Last and first

On a glorious late September Saturday, not a cloud to be seen, cricket earned a draw against the weather. It was almost possible to forget the rain-offs and sodden abandonments earlier in what was misleadingly called the summer. Although definitively the last match of the season, it also signified a start: For many it was their first opportunity to see and play in the field henceforth to be known as the home ground, a tree-curtained secluded spot a dozen miles south of the city.

Being a mind game, especially for batsmen, the informality of an inter-club friendly gave some the opportunity to relax and perform better in the void left by the absence of pressure, not that there weren't those relishing the opportunity of proving points and settling scores, nor those for whom the lack of league frisson or consumption of alcohol would negatively impact on their ability.

The rhubarb crumble cakes and a spot just short of a length, from which an unplayable ball spat, merit mentioning, as does umpiring with six feathers, in the absence of pebbles, or broad beans which were in another pocket and planted at the conclusion of the match, just before the sloe gin was passed around.

Double fun

Scorecard 1

Scorecard 2

Mission possible, but unlikely

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go into bat with one ball remaining and score two runs to win, one to tie. This batsman will self destruct in five seconds.

Scorecard

Game for a laugh

Scorecard? It wasn't that sort of game.

Gloucestershire C.C. v South Africa

Scorecard

Lashings of cricket

Lashings World XI

Loose

Scorecard

Tight

Scorecard

Match report

Sunday roast

Scorecard

Match report

Repetitive rain injury

Another photo of a field where a cricket match didn't take place: A twenty minute downpour on arrival at the ground put an end to any possibility of playing. Happily, after sitting around drinking ale, both out in the sticks and back at inner city HQ, a knockabout game with a tennis ball was convened, including a four year old and a keen and talented passing teenager, whose phone number was obtained.

Three quarters of a loss (The Great Escape)

The advancing blue splodge of the Met Office's rainfall radar didn't bode well. Nonetheless, for the first time in too many weeks we were finally en route to play cricket among the Mendip Hills. More irritating than the meteorological forecast was the voice, if indeed it can be called such, of Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics, bawling along to some horrendous dirge on the radio. Still, given the option of walking out of the city to a more interesting soundtrack or getting a lift in a car tuned to a dodgy radio station, the latter was marginally more appealing. Until that is, UB40 came on, at which time an evaluation was made of the likely chance of surviving baling out of a car doing 50 mph: Tucking and rolling probably wasn't going to help the avoidance of serious injury and despite the lush midsummer verges, landing was going to be hard. On balance, just this once, it seemed better to set aside musical snobbery, weeks in hospital or possible death and stay seated.

"Time flies so don't delay" reads the inscription on the village clock tower, not that a cricketer in the afternoon of his career with one eye on the forecast needs reminding. The cats and dogs were due to start arriving vertically just after tea and as usual, the best plan would be to bowl first and then attack the target second with a swift run rate. This occurred to the opposition too, who on winning the toss did exactly that.

The bowling didn't look too hostile nor the pitch too treacherous, yet our openers made a slow start and spluttered in a rather shameful run out. In his defence, the surviving culprit was wearing boots that were less than an hour out of the shop, whose pristine spikes may have bored down through the Mendip clay and anchored him to the bedrock beneath.

The skipper went in next, stale from a night in Wales without sleep and proceeded to prove, with solidity and style, that shut-eye can be a bit overrated. Alas his partners came and went, unable to get to grips with the strip of porridge in front of them and paying too much or not enough respect to the ball. The big hitters hit, once or twice, then got stung, over ambitiously attempting repeats. After a customary questionable LBW decision I found myself walking out to the middle and exchanging a disappointed shrug with the outgoing batsman before taking guard and surveying the divoted mess before me.

The first few balls seemed to be aimed at imaginary stumps on another wicket even though only one was called as a wide. Someone was saying something about the wind and the wicket keeper was congratulating me on choosing the right ball to leave. Shortly afterwards the bowler from the other end fell over in his follow through and gouged a crater just outside the line of leg stump. It was this crater, the wind and my ineptitude that contrived to have me bowled behind my legs a few over later, the whispered removal of the leg bail as deathly final as a clattered or cartwheeled stump.

The remainder of the tail helped the skipper to tip the score past a hundred, including a spirited superlative six over long on and several exquisite boundaries that nearly atoned for a couple of messy run outs, one of which involved the skipper depriving himself of a half century in the final over.

