BBC Caversham (A) – 10.5.14

Match called off due to rain

I can’t pretend to be disappointed that this one was cancelled as I wasn’t down to play anyway; I’d opted to play football as my team had a cup final the same afternoon.  As it turned out I was an unused substitute so all I’d done in effect was to give up not playing cricket for the chance to not play football instead.  And then we lost the cup final, in apocalyptic rain, so what a brilliant day that was.

Incidentally, this summer brings an end to my mediocre footballing career.  I’m retiring from the Saturday league after four hugely enjoyable seasons (and one memorable goal) with Brookside St Laurence, an immensely talented group who somehow managed to achieve top 3 finishes every year despite never training together.  The fact is, at 35, I’m starting to feel off the pace, a bit of a liability – my fear of making a catastrophic error now far outweighs any anticipation of doing something amazing.  I’m by no means unfit (I’m training to run a marathon in October) but I never had that much talent to begin with and if I lose any more sharpness they might as well replace me with a wheelie bin.

I’m the oldest player in the team, I’ve got used to that.  I may not be completely useless but I’m not first choice for any position.  I’m still capable of doing a limited kind of job in the right circumstances, and no one doubts my willingness for the team to succeed.

Basically, I’m Ken.  I’m the Ken Stewart of my football team.

At the time of writing I have one last league game still to play then I’ll cast the football boots aside and turn instead to my running shoes.  They say you know when it’s time to go, and I’ve realised for a little while now that I look forward to a long, gentle run down the towpath a lot more than I relish the thought of trying to stop teenagers scoring goals.  There’s a kid in our league I used to babysit – he got married last year.  One of our players was born in 1998 for crying out loud.  Being around these people is bound to make me feel old.

I don’t worry though.  If I ever want to feel young and athletic again I simply turn up and play for RUASCC.

Englefield (A) – 5.5.14

Englefield 152 all out (39.5 overs)

Karthee 2-19, Withers 2-26, Ashman 2-30, Main 2-35

RUASCC 147-8 (40 overs)

Ward 56, Eagle 30, Greenhalf 15

RUASCC lost by 5 runs

Everything hurts.  My back, my shoulder, my arms, the defeat… it all feels bad this morning.  Two games in two days after seven months without bowling a ball has proved too much for this torso - I don’t even want to cough for fear of structural disintegration.  And it’s not just me, I’ve heard a similar story from Wardy who can barely move following two consecutive fifties and 39.5 overs of keeping wicket.

But even in our discomfort we must spare a thought for Bruce Main.  Bowling the final over of the Englefield innings to an agricultural but very powerful hitter, Main instinctively stuck out his left hand to stop a blistering straight drive that would probably have amputated a weaker limb.  You know it’s a bad one when the big Kiwi shows any kind of pain, but after a few moments of choice Maori curses he picked up the ball, took the final wicket and strode off the pitch to get some ice.  Soon the hand was swollen and had gone a shade of dark grey I’ve never seen before.

Two hours later, with the RUASCC response in dire need of impetus, Bruce was persuaded to pick up his bat and see if he could hit a few boundaries to get us over the line.  A one-handed Bruce, the thinking seemed to go, is still better than a two-handed Tranter, Ashman or Withers.  It wasn’t to be.  Main was bowled off the last ball of the match when only a six would have done, and our first defeat of the season was sealed.

It had all started so well.  On a warm sunny day, on a pitch situated in a deer park and overlooked by Englefield House, Withers opened with a wicket maiden and life was perfect.  We were, for a short time, unsettled by some impressive batting from a young man who we soon learned plays for Jersey - the Channel Island.  The kid was an international.  Jersey are currently ranked 36^th in the world by the ICC – that’s the level we’re talking about here.  Anyway, Zia got him out and the rest of the innings progressed smoothly until the last two wickets added 50 to boost the score.

Chasing 153 to win a 40-over game shouldn’t present many problems to a team that won 14 matches last year, and when Eagle and Ward posted 78 for the first wicket it all seemed to be going according to plan.  But wickets tumbled and runs dried up against persistently accurate bowling and as a result we came up agonisingly short.

Sadly for the owners of the Englefield Estate, Sir William Benyon (strongly connected to Reading University himself) passed away in the week leading up to the game hence the flags of the house and pavilion were at half-mast.  He was 84, which we cricketers would refer to as a good innings.

