The Ladder Cricket Club

If there is one lesson to be learned from sport and which conveniently then applies to almost everything in life, it is this: “Don’t think, act.” That’s it. That’s the message. That’s my new mantra, the Way of the Crouch End Samurai.

Coffman challenged me to a game of tennis. Not, it’s true, the Real thing which is played indoors with lop-sided rackets by grumpy members of the Establishment with knee-braces, but this new-fangled version for the middle classes, Lawn Tennis I think it’s called, which has, I’m told, become quite popular.

I was there at the court early, naturally, five minutes before the appointed 9.15 but only, in fairness, because I do own a wrist-watch and so I had fully twenty minutes to do some slightly elderly stretching exercises, look around the court and do a little discreet milf-watching in a perfectly normal healthy way. But at a quarter to ten, with a rattling of bicycle stabilizers, here was Coffman.

On the face of it, this was always going to be a mis-match. Coffman is incredibly keen, plays four times a week, is a qualified tennis coach, is sponsored by Robinson’s and wears a pair of tight white shorts. I, on the other hand, have played tennis – or this vulgar corruption of the game – only once or twice in the last 30 years, had to borrow a bat and was suffering from a chill from ingesting too much pond water over the course of the heat-wave week.

The problem with tennis, ask anyone, ask any of the top players, is the serve. It’s a dilemma. The first serve, being flat and fast and delivered with the customary grunt, never goes in, ever, or hardly ever, maybe one in a thousand. The second serve, lollopingly slow, bounces up and hangs like a fluffy little planet waiting to be creamed wherever the returner chooses. It’s a problem, the result of which, in the first part of the match at least, was that neither one of us did much in the way of holding serve. We got to three all, in games of pleasingly long rallies – or ‘rests’ as we call them in the older code – and lots of extended deuces.

This is the other thing. I’m getting to my point here: Unforced Errors.

Unforced errors are caused by the brain, by thinking, or specifically by thinking when you should just be acting. Unforced errors are caused by the brain thinking it has a better idea how to do things than the body: it never does.

You know how it goes. The ball comes across, not too hard, not too low, not too deep: you get there easily. Your feet, which have done all this a thousand times before, do what they need to do. Your arms and hands likewise. Your ankles, knees, hips, spine and neck also fall into just the right alignment to deliver the killer pass or lob or drive ramrod straight down the line, even your lips, getting in on the act, fix themselves in a steely sneer of certain victory and then the fricking brain pipes up.

“’Scuse me,” it goes, “But how about a drop shot instead? Or a cheeky little cross-court dink?” And so you do. I don’t know why you do, but you do, you try it, you do, you go for Plan B.

Which fails. Obviously. The ball goes into the net or goes wide or chips up off the wood. You lose the point, you always do and why? Because you tried to play with your brain, your stupid brain, instead of leaving it to the experts, to your clever feet, your skilful hands, your innate hunter’s eye and timing. You fool.

By the end, Coffman, metronomic of serve and oddly quick and deft returning, had won, 6:4. But it was a good game and lessons were learned and next time will be different.

In other sports news, The Ladder lost a cricket game.

Hoyle came to the correct ground and batted well for his 77. He did get dropped almost every other over however. He also kept doing this thing of not running when he miscued a shot and just standing in his crease haranguing himself. He also did this thing of trying desperately to give his wicket away every time he was dropped. He did bat well though but there again, he would do, he’s a good batsman. (On balance though, it is probably no calumny to record that he later fielded like a complete spas.) Arkell second top-scored with a tedious and unstylish 27.

Overall we made heavy weather of getting to a modest total of a hundred and sixty something. This under-powered batting performance could be put down to the heat, the pitch or the currency markets but actually should be put down to generally bad and occasionally very bad batting.

Bowling was also a struggle, especially given our lack of decent bowlers. That’s not entirely fair. We didn’t disgrace ourselves. Neither did we greatly trouble their batting. Nathan bowled well and with a nice action. Chirag bowled quite well as did Raj and even I did OK and even got a wicket, my first in over 30 years.

In summary: we lost. We were bad. They were better. It was hot. Jim Laddie was captain. And John McMullen tried to start a fight with their whole team, bless him.

Match Report The Ladder CC vs. The Beamers May 12^th 2012

I’m sorry. I’m late with this. Adam has been on my case. The dog ate my match report. So here it is and I’m going to be brief.

First game of the season then, on the top pitch at North Middlesex, a dry enough spell of weather emerging from a dark, damp Spring. Not that I personally minded the weather we’d been having, what with the drought, and, say what you like, the groundsman did seem to have played a blinder, the pitch looking pretty dry and tight and the outfield glowing, when the sun shone, in mixed greens like the nap on fine velvet.

