Rickmansworth & Isambard Cricket Club

“Season Ends” concluded Rickmansworth supreme Paul Blackwell after the previous Sunday’s satisfying win at Boxmoor.  But had he spoken too soon?  For a number of the R&I great and good declared their enthusiasm for one final hit to round off the season, tempted doubtless by the forecast balmy temperatures and inevitable late-season Indian Summer.

Organising another match after a satisfying season-ending win is a bit like visiting that girl you got it together with on holiday.  Sure, there’s a chance that love’s flame would be rekindled, and you would have a romantic weekend (or lots of shagging, at least).  But there’s also a chance that a trip to Kettering might not have the same effect as the sun n’ sangria shag-tastic surrounds of Santorini; she would be indifferent at best, and her brick-shithouse boyfriend would “want a word” with you.

Sunday’s trip was to Slough.  To be fair, a part of Slough that was infinitely more pleasant than its centre, the present conversion of which to large piles of rubble can only be an improvement.  Stoke Green are a team who both Rickmansworth and Isambard have played in the past.  The latter visited twice in 2000, winning the first by ten wickets and losing the second by nine.  Your correspondent played in the second game, and Disco Malin in both; indeed, the latter top-scored with 32 not out in the first match, with his usual blend of gentle singles and well-struck fours.  Isambard’s latter match was notable for the presence of a lesbian off-break bowler in their line-up, something it was safe to assume wouldn’t be repeated on this visit.

The days leading up to the match saw the inevitable line-up changes, although we did at least end up with eleven men on the park this time.  Some members of the R&I community are rather like the fathers-of-many who populate Jeremy Kyle – they frequently pull out late, with little regard for the consequences.  One of our number sent his apologies late on the preceding Thursday with a list of excuses which included “hangover”.  He’d either been on a Shaun Ryder-esque bender that week, or was able to predict the future.  (And anyway, days were when a hangover was an essential part of Sunday cricket).  As the old cricketing saying goes, “When September is here, Ric Firth disappears”.

The match itself was due to start at half-twelve, but was delayed in part due to an occurrence even more unusual that Sapphic spinners; the arrival of a third cricket team.  A quick fact-finding session from our hosts determined that Stoke Green’s fixtures secretary had fecked up royally; fortunately, R&I were deemed to be the ‘correct’ opponents.  Cue departure of wronged XI in a cloud of dust, presumably to lynch the errant official.  At least the delay allowed skipper Mark Wembridge to get to the ground in time for the start, having taken a route from Camden via Upper Volta in order to collect Jimmy Dean.

R&I opened the batting with Paul Blackwell and Joe McCusker, who put on 39 before the latter was unaccountably castled by a non-swinging straight delivery.  At this point, byes and leg byes were probably the top scorers, largely thanks to the home ‘keeper, who dived with copious enthusiasm but a woeful lack of timing.  Unfortunately, McCusker’s dismissal led to something of a slump in R&I’s batting performance.  Veteran opening bowler Gilman accounted for the spendidly-named Freddie Dare, Ken Brown and Jimmy Dean – the latter two for ducks – as R&I slipped to 64-4.  This would have been an ideal moment for skipper Wembridge – averaging circa 60 this season – to be on the pitch, and he duly obliged.  Regrettably, it was standing at square leg, wearing an umpire’s coat.  When would he come and bat?

A rebuilding job needed to be done, and Blackwell and the veteran Dave Malin were the men to do it, putting on 71 for the fifth wicket.  After a circumspect start against equally-veteran slow-left-armer Akhtar, Malin hit some splendid fours before being bowled around his legs for 19.  Meanwhile Blackwell, having asked umpire Williams for a brief statistical analysis of Malin’s seventeen-year Isambard career, was assured by Keith that Disco runs like Christie between the wickets.  Unfortunately, that’s Agatha Christie.  Blackwell was batting was increasing confidence before he was undone by a plumb lbw; Isambard 144-6.

Blackwell’s dismissal brought the Kiwi duo of Aaron Queree and Karl Sadler to the wicket, in an attempt to boost the scoring rate.  It worked; the last eight complete overs put on a staggering 102 runs.  Queree hit a brisk twenty before being well caught, having hit the ball so high that it came down with snow on. 

At last our captain, batting at the heady heights of No.9, arrived.  Mark was largely content to watch Karl (who had been dropped first ball) proceed to lay into the home attack.  He tucked into the bowling rather like Mr.Creosote into a twenty-course meal.  He hit six huge sixes, including one which cleared one of the mature trees on the boundary, in posting his first-ever Isambard/R&I fifty.

