Autumn on its way
Well it’s that time of year again, despite the fact we’re currently experiencing about the best period of weather we’ve had since around May, the cricket season is drawing to an end, one more weekend of friendly cricket left till next April.
In a couple of weeks I’ll find myself bored and fed up at the weekends, before I get myself going again with something else to replace the cricket, first though, I want to talk about a recent couple of games.
The league finished in the last week of August, on a high note for the team, and a particular one for me.
In fact, I had a great end 2 games in the league. So much so in fact, that I think it’s worthy of a little boast!
A couple of Saturdays ago I was playing for our 2nd XI team against Staplegrove, a local side who had absolutely stuffed the 2nd’s earlier in the season (I played for the 1st’s that day, who also got fairly stuffed by Staplegrove 1st’s!). Our skipper was quite keen to show them that we weren’t nearly as bad as we had been that day about 9 weeks earlier, and boy did we prove it!
We were playing at home, managing to win the toss and chosing to bat on quite a sunny day. Our opening pair of batsmen did well and there was around 100 on the board when we lost our first wicket. Though we kept adding some steady runs, no one else really did a great deal wiht the bat, though most did chip in with a few. We ended up on 213 I think it was, a pretty respectable score, you’re always in a pretty strong position when you score over 200. Part one of the demonstration over, we only scored about 60 in the previous game against them, quite an improvement.
Then came my moment. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bowler, not had one of my best seasons this year, but I was asked to open the bowling that day, and everything just worked. First over, maiden, good start. 2nd over, heading for a maiden, when very surprisingly, the batsmen left the last ball, which moved in off the pitch a bit (as had the previous 2, and as it usually does with my bowling) and knocked his off stump over.
Wahey, an early wicket, feeling good, got a good batsmen out.
Next guy comes in, big lad, I’m thinking he’s going to hit it pretty hard if he gets hold of it. No worries though, first ball of my next over, it moved in off the pitch again, he didn’t play for it, got an inside edge, ball knocks his stumps over. I’m on a hat-trick here!
Unfortunately, I didn’t bowl a great hat-trick ball, so no danger then, but the new batsmen only lasted about another over as I bowled him as well in my 4th.
Off my first 4 overs, I had taken 3 wickets, and gone for no runs, thats ZERO runs. Something I have never done before, and I don’t think I’ve seen before! Quite obviously I’m feeling quite chuffed and my team mates are pretty pleased as well.
Anyway, to cut the story a bit shorter, I bowled 9 over in that spell, taking 6 wickets for less than 10 runs. I now fairly knackered, but elated at the same time, we now pretty much assured of a win as they only have 4 wickets left, needing some 180 runs or so still, and about 28 overs to go.
They did then manage to get back into the game a bit, hitting our youngster bowler for a few, though he did well to pick up a wicket along with another bowler. I came back on and bowled a bit more stifly, feeling the cramp in my legs! I didn’t manage anymore wickets, but didn’t go for many runs either to end up with 6 wickets for 18 runs off 12 overs. My best figures EVER. I’ve had a couple of 6 wickets hauls before, but never for as few runs, and personally, I don’t think I’d bowled as well to get them.
We got the last couple wickets and won by about 100 runs. not quite the margin they’ed beat us by earlier in the year, but enough to show them they were eprhaps a bit lucky on the day. A great match for the team, and a win we really needed to help avoid relegation. There was much drinking that night!
We then needed 13 points from our last league game to be assured of staying up. the team who could overtake us were unlikely to beat who they were playing, but we wanted to make sure we didn’t need to rely on them. As it turned out, it was a good job we did that, as they did win, and won quite well. We didn’t actually need quite the 13 points, but it could’ve been pretty close.
We played a team a bit further away, Butliegh, nice setting to play in, a big manor house off to one side of the pitch, and you can see Glastonbury Tor off in the distance the other way.
Quite a wet pitch, we lsot the toss and were asked to field. Not so good, we seem to be a team who do better at batting first, but we don’t need to win, just to get those points!
Anyway, we didn’t field all that well. My personal bowling was a bit of a mixed bag. My first 7 overs were pretty good, not great, but didn’t go for many runs. Though when I was broguth back on later, I slapped around a bit and ended up with some pretty bad figures. Combine them with the week before, and you’d get 2 sets of ok figures.