One hopes that no one will be put in the same unfortunate position as the Earl of Lonsdale who has this week been forced to put one of his favourite mountains up for sale to settle an inheritance tax bill.  Blencathra, in the Lake District, is on the market for a mere £1.75m and with the new owner also assuming the title of “Lord of the Manor of Threlkeld” this is sure to be a hot topic of speculation at food banks up and down the country.

RUASCC Highlight:  Andy Greenhalf continues to provide many of the on-pitch highlights this season.  For the second match in a row he got off the mark with a six, and his stylish one-handed catch at mid-wicket epitomised his display in the field.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  It’s Ward again, and it will keep being Ward until someone else does something useful.

RUASCC Team:  Ward (wkt), Eagle (capt), Jas Singh, Zia, Malde, Greenhalf, Karthee, Main, Tranter, Ashman, Withers

Blewbury (A) – 4.5.14

Blewbury 194-7 dec.

Baker 2-34, Waqar 2-37, Withers 2-45

RUASCC 161-7

Ward 67, Dip 22, Eagle 15

Match drawn

CRICKET!  We played cricket!

As Andy Eagle handed out the fixture cards before the game I was reminded that I now hold the exalted position of RUASCC Vice-Captain.  I realised almost immediately that I have very little idea of what this means at a practical level but I resolved to go out and play the game a tad more authoritatively just in case.  The first indication of how this went across with my subordinates teammates was when Johnny Baker suggested I was acting "a bit cocky”, so maybe there’s still some PR work to be done.

While we’re talking about Baker, I should mention that our attempts to at least pretend to be a professional cricket outfit rather failed at the first hurdle: he’d forgotten to bring any shoes.  Kenny Stewart came to the rescue at the expense of his own dignity, generously handing Johnny his trainers and hence having to take the field himself in a pair of tan leather brogues.  It was an odd look but still far superior to the purple trousers he’d been sporting minutes before.

Last year’s win, in particular Waqar’s winning boundary, was mentioned more than a few times before play began, to the extent that those who’d never played at Blewbury before soon felt as if they had.  Eagle won the toss and chose to field, and looking back at the 2013 match report I notice Blewbury played almost exactly the same innings again - indeed there are some striking statistical similarities which I would be delighted to talk you through sometime.  This time, however, RUASCC’s reply merely coasted along to finish with a comfortable draw rather than a very uncomfortable win.

As RUASCC fielding performances go this one wasn’t awful.  Withers only went for one boundary in his 11 overs, a result that probably owed more to the long grass in the outfield than anything else.  Newcomer Karthee bowled with pace and picked up a debut wicket and Waqar put in a typically solid stint.  Several shots went in the air but very few were catchable, in fact only two good chances went down: Withers off his own bowling and much later Eagle at deep mid-wicket.  The low point was probably the one that fell halfway between Stewart and Ward with neither player fully committed.

Ward duly redeemed himself with the bat, although I was distracted for some of the early part of his innings by three screaming infants around the scorer’s table (actual babies I mean, not referring to my teammates on this occasion).  This led to the first instance I can remember of my view being partially obstructed by a breastfeeding mother; I’ve never had to pretend so much that I was watching a game that I was genuinely watching.

Had Ward been slightly better supported we might have come close to winning the game.  Eagle was perhaps unlucky to be given out off a bump ball and Baker ran himself out going for a second when, by his own admission, he didn’t know where the ball was.  Can’t blame Kenny’s shoes for that one.

Pointless Statistic:  RUASCC’s first three wicket stands were 44, 44 and 4.  All but one of the completed partnerships were divisible by 4 (28, 20, 16 and the odd one out, 5).  Yes I am married, why do you ask?

RUASCC Man of the Match:  The scorecard would have looked decidedly empty without Ward’s half-century.

RUASCC Team:  Ward, Eagle (capt), Baker, Weeks, Dip (wkt), Greenhalf, Nadeem, Karthee, Stewart, Waqar, Withers

Mortimer West End (A) – 27.4.14

Match called off due to rain

Another wet April weekend means RUASCC are O for 2 so far this season, though at least we can consider ourselves significantly more fortunate than Wirral CC whose Cheshire League game survived the weather on Saturday.