Tea was taken as the skies darkened. Some searched for signals on mobiles, others for sandwiches without flesh. Set just under three an over to win, the home side wore the broadest smiles, the advancing precipitation mixing a note of urgency with their confidence to produce a cacophony of runs in the opening overs as our opening bowlers were dispatched, laterally and aerially to the boundary. Like a snail clinging to the underside of a leaf and witnessing a family member crushed by a gardener's boot, I waited my turn.

I didn't have to wait long, as the left and right-handed opening batsmen progressed at over six an over and the skipper sought to try something, anything, else. The ball, a cheap one, was mud spattered and neither red, nor pink nor carmine, perhaps vermillion. Perception becomes heightened as you anticipate calamity. Focus too.

The left-hander swiped and missed at a few, connected with others, blocked the yorker, found the boundary with one or two and half of my hand with another: If you bowl stump to stump you can expect one to come back your way every now and then, yet the velocity, fading light and tardy neurones prevented the fingers from closing and the ball from sticking. To much relief, the batsman holed out to mid-wicket in my next over, just short of a fifty.

By now it had started to rain, the ball needed frequent wiping with a cloth and the bowling crease was potentially slippery. Despite having pegged them back a bit from my end, my friend's usually deadly leg spin was getting hit and the opposition seemed capable of overhauling our total quite easily, but they hadn't yet faced the necessary twenty overs to win a rain abandoned match on a superior run rate. When the rain intensified and persisted, there was no option but to leave the field and when a storm drain overflowed ten minutes later and flooded the outfield, the match was abandoned.

(Damp) Scorecard

Eels and whales

Tomorrow's match was called off late this afternoon. It's quite possible that eels have returned to the outfield, if not several blue whales.

Prey

Now unbeaten after the first four Saturday afternoon league matches and getting familiar with the team's new home: The slope, tree and relatively small boundary all favour batsmen although the wicket can produce both low bounce and high ping. Losing the toss again we were put into bat, but the top order played solidly and kept me busy with the scorebook. A six landed on the roof above our heads.

A flurry of wickets caused the abandonment of the scorebook in search of pads with which to face a hat-trick ball. Examined under a microscope, it was blocked. Shortly afterwards a stupid probing drive found an edge but luckily it plopped into space and enabled a single. Then a cut four to the short boundary but after a change in bowling, with my foot so far down the wicket it was nearly in the next field, my extended front leg met a full ball from a floated spinner and the umpire - a team mate - extended his finger in judgement. Later, he would explain the decision, without invitation, leaving me in doubt, with a new theory that his previous almost half century had made him over confident.

Failing to bat out all the overs is a bit naughty, but another LBW decision (which looked out from the boundary but was again debated by the batsman) led to an early demise of our innings, short of the double century we'd hoped for. As we left the field, a missing member of the opposition team arrived.

The tea had been driven to the match on the seat behind me as the driver struggled to extricate us from the city through traffic jams and navigational errors. It still tasted fine, although with running and jumping to do, it was best not to scoff too much.

Our opening bowlers tested the batsmen, despite a rather grubby ball and the best of the afternoon's humidity gone. The almost-half-centurion received a nasty crack on the knee. The score progressed to the doorstep of concern before our bowlers hit the stumps for the first of six times. In between the score appeared to race, stagnate, escape, proceed and fall. The number three batsmen had about him the air of a tail-ender, swinging and a missing many times, connecting twice to reach the boundary before the first change bowler up the hill cleaned him up.

Running in down the hill, the sweet spot found last week, where the ball popped to an awkward height, was elusive. By now it was evident that our opposition were a team of hitters and buoyed up by having a five-fer under his belt, the No.4 batsman was intent on making early summer hay.

There was some bad fielding; dropped catches that bred disappointment and anxiety and some brilliant fielding; the hyper-extended arm of the man of the match plucking a blinder at backward point astonished all. Pretending to hover like a buzzard over a field mouse got me a run out, but the yorkers down the hill sometimes came out as low full tosses and got punished. One got through, played on or off the pads: Bails off. Nice. Soon after I got rested, to come back on at 'the death': It's up there with being night watchman; an awkward job, but someone's got to do it and if they pick you, they probably think you've got half a chance.