Not that you’d call this a grudge match, but there is a slight frisson to the fixture, us and the Beamers: peas in a pod perhaps, both sides local, familiar, affable, ageing, of markedly mixed ability and both sides, make no mistake, behind the smiles, wanting to win.

Only one side could win of course and today it was The Ladder. Win and win well, we did, even, by the end, a little easily. And it was certainly played and won in typical Ladder style, fairly, generously and in good spirit. But a question lingers: was it really a Ladder victory?

Coffman was captain and either won or lost the toss. We were to bat in any event.

Ikram and Arkell went in and did well. Ikram, one of several Archway Graces players guesting today, looked good, aggressive and making up for a certain early-season lack of timing with a heavy batted, determined style. Arkell, at the other end, was definitely the Wise to Ikram’s Morecambe, scoring a ferrety little single for every one of Ikram’s boundaries. Not to worry. It was a sound opening stand that lasted until, just after his first and only four, a trademark and not unattractive cut through point, Arkell was out LBW for 17: OK for an opener’s knock nonetheless.

Laddie went in. Question was, with all the talk of the famous batting Pledge still ringing in his ears, would the man temper his normal natural batting exuberance with some defence, some restraint, some discretion? Batting-wise, if you’ll forgive the gynecological analogy, how would Laddie’s restored hymen hold out? Not long was the answer, sadly. Batting-wise Laddie showed he’s still a bit of a slapper and was out bowled for 6.

Sometime in the meanwhile also, Ikram also got himself out, LBW, and this was a pity. It had been a really good knock: belligerent, powerful, with many more runs coming from boundaries, including a dizzying six or two, than from anything more modest. Getting out for 86 though, it must be noted, Ikram set a new all-time Ladder high-score, eclipsing my own 80 on the adjacent ground from two summers ago. So well done, Ikram, well batted indeed.

With Ikram’s strong knock we were looking well-set. So it was high time for a wobble.

Dave Goodman, a new recruit went in and prodded about quite creditably before being bowled for 9. Chirag took guard to face his first ball and this is where I have to pause.

1.           I would rather play for the kind of team which does, when umpiring members of its own team, have the probity and balls to give batsmen out LBW.

2.           I do think it was out.

3.           So I did give it out.

4.           It might have been a fraction high.

5.           No, I think it was out.

6.           I now regret giving it, I must admit. I think it was out. But there was just enough doubt not to have given it. I shouldn’t have given it.

But, as the scorebook records, I did give it and Chirag, unfortunately, had to go, which, sportsman that he is, he did without a backward glance. Can there be any true honour without regret?

Salah came in and did not tarry, third victim, for 0, of their terrier-like Kiwi captain. Then Faizel came in, himself, on his day, a hell of a batsman, and he too was removed, bowled for 0. Our wobble started resembling collapse. This ship needed steadying and Shady Shadid was just the man to do it.

Shady was joined by our own terrier-like captain, Coffman, who after scoring a single and one gorgeous languid four (he is a far better batsman than he lets himself be), in what would later transpire to have been a singularly elegant stroke of captaincy, got himself out caught behind for 5.

Shady was joined at the wicket by Rashid. At this point, a pundit might have reckoned we were about 70 runs off the pace, maybe 90. And that was just what these two gave us. Devastatingly, as if in tandem, like lumberjacks felling the same tree with mighty blows, these two punched our total to 200 and then beyond, far beyond. We didn’t in the end even need our reliable and muscular number eleven, Will Hoyle, or WiHo as he likes to be known, still valiantly combing North London for the correct cricket ground. RTFE.

Our innings closed at 253, a rather strong par. It was invidious, at that moment, to wonder what it might have been without our guests from the Graces. Tea.

253 then. 253. It felt like a fair score, even a good score. But would it be enough. We all knew they had some strength in their batting line-up, and some depth as well. We would see.

The key moment for me was when their skipper fell. He had got a ton against us last year and could have done the same today had it not been for a very alert piece of work behind the stumps by new wicketkeeper Goodman. With him gone, stumped a mile out of his ground, it all began to seem like a foregone conclusion.

Rashid got a couple, as did Faizel. Shady got one. Coffers, bowling, got a couple and fielding, dropped a couple, although he was in fairness a bit short for the first one and horribly misled by WiHo’s calling for the second. Chirag bowled well also for his pair. Arkell even bowled a few overs without giving the match away. We were pretty sharp in the field, pretty tight in our bowling and, as firmly as a parent takes a hand-grenade away from a small child, we took the game away from them. All out for 173. Easy peasy.

A good performance then. A good victory. But the question remained: what was the name of the team that won it?