One of their players managed to hit 101 not out, with a broken bat! He looked very good and I think only gave one chance to get him out right near the end. He batted very well and helped them get to 209. As I said earlier, you always feel you’re in a strong position with 200+ on the board.
We then had an ok start to the batting. Nothing special, though the runs flowed fairly well to begin with, the problem being that the wickets seemed to fall fairly freely as well.
Then the runs slowed, in an attempt to stick aorund a bit longer and ensure we got the runs we needed to be safe in the league. We got there, but didn’t look like getting the total required to win at all.
I went in to bat at number 9, I’m not really a batsman, known for hitting some big shots at times, though I’ve never really had a big score, and too frequently get out pretty quickly.
At that time, we need around 85 runs from about 7 or 8 overs. Quite a big task to hit runs that quickly, and my first few balls were a bit dodgy.
Afteyr that though, it fell into place once again! We started hitting a few runs and I lashed out and hit some boundaries, hitting a nice 6 straight back over the bowlers head. The next over, I hit the first 2 balls for 6, the 2nd one feeling sooooooooooo goo, it flew way over the boundary. Those first couple overs were about the required run rate, and although I thought we still ahd no chance of making it, the other guy in with me kept saying it was possible and pointing out that the run rate needed was dropping.
A couple more overs go by, a couple more 6’s, a couple 4’s and I’m feeling in full flow. Although I’ve managed to pull those shots off before, I’ve never done it so consistantly in a match, it felt pretty damn good! My team mates were cheering from the boundary and starting to believe that eprhaps we could do this!
My 50 came up pretty quickly, hitting a huge six over what we cricketters call cow corner, it’s a common slogger area to aim for. I was slightly surprised, I’ve never scored a 50 before, never had to hold my bat up and acknowledge it! Another good feeling. And now I’m thinking that if I can stay in, we can win this.
Only a couple overs to go, and I calm down a little, not that I’m not trying to hit the big shots at times, just that we can now easily get singles and 2’s, though a 4 does help.
Last over, 6 to win from 6 balls. First ball, I hit a single. I had been hopign for something alittle better, but it’s ok. Next ball, no run. 3rd ball, we pick up a single and I’m back on strike, now needing 4 from 3 balls. Obviously the wise thing to do would be to knock it around a bit, play sensibly. That’s not really my fashion though, so the next ball comes down and I go for a big swing.
Not as clean a contact as probably any of my other big shots, and it was flying dangerously close to a fielder out in the deep. It was getting quite late though, getting darker, and there was a tree hanging over the pitch out that way, worrying it was going to be caught, the guy was running backwards and stumbled as the ball came down. Unfortunately for him, he knocked it over the boundary for 4, we won!!!!!
A quite incredible end to the game. I couldn’t believe it anymore than anyone else could. Not only had I just hit my highest score ever, I had done it in very few balls. 60 Not out off of around 30 balls faced. Only 20 of them were scoring shots. So on average, evertime I got a run, it was worth 3. That’s pretty good going!
It was quite a talking point that evening, and you may guess that there was a great deal of alcohol consumed again. There’s nothing like the that feeling off pulling a win out of nowhere in that way. In terms of the team and the league, it didn’t mean much, we were safe and anything extra was a bonus. To me though, personally, it was actually better than my bowling the week before. The bowling was something I’ve been trying to do for a long time, I know I can do it, it’s just pulling it off on the day, so that was good in the sense that I feel I bowled well and got something for it.
The batting is a bit different, it’s not something I’ve been good at these last few years, occasional little cameos, but nothing much good really. So to suddenly pull that out of the bag like that was awesome. Also with the batting, I actually won the game, I hit the winning runs. With the bowling, it’s a bit different, I took the sting out of the Staplegrove batting by clean bowling their top 5 batsmen and getting number 6 caught behind, but I didn’t achieve the final act of finsihing them off. And when we did win, it wasn’t so dramatic. Once I’d got those 6 wickets, we were fairly sure we should win.
So personally, the batting performance fills me with more joy I guess, though to end the league season with my best ever bowling figures, followed by my best ever batting performance, it kind of makes it irrelevant which ones better, they’re both days I will never forget.