Chasing a modest 109 to win, Wirral’s first 10 batsmen were all dismissed without scoring (six were clean bowled).  Their only run off the bat was scored by their number 11 and even he was outscored by the two leg byes.  Two balls into the tenth over the innings was complete: three all out, and defeat by 105 runs.

I’m not sure what it was about this hapless and embarrassing batting collapse that got me thinking about RUASCC.  I remember a few Sunday afternoons when, facing nothing better than village bowling, the stumps suddenly feel six feet wide, the bat’s like a toothpick, the ball seems to nip both ways at 95mph and there are 42 fielders close in for the catch.  Where the opposition had been regularly finding the boundary, we can’t get the ball off the square.

It was mostly a very different story last season, of course - last season we were an unstoppable run-chasing machine.  In one of our most memorable wins from 2013, at Frieth, we started out having a bit of a Wirral - six wickets down in 12 overs – but spectacularly turned it round when a change of bowling allowed Main and Zia to go on the attack.  We finished with over 200 and won by 48 runs.

The Wirral story serves to remind me once again how glad I am to be a bowler.  An unlucky (or inept) batsman gets one chance and that’s it: your afternoon is over.  A bowler can serve up shit on toast for half an hour and still end up with half-decent figures.  Speaking as a number 11, the fragility of batting troubles me – there’s too much that can go wrong with such disastrous effect.  That’s where my crippling defensiveness comes from: fear of failure.  This is why I have the utmost respect for batsmen who embrace the loneliness, go for their shots and take control of the game.

I have no doubt that, come Saturday, one of those Wirral batsmen will stand tall, spank their first ball to the boundary and in that single stroke surpass the team’s total from last weekend.  Because the thing you have to remember about cricket is that you will fail, and sometimes you’ll fail huge, but there’ll always be another game.

That’s if it stops pissing it down.

Farley Hill (A) – 20.4.14

Match called off due to rain

Proper rain too, none of your drizzly shit.  It was dark by 11am.

One can only speculate as to how this match would have turned out had it not been for the entirely predictable downpour that followed two weeks of glorious sunshine and ruined the first day of the cricket season, but since Withers failed to attend any of the pre-season net sessions at least the Farley Hill batsmen were spared the looping head-high full tosses that would surely have been flung from his cold rusty shoulder.  Who knows what we may have missed?  An Eagle ton?  A Ken Stewart hatrick?  Dip getting caught at mid-on?  For now we must take solace in the fact that we have another Farley Hill fixture scheduled for June and move on to Mortimer West End on Sunday.

I must confess I wasn’t entirely ready for the season to start anyway; I tried to stop thinking about cricket after a very strange winter.  Now, in the aftermath, England are attempting to solve the problems that caused their crushing Ashes defeat by a) sacking their top run-scorer, and b) re-hiring the coach with the lowest win percentage of any England coach this century.  This will definitely work.

We might never know the full details of why Pietersen has been discarded, but by all accounts it seems to be based on the fact that he’s an arsehole.  This was overlooked, of course, when he scored loads of runs - maybe the run scoring made him less of an arsehole to be around, we just don’t know.  Evidently what happened in Australia was that he dipped below some critical threshold of run:arsehole ratio and the selectors were forced to act.

It’s all rather farcical and confusing but it also leaves me fearful for the future of RUASCC.  If we were suddenly forced to drop all the arseholes who don’t score enough runs we’d be woefully short of players – basically just Zia running around in a field.

Assuming we don’t start applying this rigorous selection policy I’ll be back with another report after the weekend.

Tilehurst & Theale (at Leighton Park School) – 8.9.13

Tilehurst & Theale 110 all out

Saad 3-17, Main 3-32

RUASCC 111-0

J. Singh 75 not out, Eagle 29 not out

RUASCC won by 10 wickets

Our first “home” game of the season resulted in a comfortable run chase, the first ten-wicket win I can remember in my decade playing for the club.  Tilehurst brought a young team and RUASCC ultimately proved too strong with both bat and ball.

The players were greeted at Leighton Park by rain, and though the game began in sunshine another heavy shower forced a 20-minute break and a hasty arrangement of the covers by some soggy old cricketers.  Although a cold wind persisted, conditions improved and play continued uninterrupted until the winning boundary was scored soon after 6pm.

