Nearly There
By Ian Clark
WEEK 15
August 16th 2008
2nd TEAM v HAVANT 3rds (H)
1st TEAM v COMPTON & CHANDLERS FORD (A)
Three weeks to go and we need everyone fit and available. The firsts are top, the seconds have not won for 6 weeks and have a relegation 48-pointer and the fourths are barging their way through the pack as the line approaches.
And Tom is flat out on his back. He hasn't moved for five minutes. Shaun is already out for the season. He walked off during the Bramshaw game complaining about his back although most seemed to agree that the hamstring in his head had gone again. The ECB rightly have introduced limitations to the workloads of young fast bowlers.
Shaun and Tom are both 6'3" and both have a history of back problems. I know Tom isn't a faker and that he won't play this afternoon. Fred makes a phone call and Craig is called up. Craig will now have played for all four teams this season. It's why the club does well. The teams have their cores but no team is exclusive and players come and go. It helps connect the club; everyone has played with Craig this season from Pete to the colts in the fourths.
I am in the seconds again. They have lost 3 and had 3 called off in the past 6 weeks and need to win today against Havant thirds if a late relegation scrap is to be avoided. Havant are a formidable club. They are the Southern League champions and national indoor champions. They are the only club with a second team in the silver division of the Southern League. But their thirds are struggling and as they arrive they seem to be either in their fifties or late teens; an exaggeration of our own thirds.
This is my first league game at The Hollow. I look around the home dressing room with Macca, Clinchy, Jason, Dave Agha: proper players. I don't remember being nervous before a game like this; at least not since I was Tom's age and starting out. The last time I was in a dressing room it was bubbling and relieved; here it's strained and straining to start.
Havant third's bowling is mediocre but we fail to impose and Flower, Clinchy, Danny O and Oz are all out for 30 odd and at tea there's a sense of a missed opportunity. The Hollow is damp after more midweek rain but 169 is 30 runs too few.
We hear that the firsts have contained Chandlers Ford to 167 and Craig has taken 5 wickets.
We bowl well but Havant's experienced opener and a decent top order nudge themselves to 100. And then Danny and Dave Agha come on to bowl. Everyone loves Dave. He joined us this year with Colin, Jewelly and Otis; but unlike them he has struggled. Keith has regained his place as the first's spinner. Typically Dave's only wicket in the firsts was celebrated by running around the square while twirling his shirt above his head. He's been a sad figure at times given to mumble in a thick Essex accent via Karachi "I didn't come to make the numbers up" when for much of the season that's what he's done. But Dave has started to bowl well and this wicket will spin. And Dave spins the ball, a foot each time. He has the mentality of a young fast bowler who just wants to bowl the ball as fast as he can. Dave just wants the ball to grip and deviate. I asked Dave about his arm ball once and he had no idea what I was talking about; he just wants to spin it.
Dave's first ball is the overture. Dan takes the ball above his right hip. The team starts to encourage, the momentum is changing. Good sides fight through these periods when a good bowler is bowling well and bide their time, retain their wickets, accept the indignity of scuffed runs and maidens. But Havant are too young or too old and too used to losing and Dave is now released and is buzzing and irritating and spoiling their afternoon. Danny O is also bowling well; drifting his arm ball and jagging in the odd off-break. Havant resort to the heave and block of the desperate side as Dave and Danny reel them in.
Dave and me, two Essex boys together, sit and enjoy the win. I've got a beer, Dave has an orange juice. The seconds are safe. Dave's words bounce around the room with the relief of a man who thought he'd lost it. "I'm not here to make the numbers up, Mr Clark".
The thirds have lost and so, disappointingly, have the fourths. Hannah has scored 29, her best ever league score, but the fourths season is over. And so the whole club is at The Hollow on the sort of gloomy summer evening that could be November, waiting to hear the news from Chandler's Ford.
I started at 10am bleaching a storeroom that with a bench and a mirror had been upgraded to an umpire's room. The club had spent another £600 on fertilizer and feed to nourish the outfield until in this dank summer it's starting to have the unnatural vibrant green of Astroturf. Robbie has filled in forms for the Southern League and Clubmark and lobbied and schmoozed. The Inspectors arrive on Monday and the ground and the wicket and the admin are done. The accreditation has been expensive and onerous but we now have a good chance of acceptance.
And then the call comes in; the firsts have won in the last over - by one wicket. Two games to go and the firsts are nearly there. And to a cheer that now seems churlish and juvenile, Flamingo confirm on the phone that they have beaten Liss. The sweet taste of a narrow victory and the unexpected defeat of a rival.
As the firsts' victory is told and retold and embellished and exaggerated the themes and myths are developing. Robbie's vital boundary that brought the scores level, Craig's five for, Otis' scrambled single with Keith; the least likely player to scramble a single with, but the match report hints at thankfully what never was: Fred, alone, out, still in his pads, watching it all fall apart.
