Rammy Dads (136/7) bt Edgworth CC Tavs (93/6), 10/05/18
Have you seen The Crawl? It’s a 1997 video from the Ironman World Championship where two competitors, Sian Welch and Wendy Ingraham, are slugging it out to cross the finish line first.
Unfortunately, given an Ironman Triathlon consist of a 3.86 km swim, a 180.25 km bicycle ride and a 42.20 km run, raced in that order and without a break, by the time we’re introduced to Sian and Wendy the pair of them are physically ruined.
And it’s the funniest thing imaginable. Their legs wobble and bend and give way and metres from the line both continually fall over, struggle to get back up, plod on then fall over again.
And again. And again.
It’s a hoot.
It’s also a lot funnier than the Tavs’ lacklustre batting performance in yesterday’s curtain-raiser for the 2018 season. But there are similarities; neither the athletes nor the cricketers could muster a sprint, both were a shambling wreck towards the close and not one person comes out with much credit.
It all began so well; a glorious late-Spring evening, a proper batting surface instead of unmarked all-weather and a beaming Brian declaring: “Happy new season!”
The Tavs were full of optimism, a number with a full winter of nets under their belts and every player raring to go versus Rammy Dads. Mammut Mark declared in the build-up than an unprecedented number had paid full Tavs membership for the summer ahead and that some form of squad rotation might be needed. Heady days indeed.
Waddi captained, participating in presumably his 92nd non-consecutive campaign. If the youth of today need a pan-generational inspirational figure delivering awe-inspiring performances they ought to look beyond Beyonce at Coachella and instead turn their attention to the cricket pitch at Edgworth where a man with more injuries than Monty Python’s Black Knight (“Tis but a scratch!”) is still somehow, miraculously, turning his arm over.
Toss lost, field first. Not too bad actually, as anyone who knows our ground knows the sun dips into the batsmen’s eyes during the first innings of any fixture. A prompt 6 o’clock start had been advertised and play typically got under way at 6.17pm.
Time to draw lots for the Tavs’ batting order. The first game of the season always poses this dilemma — with no previous batting order to reverse how do we decide who bats where? Scraps of paper in a cap with numbers on, that’s how. Hardly the stuff of Donald Trump and Jimmy Greaves pulling balls out of a bag on ITV for the 1992 Rumbelows Cup quarter-finals.
A topsy-turvy batting XI was the unintentional result, something that would come back to bite us later. Still, now was the time to take to the field and get the ball in hand.
Opening this year’s glorious assault on the cricketing Gods were Bogg and Brian, two troopers with many overs under their belt. And didn’t it show — the Dads couldn’t get the ball off the square. Bogg wore a pair of sunglasses for his opening six balls, presumably to hide his craftiness. But if he’s not careful he’ll get those white rings round his eyes, reminiscent of a certain United States President…
A difficult chance spooned into the air which a tumbling Waddi in the covers just couldn’t grasp. But Brian soon had the stumps upended and the Dads were restricted to just 11 runs off the first four overs — the sort of sterling start the Tavs had dreamed of.
Then what’s this? The lesser-spotted Fireman Matt, whose proud record of precisely zero nets attendance over the winter didn’t seem to preclude him bowling at first change. Maybe it ought to have done mind, as his two went for 25 with the Dads looking to accelerate.
At the other end Alan had a shaky start with the Tavs leaking runs, before an absolute peach of a delivery pitched and left the bat before clipping the off stump. Quintessential line and length bowling and Alan’s best dismissal since the minidisc.
Out strode a Dads batsman in a helmet and no batting gloves, which caused no little hilarity. Gloves on he struggled to make any contact with the ball, and seemed a rabbit in the headlights… so Waddi brought himself on to bowl, obviously. And failed to take a wicket, though he did beat the bat with regularity.
Matt H at the other end was all Jekyll and Hyde with the ball, a tonne of dross before another long-hop was skied and the bowler collected diving forward. Thereafter his bowling was much more of a menace — the very definition of a confidence player.
Sadly though the runs kept mounting for the visitors, helped by some moments of weakness in the field when Tavs seemed to prefer to stand and watch balls race to the boundary rope. Will’s flight and guile, which was well attuned on this occasion, resulted in a wicket after five balls of mounting pressure, but Jimmy let the Dads off the hook and conceded a catastrophic 16 off his first six deliveries. Ouch.
The Dads had squirreled away their better bastmen down their order and fairly rocketed along with only Majorca Mick’s two wickets for seven at the death stemming the flow. With a first innings total of 136 for 7 the Tavs knew a swift start was needed in their reply.
It’s didn’t happen. Not only did it not happen but it never once looked likely to happen. It was a bit like the Millennium Bug — lots of talk about it, plenty of people preparing for it, lots of folk looking for the first signs of it, and precisely nothing to see here.
Fireman Matt hadn’t lifted a cricket bat since August. As a Tavs opener for the day he asked Jimmy for throwdowns — the first straight batted back to the bowler, the second smote to one side. Good omens, but not to be repeated out in the middle as he and Alan made stately, gradual, incremental progress when a bit of crash, bang and wallop would have been preferable. Never have those in the pavilion better been able to read the maker’s name on a bat than the 15th time Alan played his trademark forward defensive, followed by a clear cry of “Nooooo!”
Soon after a trademark pull to the boundary Matt’s bails were dislodged and Alan soon followed him into the hutch with, unusually, a trod on wicket. Jimmy strode in then strode straight back out for a duck, an entire winter’s nets a complete waste of time.
Mammut soon cuffed a ball high into the sky and the Dads’ keeper, who spent the entire evening behind the stumps blowing snot out of his nostrils, gathered. The Tavs were 19/4, our dreams of a quick start and strong run chase in tatters.
As the sun dipped below the treetops at the Road End finally the hosts mustered something of a response. Waddi, all stiff backlift and painful-looking running, ground out his runs but a dizzying number of dot balls visibly sapped his confidence. At the other end Matt, playing with… wait for it… a straight bat!… rallied and eventually started slapping it around. The only batsman to emerge from this debacle with any credit, his 25* had him head and shoulders above his peers.
With the game all but gone at this stage it was time for some proper batting courtesy of the man more familiar with Balearics than cricket balls. Majorca Mick, chewing gum firmly clenched between his jaws, played nicely from the off, manoeuvring the field and generally showing us all how it should have been done. Perhaps the Tavs’ batting order would have benefitted from him being a tad higher up…
Toby had kept spiritedly during the first innings on a pitch containing a few demons, and can count himself unlucky to be striding out late in the day with the sun setting to face the frankly intimidating pace of the Dads’ captain and best bowler. A decent couple before his off-stump was sent cartwheeling, with Bogg plodding out to see off the final few and the close of play.
To have not made three figures in a run chase is a disappointment, but perhaps we ought not be too hard on ourselves. With a touch more wickets and a different batting order things might have been different.
“Bouncebackability” entered the dictionary about 14 years ago, coined at the time by then-Crystal Palace boss by Iain Dowie. Dowie who, incidentally, has an M.Eng Degree and in 1996 scored one of the greatest own-goals of all time. It’s a top word, and something Taverners need to have seared onto our brains ahead of next Wednesday’s next fixture. Bouncing back. We have done, we can do, we will do.
In the iconic words of Yazz: “The only way is up, baby.”