The hapless Dhillon (figures at this point: 4-0-44-1) came on to bowl the last over, with R&I looking to break the 250 mark.  Alas, Wembridge was caught at gully off his first delivery.  Tony Norton was thus summoned for his innings, having spent the last hour padded up in the nets.  Unfortunately his practice had obviously excluded facing straight deliveries on middle stump, and he was bowled first ball.  Enter Sean Lindsay on a hat-trick.  R&I’s No.11 hit it up in the air, and Dhillon ran back and took a superb diving catch, much to everyone’s amusement.  It’s not often that a seventh-change bowler takes a hat-trick – the day’s second unusual occurrence.

Stoke Green’s tea was a good one, if slightly unadventurous on the cake front.  However, this was more than compensated for by an excellent savoury selection – pizza, garlic bread (it’s the future), samosas, and bhajis of vastly varying strength; some mild, some impossibly hot.  A sort of Indian roulette, if you will.  McCusker ate about ten, presumably hoping he would get the runs later to make up for his earlier failure.

After tea, Lindsay and Norton were given the new ball, with varying levels of success.  The first five overs went for thirty runs, albeit Lindsay had opener Bourne caught by a diving Joe McCusker for 23 with the last ball of the fifth over.  Truly the end of the Bourne Supremacy.  This dismissal slowed things down somewhat, to the extent that the next five overs yielded only eight runs.  Clegg’s dismissal then brought in Sheikh senior, whose enthusiasm for the openers was such that overs 11-15 added 46 runs to the total.  Stoke Green were looking good.

Wembridge brought Sadler and Queree into the attack, and it was the vowel-heavy Aaron who first tasted success, first castling Dhillon, then having Sheikh junior caught by McCusker first ball.  This was Joe’s third catch of the game.  Isambard enjoyed their drinks at twenty overs – with a choice of nuclear lime or nuclear orange squash, cold beverage fans – during which your correspondent happened to mention to Joe that he was one catch away from equalling the club record for dismissals in an innings.  After learning that, naturally Joe shelled the easiest chance of the afternoon.

After their squash-based sugar rush, Queree bowled the dangerous Sheikh senior, to leave the hosts 100-5.  Alas, that success was followed immediately by disaster – or, specifically a twelve-ball over costing a dozen runs, eight of which were wides or no-balls.  Poor Queree had lost line, length and the plot, and his third over was to be his last.  Happens to the best of us.  Meanwhile, Sadler was a model of economy at the other end, taking 1-4 from his first spell of five overs.  The introduction of McCusker’s spin saw a wicket with his third ball, and the hosts 117-7 with less than fifteen overs left.  Surely it was all over bar the shouting?

A good cricketing maxim, to sit alongside “Beware the cricketer in jeans”, is “Beware the No.9 bat who made a century the previous day and has been dropped down the order”.  Ahmed was such a man.  Aided by more drops than Jordan’s cleavage ten years hence, and by the fact that most of the frontline bowlers had completed their eight overs by this time, he spearheaded a remarkable revival.  Jimmy Dean held things together fairly well until his fifth over, but alas Joe’s day got worse as Ahmed took a liking to his bowling. 

Mark Wembridge brought back Norton (for his one remaining over) and Sadler in an attempt to make the breakthrough, but it didn’t come.  To Karl’s credit, though, he bowled very tightly under the circumstances; his final figures of 8-3-16-1 being marred somewhat by a final over costing eleven.  Paul Blackwell, bowling his right-arm occasionals again, stepped up to the plate from the pavilion end.  Despite a run-out of Aziz by Brown from his second over, even he was unable to keep his feet above the mulch of the barton, and stem Stoke Green’s rush towards their unlikely target.

The 38^th over saw Ahmed dropped on the boundary by Sadler – his only blemish of the day – whilst the penultimate over saw controversy.  Blackwell seemed to have trapped Ahmed plum lbw with his last ball, only for the umpire to declare him not out.  Blackwell went ballistic, which was probably more amusing from the safety of the boundary than close up.  That said, the home side did not share the amusement, instead muttering darkly about “the number of times he was out when he batted”, whilst forgetting that your correspondent had been wearing the white coat for most of the first innings.  Our final maxim of the report?  “Beware the partisan home umpire”, since this was not the first poor call of Stoke Green’s innings.  Ahmed thrashed a four from the first ball of the last over, and that was that.

After the match, discussion in the bar turned towards the possibility of yet another run-out, on 2 October.  Evidently our re-acquaintance with the summer romance that is amateur cricket had gone sufficiently well, all things considered, to consider another pop of that particular cherry.  For, if there is no cricket, what do we have to look forward to?  Endless Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing and X-Factor; freezing cold weather and pissing rain; and the traditional winter meetings of the Rickmansworth CC Film Scene Recreation Society, fresh from their re-interpretation of Women in Love last year.  Christ.  Pass me the bottle opener.