The game was nicely balanced, for a spectator, but with the light fading and a few light spots of rain arriving, nobody on either side felt particularly settled. The skipper bowled down the hill, went for a few runs, then hit the stumps. Same happened at the other end, the run rate just getting away from the batting side, despite the soapy ball far too often failing to find a safe pair of hands in the field.

It's probably best not to shout, as the ball arcs in the murky sky, "Surely this time." It didn't work and on dropping it, the fielder, one of the more enthusiastic and the most economical bowler, was perhaps best left to battle his demons alone.

"If we lose this, it'll be because we haven't put everyone back on the boundary", someone said to me between overs. "We can give them a run a ball."

"Actually, you'll have to come back on up the hill", the skipper apologised, "I've miscalculated."

The demons had by now apparently convinced the aforementioned fielder to believe that he perhaps wasn't a boundary fielder after all and with this new found half knowledge, he spilled another one. I'm equally culpable for not discussing swapping the fielder in one of the most crucial fielding positions for a right arm over. The drizzle, wet ball and uphill task had distracted me.

Still, nil panic. "It ain't getting away from us. Bowl straight. Oh crikey" clamour the voices inside, as two fielders let a ball reach a hedge before and between them. Somehow, one over goes for three fours, which is almost as many as eight went for last week, but then the skipper strikes again from the top end, bowling the danger man.

I hadn't remembered the bloke who turned up at the close of our innings and didn't realise that he wouldn't be batting, so when I bowled a straight one that was lofted high towards long on at the bottom of the field and expertly and mercifully pouched, the words, "It's all over" didn't fully register.

Scoreboard



Post match refreshment arrangements. Unfortunately, the opposition didn't drink biiter.

Pheasants

At last, a home game. Bright, blue and very green. No eels on the outfield but pheasants in the forest.

Scorecard

Green up the whites

Right arm over, from the end with the large skeletal tree, either late to put on spring growth or dead. It was thought to be an elm. The grass was long and luscious apart from a miraculously (given the recent weather) manicured square, the transition twixt the one and the other during the run-up rather cumbersome, especially for someone who can't seem to iron out a little shuffle a few paces before the delivery stride.

Before all that, a near spanking new changing room block (for it was neither pavilion nor clubhouse) with magical lights in the toilets and a carpeted interior that made it a boots-off-at-the-door affair, unlike some cowsheds that are commandeered.

Green up the whites on the first ball of the match, diving to prevent overthrows from an enthusiastic run-out attempt. The opening bowlers limit, tie-up and break through before a new batsman cuts loose towards the elm. The lambs bleated in a teletubby-esque landscape but was that sweet smell grass or manure?

Right arm over the wicket; you've got to pitch the ball up on this square, go for yorkers, different grips, slower balls, pray for swing. Sometimes, runs should count against the fielder not the bowler, especially if you let one through your legs for four on the cover boundary, even if you do later score a 50 and win the match with a six.

"Do you want him at slip?", asks the skip.
"Oh yes, keep him in for now" and to justify, bowl a full ball a little more to the off-side which with a bit of swing, movement off the pitch or whatever pegs back the troublemaker's off stump: First scalp of the season.

Apart from a pair of howlers the fielding was sharp, nevermind the near total lack of practice; a couple of run-outs and reasonably straightforward catches held.

A child, barely a teenager, came into bat wearing a white helmet not seen since the days of Graham Gooch. It made a nice change. Usually they're those uniform blue ones and everybody looks the same. He played a good, straight game but the long grass didn't reward his driving.

Bowling in the middle (of a plateau 500 feet above sea level) focuses the senses on the stumps somewhat more than in the nets, without all those stringy restrictions, walls and clutter, or so it seemed, with the ball seldom straying from the stumps. There was no extravagant swing to control but a couple of balls bit the turf, jagging in unexpected directions. The laddie had the sense to watch and block the yorkers, playing everything perpendicular, the other one risked more and when he swivelled and missed and was hit as straight as a very straight thing, the denial of the earnest LBW appeal was a disappointment hard to bear.

Came off to come back on again at the death but other bowlers had plans and guile, plugging away and whittling the wickets until earlier score predictions were revised down. A brilliant stop at mid-off ended in another run-out and attempts to go aerial mis-fired and were caught. Our eldest finished with 3-10 with the opposition on 99.

Domestic gods in our midst served tea with wholemeal baguettes, cheese, houmous, scones, cream and jam, plus all the usual. Someone had to do something about a broken down car.

