 |
| partial view over the old Sneyd ground (the pavilion, which stood just to the left of the lamppost, has been demolished) |
Saturday, July 15
Once upon a time, back in the swinging sixties, Sneyd was
a thriving cricket club that had a strong team, a good surface, and hosted a
string of representative fixtures. However, times are hard these days and their
once elegant ground is looking more than a little shabby, while it seems the
whole club is being held together by the efforts of Jess Hall alone.* A few
years ago they merged with the now-defunct Great Chell CC – with its
magnificent 3-storey pavilion, complete with ballroom, full-size snooker
tables, viewing gallery and Lord’s-esque entrance to the arena – and, in an
attempt to return both clubs to their halcyon days, pulled off the ambitious
signing of Guyanese quickie Barrington Browne. Despite Browne’s brilliance, the
project failed: Sneyd still reside in the lower reaches of Section B and are
viewed by the top teams as 40 points per season. Hopefully, they could provide
us with a good start to an important weekend.
My own weekend had got off to a calamitous start (as predicted, may I add, by Mystic Meg). As probably the only individual in the British Isles unaware that there had been a nationwide rail strike scheduled, I strolled into Nottingham station late on Friday afternoon preparing to return to the parental abode and then on to Moddershall for practice, having arranged to be collected at 6.40pm from
 |
| the next arrival on Platform 2 is the tomorrow morning from Derby... |
There was no way I was going to make another bank-breaking
taxi journey, so I’d just have to call home and explain that I was stranded
in Derby. Ten pence after ten pence was poured into the slot, yet all I got was
the answerphone: “Hi, this is Jim Oliver. There’s nobody home at the moment…”
At 8.15 I eventually got through and told them of my predicament. “Well, that’s
bloody clever, that is. Really bloody clever”, sympathized my father. I hung
up.
What now? B&B? Hitch-hike? Sleep rough? I briefly
weighed up these unattractive options and decided to call the folks again, this
time cunningly employing a Scottish accent and asking after the more flexible
and understanding Mrs Oliver. Dad was duly fooled by the vocal disguise and put
me through to my mother, who explained that they had been waiting for over an
hour at Blythe Bridge Derby
All this confusion, disagreement, and angst led me to
opt to lodge for the evening chez Addo, perhaps as a sort of juvenile protest
against padre’s apparent inability to grasp that a national rail strike, rather
than any deliberate negligence, had been behind the mix-up. Staying at the
pro’s thus meant that I went to Sneyd not in the Heardmobile but in Lovejoy’s
silver Saab (an antique if ever there
was one), allowing me to hear his quite staggeringly romanticized (possibly
insane) opinion of this bedraggled venue. Having cruised up through the leafy
suburban delights of Cobridge, the Sneyd slagheap came into view, and we
accelerated up the slope and into the ground. Parking the car, Agile cast a
misty eye over the ground and said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm in
his voice: “Take a look at that, Dog. Beautiful. Best ground in the league”.
 |
| aerial shot of Sneyd slagheap and derelict cricket ground, square just visible above the football pitch |
Traipsing over the outfield – the hallowed turf, in
Addo’s case – toward the candy-striped wooden pavilion, it wasn’t immediately
obvious witch strip we would be playing on, since the square was entirely
covered with grass of the same length. Then again, it was the same last year
when Addo and I helped ourselves to 199 for the first wicket. Were it not for
yesterday’s horoscope, I might have thought something similar was on the
(tarot) cards, but who am I to doubt the clairvoyant powers of Mystic Meg.
Anyway, after knocking up for half an hour, it was
down to what many considered the most important part of all our matches: the
toss. It must have been strange for Addo to observe this ritual with a man
(Sibtain Haider) who has turned out for as many North Staffs clubs as he has,
but it didn’t distract him from making the correct call and inviting Sneyd to
have first use of what was sure to be a sporty deck. The decision appeared
immediately vindicated when Mauler’s second ball flew straight over the
batsman’s head from a fraction shy of a good length, forcing me to leap à la
Jeffrey Dujon to pluck the still-rising ball from the air one-handed. The take
was all the more remarkable given that I was in some discomfort whilst ‘keeping
on account of having neither jockstrap nor a pair of underpants to hand. As the
umpires had already made their way to the middle, it was an emergency of major
proportions; luckily Addo came to the rescue by lending me his crotch-chafing clean-on-this-mornings.
After a testing opening twenty minutes, the
breakthrough came in the sixth over when Rauf steered Waynoss straight to
Mauler at slip. Sneyd’s number 3, Vimalin,
has the perfect surname with which to endorse a pharmaceutical product and it
wouldn’t be too churlish to suggest a laxative tablet of some sort, as evidently
he could do with some help to get runs. Having collected only a single, he
initiated what was undoubtedly the champagne moment of John Myatt’s entire
career: pushing a ball of good length back down the wicket, he shuffled involuntarily
out of his crease; there didn’t seem to be any danger, but Mauler picked up the
ball and, with full stereophonic sound effects, attempted to throw down the
batsman’s stumps. Normally, the throw would have flown a lot closer to the
batsman’s skull than the poles, but this time, with one almighty cartoonesque ‘whooooossshhh’,
Mauler broke his 20-year famine and ran out the hapless Vimalin to leave Sneyd
at 16 for 2.
 |
| Dujon -- not DOOG-on |
This seemed to provoke John into bowling flat out,
especially at young Bostock who was having a torrid time of things. Despite
being the offspring of the two most insane individuals in the entire cosmos,
the slightly camp Bostock was hanging in there bravely until one single ball
transformed his innings. He had scored only 8 runs in 16 overs when Addo rather
loudly instructed Mauler to (and I quote) “Kill!” The ball was dug in halfway
down but – scuppering the plan somewhat – the next contact it made with the terra
firma was somewhere behind the pavilion. From then on Bostock grew in
confidence and helped his captain add 102 runs for the third wicket before
having his stumps uprooted by Andy Hawkins.
