is Tom Weeks.  Weeks’ eventual dismissal seemed to energise Loader and he passed fifty while Greenhalf looked to generate momentum at the other end.

By various means RUASCC kept up with the required rate until very near the end but with two overs remaining we still needed 20 to win.  Greenhalf smashed a four and six off the penultimate over yielding 13 runs but neither he nor Waqar could lay proper bat on ball in the last set of six and Waqar’s run out on the final delivery sealed the defeat by just one run.

While reflecting on how rare it is even for a 40-over game to have such a tight finish, I’ve been watching the highlights of the final day of England v Sri Lanka at Headingley.  I’d managed to avoid hearing the result so I lived every nailbiting moment while Jimmy Anderson tried to block out the final over.  Both Tests in a two match series going down to the final over of the fifth day; one decided by one wicket, the other down to just one ball.  I like to think we understand a little about how Jimmy feels this evening.

One fucking run.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Loader for his fifty, and I don’t remember him dropping a catch.

RUASCC Team:  Ward (wkt), Eagle (capt), Murphy, Loader, Weeks, Greenhalf, Dip, Waqar, Tranter, Jagesh, Withers

Mortimer (A) – 1.6.14

RUASCC 109 all out

Dersh 35, Main 18, Ashman 12

Mortimer 48 all out

Waqar 5-6, Ashman 3-13, Main 1-9

RUASCC won by 61 runs

Well this was a bit of a shambles.  In a limited overs game things looked pretty bad when we were bowled out for barely a hundred, but on a wet pitch with practically no bounce at all we were then comprehensively out-RUASCCed by the home side who presumably should have known exactly what to expect from the playing surface.

Probably the less said about much of the batting performance the better, though it was held together beautifully by Dersh who opened the innings and handled the conditions better than most.  As wickets tumbled around him he played good cricket shots and kept his cool right up until the moment he ran himself out.  His 35 turned out to be the highest score of the match.

The rest of the RUASCC line-up tried desperately not to get out to Mortimer’s first change bowler, Barrett, the first female cricketer we’ve faced since about 2007.  Three of them, it must be said, failed.  First Greenhalf smacked one straight to mid-wicket; then Main, having already taken 14 off the first five balls of the over, holed out to one of the three men on the leg-side boundary.  Finally Waqar missed a straight one and was bowled, but fortunately his day was to get better later on.

The innings looked set to end after barely 20 overs but Withers and Ashman dug in, adding an average of a run an over for the next half an hour.  As it happened, apart from nudging the score up to 109 we achieved little more than delaying the tea interval.  And what a delicious tea interval it was, Mortimer have done themselves proud again.

Opening up, Waqar bowled superbly and was denied a wicket with his very first ball when an LBW appeal was given out by the umpire but given not out by the batsman who thought it had hit the bat first.  This seems to be happening more and more over the last couple of years and I’m not a fan.  Yes, umpires occasionally make mistakes, but it should be down to the fielding side to voluntarily withdraw their appeal if something looks wrong, it’s not the batsman’s place to argue the decision.  I don’t actually care if it hit your bat first or not, that’s not always the point.

I’m writing this on the same day that Jos Buttler was run out while backing up at the non-striker’s end, an incident that caused controversy because it was deemed against the “spirit” of the game, not surprisingly by the people who were disadvantaged by the result of it.  Tough luck, it’s in the rules.  And again, unless the fielding side decide to withdraw the appeal there’s no point whining about it, or booing the bowler.

I still wince at the arrogance of Ian Bell insisting that “the right decision had been made for the good of the game” when he got his reprieve at Trent Bridge in 2011.  It might have been a nice decision for Ian Bell, and for fans of English cricket, but what right do the fans have to “react angrily”, boo the Indian players and seemingly forget that sport is about more than just getting result you want.  Put your snivelling sense of entitlement aside and try to remember there are other people involved who might just feel differently from you.

One of the things I won’t miss about playing football is the constant cheating and lying that lots of people were quick to remind me is “all part of the game”.  No it fucking isn’t.  Kicking a ball and running around are parts of the game; deliberately attempting to deceive the officials to gain an unfair advantage is cheating and that is NOT part of any game I know of.  That’s what happens when people place more importance in the result than they do on enjoyment, fairness and basic human decency.  I don’t want to see cricket, and especially not Sunday afternoon village cricket, become a place for arguing with umpires or trying to con your way to a higher score.  That would be shit.