Post teatime is often a good time for a bowler to curl up with a good book, and so it happened that the scorebook was claimed. Others wandered off, allegedly to avoid being asked to umpire, whilst batters 1, 2 and 3 got their freak on.

Bloody long grass; now it's slowing our progress. Drives and cuts on one side of the wicket go nowhere for nothing. By the 14th over the scores are identical with both openers gone. Chalk and cheese batting now; circumspect straight blocks at one end, punchy lofts from the other, some into danger zones but unattended to.

"Can you ask him to come and look after his daughter?"
"Erm, not really, he's batting"

She's really not badly hurt, it's just a graze and she'll pick up with a bit of attention. We can talk about snakes.

The partnership flourished and blossomed, in turn defending, pushing and fruitfully dropping plums by and over the boundary line.

"Let's finish this now."

Back on

Unexpectedly, the skipper's been talking to the opposition, whose pitch is apparently fit to play on, and agreed to reschedule this week's game at their ground. Trouble is, some people have rearranged their weekends, wandered off, spent their match fee and tea money on, well, all sorts.

Will the team Mk2, be any match for the opposition and with the going extremely soft, will any participants have to be put down afterwards?

Concrete proposal

Saturday's match has been called off: This week we can't prepare our pitch because it's waterlogged. Indoor nets were arranged, but those who work outside a 9-5 couldn't make it and some are feeling very out of practice. It's becoming increasingly likely that when we do get to run around outside like late spring lambs, there will be injuries.

We ought to reclaim the streets for cricket and play with a tennis ball, or 'soft ball' (a roughened up, partially singed with fire, tennis ball) like the majority of people around the world do: One of our team grew up playing 'soft ball' cricket wherever there was space, barely daring to dream of the day he could play 'hard ball' cricket, because of the cost and privilege entailed. But at least he played cricket, incessantly, for fun and for cash, along the way developing an idiosyncratic and highly effective style, in much the same way as another local lad, Lasith Malinga, did.

Some people get sniffy when you suggest playing with a tennis ball, as if it's not proper or worthwhile, or fun and free. In the absence of much green space in our cities, let alone dry green space at present, all that concrete and all those walls should be utilised to the maximum.

It's cricket, but not as we know it

"You don't watch that shit do you?" he replied, when I asked him if he'd been watching the IPL."It might as well be baseball, smacking every ball out of the park."

AB de V

The IPL can be a bowler's nightmare:AB de Villiers scored 47 not out from 17 balls today, as if Tillakaratne Dilshan's earlier 71 hadn't been dazzling enough. Poor old Dale Steyn got tonked for 30 from 3 overs, despite one of them being a maiden.

Unprepared

The opposition couldn't prepare a pitch for today's fixture following more rain this week and the match was called off 24 hrs before the first ball was due to be bowled. The afternoon turned out mostly dry in the end with a cold north-easterly wind.

Indoor sessions were promptly arranged for those eager to let off steam and keep the muscle memory fresh.

All over the land,
there's water on the wicket,
puddles on the pitches.

Eels on the outfield

Difficult to know whether our skipper was kidding when he announced two days ahead of our first league match of the season that there are eels on the outfield. Eels or not it's off, the ground too waterlogged to prepare a pitch.

Outdoor nets were a bit soggy this week and bowlers didn't get to practise because the run-ups would have got ruined for the rest of the season. Batsmen made do with throw-downs and actually seemed to prefer the experience to that of facing a line of bowlers of random dexterity and speed.

There wasn't much sense in ground fielding practice because it was so wet, but there was a lot of varying catching practice, including use of the slip cradle, which caused your correspondent to come within a gnats whisker of breaking a finger on his left hand.

Happily, 48 hrs later, it's much better and would have been fine for the weekend. What's surprising is how much giving batsmen throw-downs makes your arm ache afterwards.

Hail on the hill

Kitbag packed, ready to leave for the first match of the season; a friendly, on a hill outside Bath. Despite a fair bit of rain yesterday the forecast's not bad and it's sunny and breezy. The text message arrives: Cancelled. The hill had been hit by a torrential hailstorm and after all the rain during the week it was in no fit state for a game of cricket.

A vague attempt at arranging an alternative cricket-based activity didn't get anywhere, nor did popping to the pub on the off chance that people might be milling around, so after visiting the No.6 batsman for a coffee, it was up to the allotment for a gloriously sunny afternoon.