One for the purists

It says a good deal as to the frenetic pace at which we have been living of late that Sunday last saw only my second appearance of the season in the whites (as opposed to the garish ‘pyjamas’ of the short-form game) that are still in the main the mark of the village cricketer.

I posted regarding my first outing of the season here. This fixture was played under rather different circumstances, taking place not on some bucolic countryside cricket green but rather in a council run park in one of the suburbs of south London. Nowhere near as pretty and – as is often the way with council squares – the pitch was – shall we say – erratic… to put it mildly. In other words – some balls kept low whilst others would shoot abruptly up to chest or even chin height and very few came on nicely to the bat – making the timing of shots difficult in the extreme.

No matter. A good game was had by all and the opposition – another side new to us – were good sports. The match was thus played in an appropriately Corinthian spirit.

One of the great beauties of cricket is that the game came be played in a wide variety of formats, from the full five day ‘tests’ so beloved of the purists (of which I count myself one) down to the frantic dash of the Twenty20 format, which is done and dusted – razzamatazz and all – in around three hours. Even at village level subtle variations can be agreed upon to enhance the occasion. For this fixture – for example – we had agreed on two additional rules:

• every member of each team would be required to bowl at least one over – including the wicket keepers…
• once a batsman reached 30 runs he would be obliged to retire, though he could come out again if all of his team’s other wickets had fallen.

These ‘house’ rules were adopted to ensure that all concerned would be as involved in the match as possible, and so that no particularly gifted individuals could hog the limelight.

As a result I got to bowl a couple of overs for the first time in ages and – to my surprise – I actually took a couple of wickets… although the second such – a stumping – came from such a rank bad ball that I felt embarrassed to have my name associated with it. I also hung around for a while with the bat and accumulated what is – for me – a respectable score.

Once I was out – however – we lost several more quick wickets and soon found ourselves at 120 for 8, chasing a target of 183 and with only 7 overs or so left in which to get them. A win looked the least likely outcome at this point. Fortunately – by another of the sort of quirks that features only in this type of game – we had held back a couple of our better batsmen until well down the order, and some judicious hitting out by them saw us home with a few balls to spare in a most exciting finish.

Jolly good stuff all round – and everyone went home happy.

As the title of this post suggests, I have made no attempt herein to elucidate any of the arcana of the game for those with little or no extant knowledge thereof. To make up for this ommission I am very happy so to do – individually – for anyone who might be interested.

I don’t think I will hold my breath though!