Anyway, where the hell was I?  Oh yes, Waqar!  Waqar bowled superbly, and not just his first ball, but for the rest of his eight over spell, during which he took five wickets for only six runs.  Admittedly it was difficult to see exactly what was going on from deep square leg where I was stationed, but evidently the entire middle order were unable to deal with it.

One of the undoubted match highlights was Waqar’s final ball.  Already with four wickets to his name he got one to bounce and turn and bagged the five-wicket haul before setting off on a lap of the field in joyful celebration.  Then just a few overs later he was the star again: fielding at square leg he took a sensational low catch off Dr Ashman and set off practically cartwheeling all over again.

Ashman too proved difficult to get away and he fully deserved excellent figures of 3-13.  Eagle took an important catch at mid-on to end one potentially dangerous partnership and Main finished things off taking a catch off his own bowling to finally dismiss the opening batsman who’d scored 32 out of the home side’s total of 48.

Two wins in a row for RUASCC and a nice early finish saw us across the road to the pub.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Waqar, even though he was bowled out by a girl.

RUASCC Team:  Eagle (capt), Dersh, Murphy, Dip (wkt), Greenhalf, Main, Malde, Waqar, Tranter, Ashman, Withers

Theale & Tilehurst (A) – 25.5.14

Theale & Tilehurst 193-8 (44 overs)

Withers 3-27, Stewart 2-19, Adil 1-24

RUASCC 197-4 (34.2 overs)

Adil 83 not out, Nadeem 45, Fawaz 19

RUASCC won by 6 wickets

For more than 10 years I’ve been playing against this team.  I made my RUASCC debut against them, I recorded my best bowling figures against them and we’ve been playing against them twice every year so I’ve written quite a few match reports about them too.  For 10 years I’ve been calling them “Tilehurst and Theale” because that’s what it says on our official fixture cards, so imagine my surprise when I just looked more closely at their club website and discovered that they’re actually called “Theale and Tilehurst”.  My world has been turned quite upside-down, and I have no idea to whom I should apologise.

Nevertheless, Sunday’s match against both of them saw a welcome return to form and a comfortable win for RUASCC with more than six overs to spare.

Blessed with a strong line-up that somehow accommodated nine bowlers and eight batsmen Eagle finally located his middle order, though the principal contributions were from unexpected sources.  Nadeem, a player we’ve previously only used as an off-spin bowler but who is, apparently, a wicketkeeper-batsman, made a strong 45 to support Adil, who would have been batting at number seven in this game had it not been for Dip unselfishly rearranging the order.  The pair rescued RUASCC from a perilous 33-3, adding 121 together in 20 overs.  And when Nadeem finally departed we were treated to debutant Younus Khan confidently seeing us over the finish line.

Having lost the toss and been asked to bowl we were relieved to see that this wasn’t quite the batting paradise we’re used to at this ground.  The pitch not quite so hard and true; the outfield a bit more forgiving for the chasing fielder.  Withers kept things tight with three early maidens but it was largely thanks to another fascinating episode of Can’t Catch, Won’t Catch that the young left-handed opener managed to pass fifty despite timing the ball precisely once in two hours at the crease.

At drinks T&T were 66-2 and while the run-rate increased significantly in the second half of the innings a flurry of late wickets kept the score below 200.  Ken Stewart, a week short of his 75^th birthday, took the pace off the ball to great effect and could have had more than his two wickets but for dropped catches and a missed stumping.

While a target of 194 could have seemed plenty to a side who hadn’t scored more than 161 this year, something about the way Fawaz set off in the first few overs gave us cause for optimism.  His dismissal threated to derail the chase completely until Nadeem and Adil came together, and their powerful but controlled hitting, not to mention a few more dropped catches, set us up for victory.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Adil, by quite some margin.

RUASCC Team:  Eagle (capt), Fawaz, D. Singh, Nadeem, Adil, Khan, Dip (wkt), Waqar, Karthee, Stewart, Withers