Village cricket is a wonderful thing. However, one aspect that isn’t so wonderful is having to call everybody you’ve ever spoken to who once said they played cricket 14 years ago on a stag do to see if they’ll make the not insignificant journey to Buckinghamshire to play a match in the middle of a bank holiday weekend.
So, the CICC turned up with a solid 8 players under a drizzle filled and low hanging sky at, the nevertheless beautiful, Marlow Park. Two new players had been cajoled (and/or bribed) to play and gracefully hid their disappointment when we told them there might well be the odd gap in the outfield.
Councillor James Frecknall was nominated as captain (literally no one else wanted to do it and he’s too polite to refuse) and he rolled back the years by strolling out to the middle with the opposition captain to lose another toss. He did a half hearted gesture that implied we were being put into bat and so with that Messers Gregory and Shinner strolled to the crease, and after the customary Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who faces first, Gregory cautiously took his guard.
Ed Gregory is a classical batsmen. Like you could take a photo of him with a long lens, super impose a crowd in the place of an empty stretch of field, and he would look for all the world like a “proper cricketer”. However, after his unfortunate start to this season of 4 balls faced, 0 runs scored and 3 dismissals, he was a little anxious to get some runs under his belt. First ball: leaves. Phew – not another golden duck. Second ball: slightly uncomfortable defensive shot to a good ball – you got bat on ball for the first time this season, come on, Ed! Third ball: back-foot drive a la Joe Root that races away to the boundary for 4. JOY OF JOYS.
Maybe it’s the nails that are holding his bat together (no, really) but Gregory looked much more confident as the rain started to fall and was only undone by one that barely got off the ground and skidded through to clip his pad straight in front of middle stump. This left Shinner, coming off the back of his 138 against Lord’s Travellers, with new kid Will Turner, who Matt Goodman assured us was “pretty handy”. It turns out that Goodman was right, and the pair looked fairly comfortable against the attack. This was until your author here thought (for some ridiculous reason) that premeditating a sweep shot to a nippy off-spinner was a good idea and was predictably brought back to Earth and bowled for 24.
Councillor James Frecknall then assumed the role of Saviour (again) and started to build a partnership with Turner. The partnership mainly consisted of Turner nudging the ball around very sensibly for ones and two, and Frecknall playing sweep shots to low full tosses that ran into exactly the same bush on the boundary. Turner moved onto 48 and yours truly thought it’d be nice to video the moment he got to 50 in his first match for the club, however it would appear that I cursed him as all that I got was his stumps being knocked back. Sorry, Will.
Now, umpiring at this level is a poisoned chalice – either you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and basically just guess decisions (Zed Jameson); you’re biased to your friends; or you’re afraid of appearing biased to your friends and then just trigger everyone. Ed Gregory was the culprit this time, giddy after his 6 runs, and was crouched down watching whether Frecknall had made his ground after a quick single before an excellent direct hit dislodged the damp bails. He sheepishly gave him out and then later admitted that it was “too close to call really”. This doesn’t make a batsmen feel better when there’s no opportunity to review the DRS footage. Then the batsmen then has even more reason to feel aggrieved when several opposition players say to him afterwards that he was a little hard done by. So, that was that… Frecknall triggered for a well played 44.
Toozer, Stern, Goodman and Van Sittert collated a binary 1,1,1,0 and the CICC’s 8 men were dismissed for a well below par total of 143.
Tea consisted of a swift pint, a sausage roll and a delicious red velvet cupcake, or in my case it involved dripping hoi sin sauce all down my whites and looking like I’d taken a bullet to the chest.
Marlow Park very kindly lent us a couple of players to help plug the gaping holes in our field caused by people selfishly doing charity walks to Brighton, holidaying in Jerusalem, coping with back pain or “spending time with their new girlfriend”.
Sadly this generosity came to mean very little initially as the opening pair got off to a flyer and reduced the required rate to around 1.2 runs per over. Thankfully though after an opening stand of 51 the wickets started to fall. First up a run out, second a beautiful delivery by PVS to bowl their other opener, and then up steps our protagonist, Edward Gregory.
Now, Ed has so far been steadfast in his refusal to give into his (more than evident) middle age and stop bowling “seam”, however Councillor Frecknall told him that he could only bowl if he bowled his left arm spin, and for whatever reason, Gregory agreed. The result of this has your writer giddy with excitement as he re-lives Ed’s 4 wickets in 9 balls. Caught, bowled, stumped, bowled. Two hat-trick opportunities went by in two overs… much to Shinner’s delight.
The game was on.
An excellent innings by Marlow’s no.3 was cut short by his own team mate catching him at square leg off the bowling of Jon Stern and then it was down to the last partnership to win the game for the hosts. 10 runs needed, one wicket in hand. Councillor Frecknall on to bowl. A boundary and a scampered single left Marlow with 5 to win before our beloved stand-in skipper comes in to bowl and takes the top of off stump.
Now admittedly celebrations at this point were somewhat muted as the scoreboard only showed them to be 8 wickets down, however once informed of the situation The CICC sank to their knees (metaphorically of course) and thanked the cricketing Gods, and Gregory with his middle aged, but brilliant, spin bowling, for breaking the run of losses with a beautiful green dot on the website’s results column.
Travelling to Marlow can always seem a bit of a mission when you wake up slightly hungover on a Sunday, but we are met every year, without fail, by a lovely bunch of guys who play in exactly the right spirit. Win or lose it’s a joy to be there and we’re very grateful to be invited back season after season.
By Josh Shinner.
Ed Gregory, shortly before triggering Councillor James Frecknall.
Jon Stern with a sports drink.
