Date: Sat, 15th May, 2021
Venue: Home - Bushy Park
A record-breaking win for the 4s as we easily saw off Perivale.
We didn’t play Perivale last year as they’d withdrawn their 4s from the league due to the Covid pandemic. However, I had expected a sterner contest as we’d played them in the past and been beaten.
There were early signs that we might be on for a win when barely any of them were present by the prescribed meet time and once we had started, their captain said they still only had 9, but that the other two would be on their way. Bizarrely, their captain then won the toss and decided to field. 🤷🏼♂️OK, sure, if you want to demoralise your team by having nine players chase the ball for 40 overs, so be it. We’ve been in a similar boat to Perivale before and logic would surely suggest you’d bat first, unless the conditions really favoured the bowling side. In any case, we were in and I asked Jamie Khan and VC Dilan Camball to get us on our way.
Dilan was out with the score on 11, but Jamie and Hasan Aziz took full advantage of the lack of fielders to add another 170 runs before Has (67 - 10 x 4s and 1 x 6) was bowled by someone with the weird name of “Unsure” (according to the scorecard). Jamie was out shortly after reaching exactly 100 in his first game of the season. No jug avoidance there, although I don’t think Jamie’s ever forsaken the opportunity to order beer. 😄 I then joined young Eddie Clark in the middle and we managed to take the score up to 327-3 off our 40 overs, Eddie completing his first century for a senior team in the process (113* off 57 balls with 15 x 4s and 5 x 6s) and me contributing a modest 27 not out off 30.
To say that this chase was beyond Perivale would be a bit of an understatement as we managed to take the required 8 wickets for the loss of only 35 runs (Simon taking 4, Archie Talman 3 and Sam Davis 1 wicket off 0.2 overs to finish them off!). Their scorebook did have the batting down as 37, but one of my pet peeves is people not completing scorebooks correctly, so I insisted it went in as 35 as that’s what the bowling added up to and I think, by that point, their captain was beyond caring and just wanted to go home.
So we recorded a meagre 292 run win, much to the amusement of some of the 2s players on the top ground, who happened to witness the event. I was subsequently asked by Dan Hough from Twickenham whether I’d like to pass comment for the MCCL podcast. I did reply, but too late for that week’s podcast. I’ll have to check whether it was mentioned the following week (I’ve since checked - it hasn’t been 😞).
This appears to have been a 4th XI record winning margin - yes, I was sad enough to go back through play-cricket to 2000 and I couldn’t find a bigger winning margin. This broke the previous record set under Snodders (Ed Snodgrass) who had led the 4s to a 203 win a few years previously in a cameo captaincy appearance that has never been repeated. Shuffs did tell me later, though, that he didn’t think it was a club record win as there was a bigger win in the 80s or 90s. I’ll believe it when I see the scorebook, Shuffs!
Author: Matt O’Toole