Teddington Club XI vs Nepotists Friendly XI

Date: 6th June, 2021

Venue: Bushy Park (top square)

Playing the Nepotists is a regular fixture in our cricketing calendar each year.

Winning the toss (for once), I elected to bat on a warm, sunny day. Things weren’t exactly going to plan with George judged LBW off his hip and Tristan getting a golden. Eddie Clark (45) and Nathan Beresforde (playing his first competitive senior game for the club) managed to restore some respectability to our scorecard by taking us from 12-2 up to 105-3 before Eddie was out. Daniel Edge (also on senior debut) contributed 18 as we managed to somehow get ourselves up to a modest total of 165 AO off just 33.2 overs, with 6.4 overs being wasted.

Nepotists sent the experienced Carl Hoar at the top of their order and he managed to largely nurdle his way to 45. Even when he was eventually out (bowled around his legs by Daniel Edge off just his - Daniel’s - second ball in his first ever senior spell), with the score on 102-4, the total still seemed to be easily achievable. However, some good bowling from Oli Worrall, Daniel Edge, Nimesh Patel and Nathan Beresforde managed to help us to get the last few wickets and scrape home winners by just 3 runs - the Nepotists captain, Steve Werrin, being the last wicket to fall - rather generously given out LBW off Nathan Beresforde by the umpire.

Nepotists are the team that have the tradition of passing around a brightly-coloured wig which has to be worn by any fielder dropping a catch. This year it was a pink, curly number. They also have a tradition of staying beyond after the game and getting through a fair few pints. So it proved to be the case this year, as we managed to finish this lot off 👇🏻 (and more besides) and I only left the pavilion at 10.30pm.

Author: Matt O’Toole

Scorecard

Teddington Club XI vs Brondesbury 4th XI

Date: 30th May, 2021

Venue: Bushy Park (top square)

A reasonable contest in a friendly between us and Brondesbury saw us lose by 7 wickets.

Sent into bat, slow and modest contributions from our top four got us to a worrying 83-5 (after being just over 50 at drinks - around 2.2 an over!), before a partnership between me (21) and Ben Mosey managed to add another 65 to to the total before Ben was out for a top score of 38 (his highest for a senior team), with the score on 148-6. A few runs off the remaining overs managed to get us to 165-7 off our 40 overs, which looked like it was unlikely to be enough.

So it proved when Brondesbury (who apparently were able to field six sides that day!) came out to bat and chased it down inside 23 overs for the loss of only 3 wickets, their No.4 ending unbeaten on 57.

Still winning isn’t really the objective behind arranging these games - it’s more about allowing some of our younger players to gain some experience of senior cricket in a friendly and largely non-competitive environment - today, for example, there was a senior debut for Ryan Weerasooriya.

Author: Matt O’Toole

Scorecard

Spelthorne Sports Sunday XI vs Teddington Club XI

Date: 23rd May, 2021

Venue: Spelthorne Sports CC

A combination of the weather and child protection meant we had to cancel this scheduled match on the day. I was coaching Sunday morning when I received a call from Spelthorne’s captain to say that the downpour they’d had that morning had made their pitch unplayable. We had our top square available (voted the best square in the MCCL Premier Division for 2020!!), so I immediately suggested we simply switched venues and he brought their team to ours (Spelthorne CC is only about 15 mins drive away from TCC). However, their captain ran the idea past their Child Welfare Officer who immediately vetoed the idea of driving some of their colts 15 mins down the road, due to the club’s SPC policy. Various other options were discussed to try and get the game on, but after two more phone calls, their captain eventually said that there was no feasible way of persuading some of their colts’ parents to simply drive their kids a further 15 mins away on a Sunday morning and so we eventually gave up on the idea and cancelled the fixture. Frustrating.

Author: Matt O’Toole

Teddington Club XI vs Twickenham Sunday Club XI

Date: 25th April, 2021

Venue: Bushy Park (top square)

Twickenham agreed to a pre-season friendly with us at Bushy Park and were meant to send over a 4th XI standard team. However, it turned out later than their captain (Ethan Wright) played in Twickenham’s 1s or 2s and had been roped into captaining the side quite late on in the week. His involvement ended up making a significant contribution to them inflicting a close defeat on us as we made a credible effort, despite the gap in ability between the two sides.

Twickenham won the toss and decided to bat. They didn’t really look phased that much by our bowling attack and cruised to posting a daunting total of 238/4 off their 35 overs.

In response, I decided to shuffle the order around a bit and sent Bilal Siddiqui in to open with Dilan. Unfortunately, Bilal was quickly cleaned up before Dilan (27) and Shirsh Bedi managed to rebuild the innings somewhat to get us to 74-2 before Dilan was adjudged out LBW. The core of our innings then came from the 76 run partnership Shirsh managed to established with Eddie Clark, before Eddie was out for a decent 30 off 33 balls. Shirsh was eventually out for 89 (off 81 with 12 x 4s) with the score on 177-5. Some late thrashing and scurrying from Jon Kindon and Tom Cooper helped us to eventually post a reasonably credible total of 231, falling just short of the total by 7 runs, with 5 balls left in the innings. It was noticeable that when we were within sight of the target, Ethan decided to switch from bowling spin to bowling fast, seam-up. 🤨 He ended up with 5-45 off just 6.1 overs.

