Nearly There
By Ian Clark
WEEK 6
JUNE 14th 2008
3rd TEAM v WATERLOOVILLE 2nds (A)
1st TEAM v ANDOVER 2nds (H)
East Meon was the home of Izaak Walton. Its cricket ground is beautiful. It's in the South Downs, has a wooden pavilion with changing rooms that are so cramped we change in shifts and it's got a poor wicket. Village cricket at last!
Our Sunday seconds played here 2 seasons ago and I umpired. It rained so heavily that football would have been abandoned. I said to East Meon's captain that we would ruin their wicket but he smiled back and explained that they played in all weathers. Village cricket on a Sunday thrives here in the Weald. A series of pretty villages, Droxford, Cheriton, Wield, Exton, play against each other through the summer, rebuffing the coarse advances of league cricket and giving (a little) credibility to Henry Blofeld's view of the world.
So why are we here?
We're here because Waterlooville Cricket Club's ground has just been dug up by the local authority to install a new drainage system, and with 3 weeks before the start of the season Waterlooville had nowhere to play.
A tall, immaculate black man sits in front of the pavilion. Stan Rudder is playing for Waterlooville seconds today. The stories about Stan are probably apocryphal but hard to resist. How he batted above Gary Sobers at school, how he has taken 500 Southern League wickets and how he took his girlfriend to Las Vegas for his 70th birthday. I like Stan because he is still so nuts about cricket when he should know better. And few are so encouraging to young players: he still compliments youngsters if they hit him for 4 with a good shot.
Stan greets Olly like an old friend and they are soon chatting about games from 30 years ago. Olly and I complain that are not many seasons left but Stan is 27 years older than us and he'll be opening their bowling.
Before the game both teams form a guard of honour. Today is the third anniversary of Stephen Joyce's death. Robbo makes a short powerful speech and recalls the suddenness and shock and the loss of his friend.
We bat and Reevsy and Flower show again that they are destined for better things. Reevsy gets 50 and supported by Tosders, Olly and Danny O we reach 166-4. This is likely to be a winning score here. It's interesting to listen to the youngsters complain about the low, slow wicket because it's so reminiscent of the tracks of my teenage years. Then 160 was a winning score in most games. One of the clearest benefits of league cricket is the improvement in pitches. Like many, Bob spends at least 3 nights a week rolling and preparing our square and consequently 250 is a par score in most games now.
Waterlooville Seconds are poor. They never look like reaching our total and we spend the early evening enjoying knowing that there is at least 1 weaker team than us in this division.
Amongst the muddle of coffins in the cramped dressing room I notice a poster in the pavilion. East Meon are playing Captain Scott's XI here later in the summer. They'll be keeping the spirit of cricket alive here on a poor wicket in the Downs while we drive back to Sarisbury and our 70 players and 5 colts' teams. That's the irritation of "Fatty Batter" and "Rain Men". They celebrate ineptitude, they are lauded by professional players and writers who have little regard for anything below test level (Sky has a slot on club cricket and watching Botham having to describe us all in positive terms was like watching Hyacinth Bucket having the relations over for Christmas; he was appalled by it all). And all with a smugness about the values they promote when in fact they are wandering sides (and so do not even maintain a ground), do not, therefore, promote cricket in a locality and are inaccessible to anyone but their chums. They do next to nothing to promote youth cricket. It's elitist and anachronistic and whatever world it thinks it represents left them (and Henry Blofeld) to it a very long time ago.
One.... Where are your feet?
Two... Do you go forward or back?
Three.... Do you block or hit?
Click your fingers; that's how long you've got to decide.
Shaun is 18, gangly with an Alice band and often it seems that cricket is the only constant in Shaun's life. Shaun's life is in his bowling; erratic, unfulfilled, fast. Shaun is the fastest bowler in Hampshire League; faster than any of the Aussies or South Africans. There is a convention that Shaun's pace is qualified with the phrase "at this level". Club cricketers are not fantasists, and are quick to acknowledge that the professional world is playing a game with different perimeters. But no-one knows how fast Shaun is or how fast he could be with a proper run-up, with discipline and some gym work.
There is a scene in "Bull Durham", a film made in 1988, set in a small town in South Carolina, when Susan Sarandon, the team groupie, measures the speed of rookie Tim Robbins' pitching on a speed gun. It was nearly a decade later before the mystery (to Fred Trueman at least) of why Jack Russell was not standing up to Craig White was revealed (he was bowling at 90 mph). So minor league baseball had a speed gun a decade before test matches; indicative I'm afraid of the levels of professionalism of sport in the 2 countries. We've caught up a bit since but none of us at Sarisbury has ever seen a speed gun so we do not know how fast Shaun is. All we can see is the wicket keeper standing a long way back and that he scares good players.
And today was Shaun's day. Not because he bowled fast because he does that often but because he kept his nerve.
Tom speaks quickly, still exhilarated. The firsts won a superb game against Andover 2nds. Peter struck a quick 75 but the firsts only got 189. Tom and Shaun then bowled well and Andover were 17-2. But Andover hauled themselves back into the game.
12 to win off the last over. Brittle Shaun to bowl and then it's the last ball and they need 4 to win. Shaun lumbers in and then flies into his gyroscope action. The ball is pitched up and the batsman drives straight down the ground. A strong straight hit is hard to defend; fielders have to stand either side of the sightscreen. Matt Journeaux, the fastest fielder in the team, starts to move from long on towards the sightscreen. The ball clips the stumps at the bowler's end and Sarisbury have won by 3 runs. Cricket can be a game of fine margins; the difference between edging and missing; inside edging for 4 and being bowled; hitting the stumps and missing. Teams win leagues because of sustained performance but sometimes you need a bit of luck.
