Rickmansworth & Isambard Cricket Club

Roxy’s final match was rather like a drunken office night out. After several pints, you at last pluck up the courage to make a pass at that fit PA you’ve had your eye on for ages.  Amazingly, you succeed, and it’s back home to seal the deal. However, due to the aforementioned skinful, your subsequent performance leaves something to be desired, and the evening ends up as something of a farce.

So the Hare Street game was very much the morning after the night before. Would Isambard’s first match PB (post-Bywater) see arguments and bitter recriminations, coffee and a nice breakfast interspersed with the occasional long silence, or a surprising post-hangover recovery and mutual ecstasy?

In truth, the match was probably a little of the latter two scenarios. Question one was who would fill Roxy’s considerable shoes by scoring runs and taking wickets? Skipper Wembridge decided to hold himself back for the late surge of runs (or, to quote Paul McConville from the previous report, “later, when the bowlers are shit”), and so opened the batting with James Dean and the returning Nat Parbhu. Dean proceeded to blast ten off the first five balls before being castled by the sixth, followed shortly by Richie Robinson. Not the best start.

Robinson’s departure brought in Simon Watt for his first game in a few years, and he and Nat formed a Kiwi-Ginger coalition for the third wicket, putting on 73 before Watt was bowled. Dave Malin came in and continued his good form, batting well after Parbhu had been dismissed for a splendid 56. Many years ago, there was a veteran cricketer who had his own armchair on the field to rest in between deliveries, something we may have to consider for Disco if his form continues for many more years.

In a brief innings, Jeremy Carton risked pulling yet another part of his anatomy by being stumped off a massive heave, but runs from Gareth Kenny and Wembridge helped Isambard to respectability. Mark presumably thought that No.8 was the ideal position to top up his season’s average with a tasty not out, but was bowled for a mere eleven. Serves him right.

Wembridge was swiftly followed by the splendidly-named Damo Sime, who perished first ball in his first game of cricket anywhere. With the next batsman, Michael Wehrle, also playing his first-ever game, and coming from a country more famous for tax havens and cuckoo clocks than its cricketing culture, a hat-trick was surely on the cards. However, the man now nicknamed the Swiss Whirlwind rattled up a swift thirteen before being bowled, so helping Isambard over the 200 mark and into respectability.

After tea, which divided opinion, Isambard took the field, with Robinson and Kenny sharing the new ball. Both of them, plus first-change bowler Dean bowled well, and were rewarded with a wicket apiece. Perhaps they deserved more; but, to cite the immortal Ian Holloway, you sometimes have to be grateful for what you do achieve.

But it was Watt’s medium-pace, allied to some good fielding and catching, which made the difference. The ginger swinger took 3-32 from eight overs; this, assisted by an unlikely brace from Carton, ensured that the middle order couldn’t really get going. The exception to this was Hare Street’s No.7, R.Hammond, whose 39 not out (along with 55 from opener Newland) kept them in the hunt for a win.  In the event, any of three results was possible, but the eventual draw seemed the fairest all round, as Isambard enjoyed a fine day out.