Bostock’s departure brought the highly destructive Ali
to the wicket, yet it was Haider that was doing the damage. At one point in his
career ‘Sibby’ was on the fringe of a very strong Pakistani Test squad and it
showed as he played some brilliant shots in his 80, including successive
extra-cover drives on the up off Mauler that flew to the boundary. However,
none was better than the absolutely monstrous straight six he drove off Cokey
that landed three-quarters of the way across the football field, and another
half an hour of his batting might have put the game beyond us. Thankfully, he
was removed by Hawky, who bowled him with a straight shooter, and quickly
followed by Ali and Rashid, both of whom fell to Darren Carr as 151 for 3
became 154 for 6.
 |
| Michael Bostock: serving a 5-year sentence for fraud
|
Some lusty hitting from Farooq and Younis (who had a
lucky escape when Drew dropped the easiest catch in the history of the game at
mid-on, before being stumped an over later when I managed to take off the bails
with the third swipe of my gloves) elevated the score to 210 before Iain Carr
picked up the last wicket with
his first ball of the day. Had we not polished off the last two wickets so
quickly we could have been coming out for quite a long bowl after tea, since we
had only sent down a paltry 47 overs by ten to five. However, that was now
irrelevant. All that mattered was knocking off the runs, something that would
require watchful batting on a wicket that was becoming increasingly variable in
pace and bounce.
The opening over from Haider was quite gentle in
comparison both to the pace he had once bowled and that sent down by his
new-ball partner, Muhammad Ali, who really did float like a butterfly and sting
like a bee as he drew blood from the hands of both Agile and myself. My injury,
a blow to my right thumb from a ball that rose off a length and cut me under
the nail, almost caused me to retire hurt. I later discovered that I had
suffered a hairline fracture, but adrenaline allowed me to bat on with a
slightly modified grip and help Addo, who had a chunk of skin ripped from his
knuckle by another lifter, add 44 for the first wicket.
 |
| float like a butterfly, sting like a bee... |
Jon was the first to go, skying a wide ball from Ali
to cover-point. His dismissal brought Harv to the wicket and together we saw
off Haider whilst keeping the scoreboard ticking over. Haider’s replacement,
the erratic left-armer Pete Axon, seemed intent on banging the ball in short
and I duly hooked his second ball straight through the open pavilion door.
Unfortunately I was making the same journey an over later after gloving another
Ali lifter to the ‘keeper. In the following over John Myatt suffered the
ignominy of a golden duck when he went back to an Axon delivery that struck him
just above the bootlaces, and we were suddenly in a vulnerable position at 75
for 3.
A bright and breezy stand between the two
cack-handers, Harv and Hawk, turned things around and brought the runs required
to within double figures before a sudden and dramatic collapse changed the
balance of the game. Dickie became Axon’s second scalp when he spliced an
attempted pull shot and offered a simple return catch. Drew, looking a little
out of form, fell next, bowled by Haider for 3, and he was shortly followed by
Seth who got a thick edge to a rare delivery of drivable length from Axon.
 |
| Iain Carr |
Still buzzing from his heroics against Buxton, Smudge went
to the crease intent upon repairing some of the damage, but he was soon
returning after a piece of crazy running between the wickets from his mate and
batting partner Iain to leave us in the perilous position of 131 for 7. So,
Billy had run out the hero, but could he run out the hero…?
By now the home support (Jess Hall’s wife) was roaring
Sneyd on as they began to appeal for almost anything. With victory in sight and
our required run-rate standing at about seven per over Haider made an
unbelievable bowling change and brought on some comedy leg-spin. You could
almost hear Cokey thinking ‘carnage time’ to himself, and probably would have
been able to hear him had Hawky not been invoking the “All we need is one good
over” mantra. Kev tucked gratefully into the buffet, smashing Hashmi’s second
over for 23 runs. The game had swung back in our favour as now only 33 runs
were required from 10 overs left. As usual, however, a spanner had to be thrown
into the works, and another mix-up saw Cokey run out by the length of the
pitch.
Yet again it seemed as if we had blown it. The form
that Iain was in suggested that he was well capable of knocking off the runs,
but he needed a reliable partner to hang around with him, preferably someone
with a cool head to prevent him from doing something rash. That man was Darren,
his brother, who, tucking his greasy fringe inside his helmet, strode
purposefully to the middle. Normally he prefaces this journey with the comment
“I’ll see you in two minutes”, but not this time. He was still batting at the
end when his ‘little’ brother crashed his eighth boundary to bring up the
victory and, also, his own half-century, made from only 47 balls. Top knock.
 |
| view from Sneyd slag heap |
MODDERSHALL WON BY 2 WICKETS
SNEYD 210 all out (47.1 overs)
S Haider 80, M Bostock 38, M Farooq 35, A Hawkins 3-33, I Carr 3-57
MODDERSHALL 213 for 8 (44.2 overs)
I Carr 52*, S Oliver 34, K Colclough 30, P Axon 3-6 1
MODDERSHALL 20 points
SNEYD 9 points
* Of course, the club would fall apart fairly soon after this 1995 season.
No comments:
Post a Comment