Eagle won the toss and chose to field, and for the fourth game in a row Withers made the initial breakthrough when a leading edge flew to Obaid at mid-on.  Then Saad took over, full of pre-match Red Bull and hurtling in for ten violent overs against batsmen ill-equipped to either attack or defend against the pace, bounce and wild screams of “CATCH!”  So demanding is Saad of his fielders that he insists they catch the ball whether or not it hits the bat, whether it’s in the air or on the floor and completely irrespective of whether there’s a single person within 25 yards of it.

Nevertheless Saad took the next three wickets to fall, all thanks to catches by close fielders, and Main’s first wicket kicked off a collapse from 80-4 to 110 all out in the 35^th over.

As it turned out Dr Eagle didn’t need to spend much time thinking about his batting order.  Jas Singh went on a bit of a rampage, reaching fifty with his 11^th four, and even Eagle got creative with a six over backward square leg as the opening pair knocked off the runs in just 17.3 overs - much to the annoyance of Andy Greenhalf, all padded up with nowhere to go.

RUASCC Highlight:  “CATCH!”

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Jas Singh.

RUASCC Team:  J. Singh, Eagle (capt), Zia, Greenhalf, Obaid, Partridge (wkt), Tranter, Saad, Main, Ashman, Withers

Hambleden (A) – 1.9.13

Hambleden 128-7 (40 overs)

Withers 3-14, Ashman 2-24

RUASCC 131-2 (22.5 overs)

Zia 63 not out, Eagle 27

RUASCC won by 8 wickets

I love playing at Hambleden - there’s something about it that seems to sum up for me what it is to play for RUASCC.  It’s not a great wicket, there’s a forty-foot slope from one side of the ground to the other and you know you’re going to get skittled out by someone bowling off one pace, but it’s a wonderfully picturesque setting and when you’re out there in the middle you feel you could be playing cricket in the 1950s.

The facilities have been brought up to date this year - a brand new pavilion replaces the old shed that had to be torn down after Ken Stewart’s last toilet visit.  But what may quite soon become apparent is that I’m writing this match report nearly three months after the game without sight of the scorebook and I have very little idea what actually happened.  I took down the salient details: I know we won, for example, but apart from a couple of notes I made at the time I’d really just be guessing at the rest of it.  But with the AGM next Friday I wanted to get the season up to date, so let’s give it a go.

I did at least write down this bit:

The game began with another potent spell from Withers, continuing his improved form of recent weeks, and he removed both openers in his first six overs, which included four maidens.  First an outswinging delivery was edged to Dip behind the stumps before Zia took a great one-handed catch at short extra cover.  Main also picked up a wicket and Hambleden limped along to 24-3 from the first 15 overs.

What, then, can we deduce?  Well, Hambleden finished on 128-7 so that means they scored 104-4 from their final 25 overs.  There, you see, I’ve got this licked now.  To this I can add that Nick Arnold came in at number three and stayed almost till the end; he eventually fell in Withers’ last over, the ugliest caught-and-bowled you’ll ever see.  That Withers, he is good isn’t he.

I’ll tell you what though, I can’t remember anything else.  It says up there that The Good Dr Ashman took a couple of wickets so that’s bound to be true.  Ask him sometime, I bet he could tell you all about it.

Eagle dropped a catch at mid-on, claiming he was distracted by the sun.  That’s right, it was sunny!  Tranter suggested that Eagle would have caught the ball had he been wearing a cap, though this perhaps places rather too much credit to the skill-enhancing powers of casual headgear.  It was off Kenny’s bowling I think, so no damage done.

That’s that then.  Tea!  It was laid out on a table, definitely on a table.  A table near a wall.  I’m going to stick my neck out and say there were some plates.  Chicken!  There was chicken I think.  I might be thinking of somewhere else.

And then we batted!

We lost two wickets: Carpenter and Eagle.  Eagle made more runs than Carpo on this occasion.  Zia seems to have done rather well, scoring 63 not out.

Look, it’s a puppy drinking Ribena!

What we can be certain of is that, asked to chase 129 in 40 overs, we seem to have polished it off in less than 23.  Well done everyone, well done.

Oh, and according to the team list Channy was playing.  I bet he fielded well, he always fields very well.

RUASCC Highlight:  Oh, all of it.  It was such a memorable day, you know.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  An unbeaten fifty at Hambleden, got to be Zia.

RUASCC Team:  Carpenter, Eagle (capt), Zia, Dip (wkt), Malde, Main, Tranter, Withers, Ashman, Stewart