The day of the last match of an odd season broke with a
clear blue sky and all set fair. Came
downstairs to find a brace of industrious Beattie’s slaving away over various
sandwich fillers and purring proudly at the enormity of the lemon drizzle cake
that had been birthed the previous day.
By mid-morning clouds were gathering and a stiff wind had picked up but
hearts were set on fine last day of the season.
At 12.30 Beattie and Keeling were in place, as instructed by our
captain, having secured our drinks at the Bell.
Wonders will never cease, but almost an entire team of Rascal’s had
gathered by one o’clock, the possibility of a 1.30 start seemed, unbelievably,
achievable. There is though the strange
‘Bell Effect’. An illness seemingly
passed directly from the Bull, but with a slight kink to the symptoms: It takes
a large part of an entire millennium to obtain a drink there. Where the Bull used to resemble the Marie
Celeste, it is quite extraordinary that so many people can find themselves
standing on the serving side of a bar, with such remarkable lack of end
product. Inevitably 1.30 came and went
without an obvious exodus from the pub to the pitch, but we did manage to get
our captain onto the field for the toss with a 2 o’clock start looking possible.
Cries of ‘what are we doing’ were answered from the square by
Neilo with a beautiful mime of a classic forward defensive. We groaned as the discussions before the
match were clearly that we would much prefer to chase. When we gathered that Neilo had won the toss,
we were flabbergasted. It transpired though
that Neilo was deploying a far higher level of mime than we gave him credit
for; just prior to the batting action, artfully hidden in the back swing, he
was pointing at the opposition captain.
What a bunch of duffers we were not to have spotted this!
Matters started out in reasonable nick, with their opener
falling for the old ‘long hop’ ploy in the first over and popping up a simple
enough catch to Berthon at point (lovely to have that lovely boy, back in the
fold!!). From here things went rather
downhill. The Moose seemed to have a
line-up of youthful ‘naturals’, who, while not necessarily in a very pretty
way, proved extremely effective at clubbing the ball, hard and far. Was it the ceaseless assault from the
Canadian seal farmers or was it end-of-term blues, but a cloud seemed to descend
on the team? Affected by this strange malaise,
our fielding became somewhat erratic; some superlative high points (a Mackwood
catch & Clifton stop) were followed (and slightly more often than the
former) by some absolute howlers. My
best guess is that at least 30 runs went through our legs and a lot catches
spilled horribly. All of which only
darkened the mood of our team. All this
along with accusations of ‘on-field’ abuse of the captain (something that
actually fired him up to take two wickets successive balls) and rows with the
umpires made for a somewhat scratchy first half of the match. Tea was taken after completion of their 35
overs with the Moose on 248 for 6.
Neil’s bowling figures of 3 overs for 14 runs and 2 wickets, being the
pick of not very competitive bunch as the Moose had generally put our bowling
averages to the sword.
Fabulous tea, thanks mainly to Mark, Carole and Van, but
ably backed up by Jo and Kiki I believe.
With just more than 7 runs an over required, we still had to
believe we had a chance, but somehow it felt like a large mountain that we had
before us. Opening up with Drew and
Ross, matters ticked along quite nicely with Drew falling for 18 with score on
48. Ross went on to top score for the
Rascals with an interesting 47.
Interesting in as much that he seemed to play a ‘backwards’ innings;
normally it is expected that batsmen gets himself in, starting with a few loose
shots before becoming freer and more confident.
Ross seemed to struggle with his timing the longer he stayed, much to
his own obvious frustration. When the
second wicket fell for 90, we were still, if distantly, in touch and with
Tarquin striding to the middle our hopes were buoyed at the prospect of some
rough treatment for their bowlers. The
speed with which these hopes were dashed and Desoutter was despatched back to
the pavilion was something to behold (or not as a miss timed blink would have
spoilt the view). It certainly caught
our captain on the hop, who got so entangled in jock strap, pads, conversations
with various spectators that I suspect the Moose thought we had all gone home. Perhaps we had?
Other than the highlights of Mackwood’s (25) and Berthon’s
(21) cameos at the crease, the low lights of PK giving the Chair out LBW
and a brief spat with one of their
bowlers (‘I’ll keep giving it as a wide until you pipe down’), we practically
had gone home. All out after 33 overs
with 172 posted on the board, it was perhaps not our finest hour?
But, as ever, and most importantly, we repaired to the Bull
(unbelievably little debate as to whether it be the Bell or Bull, in some
things at least we are in no doubt of our improvement) in fine spirits having
thoroughly enjoyed the day and the season as a whole. Even if there was only one rather lonely
victory contained within it. Anyway, who
needs to win when we can all cheer ourselves up with the fact that Phil
Richardson was never out for the entire season and therefore has an average if
infinite!! Suck that stat up you Mooses
and Northiams!!
Hussar for 2015, and thank you to all of you
took any responsibility for organising and making possible this season (Messrs.
Beattie, Grigson, Ross and Skilbeck [if there is anyone else I have forgotten,
I can only offer up my most abject apologies to them])
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