Common People

Saturday 25th May, Barnes Common. Barnes Common CC (225-3) drew with St Anne's Allstars (125-9).

Scorecard

What a match. With some tremendous individual performances, a nail-biting finish and a dash of controversy, this one had it all. It featured a classic Allstars performance, as we tried our very best to lose the game from a good position, before finding even that beyond us.

It was a day that brutally exposed our lack of strength in depth. Our new ball bowlers kept their openers in check; our change bowlers were flayed to all parts. Our top three batsmen skilfully resisted some high quality bowling; the rest of the batting disintegrated like a particularly flimsy pack of cards.

The afternoon began with a rather sobering incident. Barnes Common is only just over the road from Allstars HQ, so I led an advance party to locate the ground and meet our hosts. No one appeared for a while but eventually I spotted a group of men in whites emerging from the trees by the station. They were encouragingly old, fat and bald, thus raising my hopes about the quality of our opponents. Luckily Tom Everest was on hand to bring me down to earth, pointing out that the party waddling towards us were, in fact, "your housemates".

Barnes Common's skipper, Christian Sweet, won the toss and, sensing the rapier-like potency of our bowling attack, decided to bat. But Tristan Haddow-Allen and Adam Clements responded well to the challenge, both providing accurate spells which kept opening batsmen Muralidhar Arun and Mike Tupper relatively becalmed. An early wicket would have been handy but Tupper survived some plausible LBW shouts off Clements and, as he became set, began to infuriate us with his unorthodox but undeniably effective method.

A left hander, his approach involved directing every ball through fine leg. Whatever the line or length - an off stump yorker, waist-high full toss or long hop - Tupper swung through the line and over his shoulder, as if he was digging the garden. Repeatedly, the ball flew to the fine leg boundary, throwing up a tactical quandary to which, it must be said, I was not able to adequately respond. I know how hard this will be to believe, but I completely lost the plot, and with it all awareness of geometry, the laws of cricket and eventually even the names of my team mates

The problem lay in trying to defend that boundary with only two fielders behind square on the leg side - a law that rather slipped my mind, resulting in a no-ball - and then changing the field back for the more orthodox, right handed Arun. As I kept forgetting who was supposed to be where, and which side was off and which leg, there ensued a state of confusion which bordered on chaos. The chief beneficiaries of this were the batsmen, who cashed in by hitting lots of sixes.

The pitch had taken plenty of rain and was slow but of fairly even bounce, which allowed Arun to punish the short stuff with muscular cuts and pulls. His main victim was Nick Jones, who that afternoon had a reasonable claim to being the most hungover man in Europe. In he trundled, popped it down half way along the wicket, we saw the blur of a swinging blade and then traipsed off to the bushes by the train tracks to look for the ball again.

Jonesy finished with the unfortunate figures of 3-0-41-0 but none of our change bowlers survived unscathed. Garreth Duncan began well, gaining real turn and bounce and conceding just a single boundary from his first four overs. Andy Clarke suffered an unsteady start - carted once by Arun for a huge six over midwicket - before settling into a good line and length with his medium pacers and causing the left-hander more than a few problems. Twice Tupper survived vehement LBW appeals before eventually miscuing one to midwicket, where Clements - to our immense relief - pocketed the catch.

At last we had a breakthrough and at 135-1 from 23 overs Barnes Common were clearly on the ropes, unlikely now to muster any more than about 400. It helped, though, that this was one afternoon when we held most of our catches. Because after Clements resumed at the Station Road end he struck twice in the first over of his new spell

We'd managed to keep Phil Haynes fairly quiet and in frustration he launched one high towards the cover boundary and straight down Clarkey's throat. Then, two balls later, came what was indisputably one of the finest catches in Allstars history. Arun seemed to be cruising towards a century, playing sweetly all round the wicket off front foot and back. But on 97 he slashed at a wide one and Jim Jarrett, at backward point, leapt salmon-like to snatch it from the air as it screamed past him. He threw the ball up to the skies in ecstatic celebration while we descended on him for an orgy of backslapping. It was a joyous moment. Time stood still. A church bell chimed softly in the distance. Song birds sang, maidens wept and bards composed epic songs of heroic deeds. Arun trudged off and probably said "fuck" very loudly. Poor bloke. At 97 not out against us he was more likely to by eyeing 200 than 100.

The new batsman had spent the last twenty seven overs on the boundary, watching us send down a variety of dobblers which, for their pace and menace, might as well have been delivered underarm. We were therefore surprised to see him enter wearing a helmet - the only explanation for which could have been to protect from the wind a fragile and laboriously gelled new hairstyle. For functional value he would have been no worse off wearing a McDonald's Happy Hat.

After two quick wickets we fancied our chances of wresting back some control for the remainder of the innings. Fat chance, as, not for the first time, the best batsman came in just when we thought we'd broken the back of their top order. Mohammed Dilshad was his name and after playing himself in by hitting his first three balls for four, proceeded to rampage his way through the remaining overs. I can't really recall many of the details of his innings except that the ball seemed to be travelling very fast in all directions. An unbeaten 41 from 19 balls always represents a useful effort and Dilshad's coup de grace came in the form of a six and three fours from consecutive balls. In a tactical masterstroke I forgot to put Tristan back on at the death and instead bullied the reluctant Roger Pordes to provide an over of off-spin. This ingenius ploy backfired to the tune of nineteen runs.

