Well, what a weekend. This is always one of the best fixtures of the season, and the only real chance we ever get to play any form of “test” match.
In the past we’ve had years that we needed to cake on layers of factor 30 and have still been the colour of cherry tomatoes by the end of the day. This however, was not one of those years. On the Saturday, “Storm Hannah” ripped through the UK and brought to the Herefordshire hilltop ground that Goodrich CC call home winds in excess of 40mph and temperatures that were chillier than the reception Theresa May gets in Brussels. There was no rain in sight (sadly) and so play commenced.
Now, preparation for the first innings of this match is a 3 hour bus journey with multiple beers and cocktails. I’m not 100% sure on how the England team (minus Alex Hales anyway) prepare for a match, but I’m fairly sure it’s not quite like this. So it was straight off the bus, into the changing room and onto the field. Myself and Joel bravely did Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide which poor fucker had to face the opening ball of the season. I called scissors. Joel called paper. The first ball was a full toss and from the non-striker’s end I saw Joel’s eyes light up. Swoosh. Click. “Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh”. Joel had missed the full toss and the ball had hit the bottom of off stump – leaving a tattoo on the ball from the bottom of the Kookaburra logo.
So, Joel joins Dr Jim Clack in achieving the rarest possible duck – THE PALLADIUM DUCK – first ball of the season. I was on all fours laughing. Good start.
Batting was bloody hard, you were being blown around in your crease and unless your bat weighed as much as my old 1978 SS Jumbo it was all over the place on your back lift. So predictably our innings progressed slowly to be quite honest… myself (10), Ebbers (30), Frecks (23), Langham (25) and Hedge (13) made it into double figures. Then the rest of the team spelled out “FUCK ALL” in binary. 127 I think was the total. Under par.
After our first innings Goodrich made it look depressingly easy. They reached the end of the days play at about 210/5. We were cold. Very cold. I think there might have been roughly 23 dropped catches.
The best thing about the first day’s play was finishing the first day’s play and walking the 200m down the hill to the pub. We had quite a bit to drink… and entered the quiz… which Joel, Jim, Alex and Jimmy won. Just. Once the quiz was over and we were being gently herded out by the staff we started the annual pilgrimage to Mr and Mrs Frecknall’s house. When you start this walk, at night, in the cold, and pitch black, you don’t think it’s going to be that bad, and then what feels like 2 hours later you crawl over the threshold of their door. I made everyone Old Fashioneds, because we’re getting old and don’t just drink Fosters these days, and then Joel, Jimmy and I had a sauna. Which was…. well as ridiculous as you might expect given the circumstances. There was also some excellent darts being played – though not in the sauna.
Morning comes and Mr and Mrs Frecknall sort our weary heads out with delicious black coffee, and the Perfect Bacon Sandwich. We watch a bit of the London Marathon and remark that nearly all of us would die by mile 6 if we were to attempt it.
Preparations for the second day’s play are marginally more professional. Joel and I actually went into the nets and had a bunch of hungover bowlers throwing quite the variety down to us. Turns out though, and who would have thought it, proper preparations lead to better performances. Joel and I reduced the deficit from about 90 to about 50 and were feeling fairly good. However a fair flurry of wickets followed and we found ourselves in a spot of bother, again. One notable wicket to mention at this point in time is Mr Edward Gregory. Out for a golden duck in the first innings he strode to the crease determined to avoid that most dreaded of pairs. I was at the non-striker’s end (again) for this delivery and time seemed to somewhat stand completely and utterly still. THUD. Ball on pad. I look to Matt Goodman (the fairest American in the world) who’s umpiring at this particular moment. He then genuinely takes about 35 seconds before very slowly, and painfully, raising his American Finger. It’s a king pair. Bugger.
The other dismissal that is probably worth mentioning is my own. I was on 33 and all was well in the world. I mean sure, I had a mouth that felt like sandpaper and running singles felt like a form of torture, but I was doing ok. Our occasional teammate, Zed the Miracle, had come onto bowl. First ball 4, fine. Just don’t do anything stupid now. Sadly though, at this juncture, they’d realised that I can only score runs in a 5 metre area of cow corner and so slip came out to leave what might as well have been an 8-1 field. My thinking was fairly solid: reverse sweep into the huge gap. In reality though I looked about as awkward as a baby giraffe born prematurely to extraordinarily tall giraffe parents trying to work out how to do triple jump. It hit somewhere around my box and depressingly got stuck in the top of my pad. I was (probably fairly) adjudged LBW and had to walk off. It was a long walk.
Jon Stern deserves a particular mention for his 32. He was looking pretty damn dreamy. Whaley (13), Langham (15) and Goodman (14) also played nicely.
Goodrich kindly said we could bat a few people again until the last 20 overs when they’d have a go. This left them around 130 to get, which at least made a good game of it. It was getting fairly tight towards the last few overs, and Joel cruelly made me bowl a couple of overs of my grenades, which turned out to be fairly entertaining. First there was a catch (thanks, Jon… I owe you) but then the highlight of the match happened…
I bowl (imagine a rank full toss was just embarrassing for everyone involved) and the batsmen pulls it to mid wicket. The non-striker has set off for a quick single, BUT NO! The striker hasn’t moved and sends him back. Jon throws in hard and I demolish the stumps. Everyone looks at the umpire (Skandy, another guy who sometimes plays for us) and he looks back at us. “Sorry guys, I didn’t really see it…. but I was filming it.” So, the decision went upstairs…. about 13 people crowded round the phone to watch the footage. “Can we just rock and roll that please?”. Fuck, it was tight. BUT YES!! THERE IT WAS! A frame where the stumps were clearly broken and the bat was about half an inch short of the crease. The result was an amazing mixture of cheering and laughter, and we all owe Skandy a beer or two.
Goodrich won the game easily in the end, and we shared a delicious BBQ in the sunshine, which had finally shown its face. It was such a fantastic weekend, as ever, and matches like this are the reason I will always love village cricket.
Josh Shinner.
Fines master and terrible reverse sweeper of a cricket ball.