So we almost got there, despite the dodgy inclusion of some obvious Twickenham “ringers”. A credible effort from all.

Author: Matt O’Toole

Scorecard

Teddington 4th/Club XI vs Burgh Heath 2nd XI - Monday, 1st May, 2017

I'm not sure when was the last the club managed to arrange a pre-season friendly for the 4th XI, but we managed it this year and the opposition even turned up this time (Burgh Heath went to Chessington instead of Teddington when we tried to arrange a friendly with them last year!).

In any case, enough of them arrived for us to start at 1.50pm and having won the toss, Matt O'Toole decided to put us in as, by that time, we only had 9 players ourselves (you'll never guess who was late - TK!) and a bit of rain was forecast for later, so some players had expressed the wish to get some pre-season batting practice in.

Dilan Camball and Phil 'Headless' Eastland opened for TCC and managed to get us to 19, before Phil played on. Hasan Aziz only added 4 before being out LBW and Dilan followed soon after. 34-3. Not a great start. However, Euan Munday started to play nicely and Dave Pearce added a couple of boundaries before he too headed back to the pavilion. Matt O'Toole did pretty much the same as Dave (altho he was only 50/50 as to whether he hit a 'bump' ball to a fielder, but had decided to walk because a) it was a friendly and b) a really old fella had caught it)). Shemal Camball (Dilan's younger brother) didn't last long either and we were 101-6 by this stage. Archie Talman and Euan then managed to bat very sensibly, Archie (15*) rotating the strike and leaving Euan to score at the other end. Euan finished on a very credible 78. You can see him getting to 50 on our official Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5KmZ8gJENc). TCC had posted 166-7 from 35 overs.

Then the rain arrived. Covers on. Early tea.  The first part of their reply offered little for us, although Tauseef Khan (TK), Dilan and Archie all moved the ball through the air well. TK managed to get one wicket at 19-1, but their #1 and #3 then managed to add 107 runs without further loss. Nick Lockwood arrived to join the fray and bring us to 11 players, but only managed 1 over. Burgh Heath, to be fair, managed the required run rate and rarely looked uncomfortable during the chase. Stan Nicholson returned very respectable figures of 4-0-25-0, but pick of our bowlers was probably Hasan Aziz, who returned very good figures of 5-0-16-2. The end of the innings involved some minor drama. With a handful of runs needed, Shemal threw the ball on the bounce ball back to O'Toole (keeping). An errant tuft of grass on the square caused the ball to pop straight into Tooley's face, knocking off his glasses and giving him a nice cut on his nose. Pads off (Dave took over). Off for a quick patch up from Josh Knappett and Tooley then came back on to find Burgh Heath only needed 1 run to win. Matt (possibly a little dazed) asked Stan who was bowling. 'You are!' came the reply. OK, time for a bit of a cameo. Still bleeding, Tooley first threw a grenade (dot ball), but followed up with a quicker delivery which pitched just outside leg, went through the gate and took out leg stump. He couldn't follow up with anything more dramatic, though, as he then threw down a wide, giving the win to the opposition. Still, 0.2-0-1-1 gives him a good strike rate, if nothing else! :)

A very good natured game, played in the right spirit (and Tooley only had to spend 3 hours in A&E afterwards).

View the full scorecard here. 

Teddington CC - Club XI Vs The Gardeners, Sunday 22nd May 2016

Sunday saw us have the first of this season's friendly fixtures against a capable and friendly team called The Gardeners. When "Tooley" (Teddington's Club Captain, Matt O'Toole) went to meet their captain before the game, three of their players had to agree whose turn it was!

Matt won the toss and seeing as it was a warm day, we were playing on the 1st team square and we had a good side, stuck us in. Richard Bennett and Hasan Aziz opened and got us off to a great start, Richard playing particularly well off his legs. Hasan finished on a well made 51 (10 x 4s) when he went for a wander down the pitch and was stumped. Richard made a measured 40 (4 x 4s) and was clearly frustrated not to have turned it into a bigger score, when he was out caught. Young Ed Lord then made a useful 17. At this point. we'd got to 146-5. Then Jamie Letten, who had been ticking along nicely on his debut for the Club XI and Tooley (40) managed to take us up to 217 before Tooley swung at a straight one and was skittled by their captain. Jamie managed to get to 55* by the time we'd finished on 233-7 off our 40 overs. Not too shabby.

Their run chase.... well, what can I say? We don't often expect the opposition to chase down 200+ on a Sunday, but they did. Jamie and Shaz both took a wicket each before their No 3 (120*) and No 4 batsmen (61*) calmly kept on hitting the ball wherever they liked and took the game away from us. Their partnership was pretty faultless and chanceless, to be fair and Tooley even threw all 11 bowlers at them, even taking his green pads (don't ask) off at drinks to have a go with his leg spin (if you can call it that).

This game also set a new record for the club (probably) as Mike Shufflebotham ("Shuffs") also turned out for us today and apparently this marked a 20 year run of him appearing at least once a season for a Teddington XI. Not a bad effort at all.

View the scorecard