Our target was 226. This was always unlikely unless they decided to bowl with a tennis ball, but we had a decent batting line-up and, in theory, genuine prospects of claiming a draw. As it turned out, our innings divided into three distinct phases. The first was a protracted and fascinating battle between two of our best batsmen - Clarkey and Tristan - and Barnes Common's pair of very fine seam bowlers, Dez Smith and Sweet. Sweet's eventual figures of 11-5-16-3 testified to our difficulty in getting him off the square, and during his new ball partnership with Kamil Randall-Khan (presumably the lovechild of Derek and Imran) runs were very hard to come by

But the batsmen dug in stoically - Clarkey's forward defensive is the stuff of poetry - and attacked the odd loose delivery with savvy. By the twenty-first over the pair had taken us to 53-0 and the draw was becoming increasingly plausible. Tristan had battled hard against the quicks, although was lucky to be reprieved from strong leg before shouts off successive balls from Smith. Now he decided, however, to get out to the friendly-looking chap at the other end. Attempting a pull off Nix's third ball, he succeeded only in top-edging to short fine leg.

As the old adage says, one wicket brings two, and in the next over Clarkey fell victim to the increasingly low bounce from the Railway End, when a shooter from Smith removed his off stump. His departure ushered in Josh Milligan, who played some handsome shots before suffering an identical dismissal in the twenty-fifth over to leave us wobbling at 65-3.

The fourth-wicket partnership between Jim "Dirty" Jarrett and Nick "Jonesy" Jones appeared to restore our prospects of salvaging the draw. Dirty manfully resisted everything Smith could throw at him, coping with both pace and seam movement. His partner, meanwhile, got stuck in as only he can, sawing his way to 23 with some characteristically rustic strokes.

Their combination of watchfulness and aggression took us to 110-3 in the thirty-sixth over, with only another seven to come. Surely even we couldn't lose from here. Sweet had other ideas and finally got the wicket he had long deserved when he beat Jonesy's heave and castled him. And with that dismissal, the levee broke. Three balls later Richard Thompson became the fourth Allstars batsman to be bowled and in Sweet's next over Jarrett became the fifth. It was now 113-6 and for the speed at which the wheels were coming off we might as well have parked our wagon in Toxteth.

Things calmed down a little with the arrival in the middle of Clements and Pordes, who defiantly blocked each delivery as the overs slowly ticked away. They lasted together until the forty-first over - Smith's thirteenth - and with safety only seventeen balls away. Unfortunate, then, to now lose three wickets in the space of four balls. First Smith produced a shooter to bowl Pordes and then another to remove Chris Gould second ball. This was high drama, and what a moment for an appearance by the Toon Typhoon - Garreth Duncan. And what a moment also for him to be out LBW first ball, struck on the foot in front of middle stump. It is fair to say Garreth did not take the decision well and given the plethora of profanities which then ensued, it's lucky the stump mic was turned off.

122-6 had become 122-9 faster than you can say "we're now going to lose" and if Smith and Barnes Common weren't actually on fire, they were certainly starting to smoulder. Thirteen balls remained and in came our last man, the incomparable Jason Nixon. Say what you like about Jase: he may lack experience at this kind of cricketing situation but he does have an excellent collection of carved African masks. He also has courage and a good eye but we were rather surprised when he not only survived the hat trick ball but took a single from it to keep the strike for the next over.

Tension mounted to unsustainable levels. Garreth chewed his fingernails to the very quicks and what remained of my hair fell out. In came Sweet for his last over. Jason dead batted two balls and then - hurrah! - found a gap for another single to give Adam back the strike. Then two more dot balls. Could Clem find a single to retain the strike for the last over? He could.

Six to come. I couldn't bear to watch, so overcome was I by the sheer emotional strain of not having to either bat or bowl. Regular readers of these reports may notice that we go to most matches with twelve players. On the pretence that I want to give everyone else a go, I make myself the non-batting twelfth man and never bowl. I then screw up all the field settings, expose all my team mates to the exposure and scrutiny of action in the middle, and then slag them off in the match reports. It was therefore Adam's job to survive the last six balls, not, happily, mine.

So, six to come. Oh goodness! Adam dead batted the first. Then the second. Then the third, fourth and fifth. Just one more from Smith and…it met the middle of Adam's bat. Yes! We had done it! Well played Adam, the man who brought us the glory of Barnes Common 225-3, Allstars 125-9.

The draw was rather unfair on our opponents, who were our superiors in every department save waist-girth and size of overdraft. Barnes Common have some very talented cricketers and we look forward to meeting them again next year. That is, of course, if they deign to host us again and overlook our poor sportsmanship, ignorance of the laws of the game, and the fact that we kept inadvertently asking the Australian Smith if he was from New Zealand. We didn't realised his nickname 'Kiwi' was a wind up by his team mates. So the bird he'll have in mind for next year's fixture is a dodo.