Was it The Ladder? Well, clearly not. Was it the Archway Graces then? Well, again no. What about The Ladder Graces? Or Laces? The Archway Gradder? The Ladderway Grarches?

One thing is certain. Without the efforts and talents of our Archway Graces guests this afternoon, it would have been a very different game.

 

 

 

 

 

An Open Letter from the Senior Batting Coach

Cricketers!

The thing is this. As you may know Adam has asked me to take the job of The Ladder’s Senior Batting Coach. I wasn’t sure at first: I am very busy. I mean, I was flattered obviously. True, I was last year’s top scorer in terms of total runs scored but all the same, what could I bring to the table? Well, after a lot of thought (it wasn’t just the money, although Adam was more than generous) I decided to take the job.

Having looked back over last season and subjected the results to a rigorous analytical examination, the following trends emerge:

1.           When we lose, we tend to lose because either a) we have not scored enough runs, b) even when we have scored enough runs, the opposition has scored more, and/or c) we have lost too many wickets.

2.           When we win, we win because either a) we score more runs than the opposition, or b) the opposition loses too many of their wickets prior to scoring more runs than we have.

3.           In the case of either winning or losing, the number of runs scored against the number of wickets lost is almost always an important, and occasionally the most important, factor that decides the outcome of the game.

None of this will, I’m sure, come as any surprise. But there’s more.

Apart from bowling, fielding and having a really tip-top mental attitude, batting is quite literally the only thing that wins games. But it’s not just batting: batting in itself does not win games. No. It is batting without getting out. According to the Laws of the Game (by which we are bound), it is only by not getting out that you, as a batsman, are legally entitled to go on batting, scoring runs, steadily amassing the kind of total that morally and psychologically castrates the opposition, unmans him, shames him, destroying his will to compete, to look his wife and children in the eye, even to sleep. This should be our aim.

In order to achieve this we have to do no less than to become:

Unstoppable Run-Scoring Machines

And to do this: we have to learn, to submit, to train. We have to be disciplined, we have to commit. We literally have to become, batting-wise, like Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands who do not know that the war is over (although, after nearly 70 years of no shooting whatsoever, they must be starting to wonder).

For this reason, I ask you to Make the Pledge.

Making the Pledge is a training mechanism designed to make it quite literally impossible to get out. Ever. You will literally never lose your wicket again. You will never again hear the sickening music of your wicket being broken. You will never again hear the word ‘owsthat spoken in your presence. Bowlers will fear you. Fielders will hate you. You will never offer a catch. You will never be given out LBW, nor will you ever have to walk. Hours after the game, even in the pitch dark, you will still be out there, in the middle, taking guard. Other players will esteem you. Children will admire you. When you are near, women will moisten slightly, in a good way.

Making the Pledge means that, for the entire period of training in the nets and for as much of the playing season as is humanly possible you will play only the following shots:

^1.                        The Forward Defence

^2.                        The Backward Defence

^3.                        The Leave

To every ball that is bowled at or towards you, of whatever quality, length, line and pace, you will select from the above list and the above list only, the most apposite stroke and play it. You will then resume your guard. Next ball, again, you will select either of the two defensive strokes or a firm leave outside off stump and thus will you proceed.

For the entire training period and for as much of the playing season as possible you will disdain the pull shot, the hook and the clip off the pads or toes to leg. You will abandon the sweep, the slog-sweep and the reverse sweep. You will cancel the cut. You will rise above the drive, be it to leg or off or through the covers. You will never even dream of striking a cricket ball anywhere but straight into the ground. Aerial shots of any kind will henceforward be the sole preserve of homosexuals and Frenchmen.

By the end of the training period, you will have changed. You will have become more. You will have become awesome. If you started out awesome, you will be something like 20% more awesome. You will be mighty, immoveable, a Force of Nature. And once the games start, you will never be out. We will win all our games by sickening margins, always by ten wickets and sometimes more. Won by ten wickets. Won by ten wickets and a hundred runs, two hundred runs, more. We will be awesome. People will refuse point-blank to play against us but in a good way.

So it is with this proud dream erect in my mind, I ask you, enjoin you, beseech you to join me. Make the Pledge! Defend or leave or die! No more of these aggressive, flamboyant or “run-scoring” shots. Forward defence, backward defence or leave. Do it for yourself, do it for The Ladder, do it for England. Join me!

Andy Arkell - Senior Batting Coach - The Ladder CC

A Personal View           

So that was the season. The games have been played, reports filed, end-of-season drinks drunk. The only thing still unresolved is whether ADL’s disputed early season ‘50’ can now, in fact, be safely recorded and regarded as such.

As mere team diarist I naturally hesitate to enter my own opinion here, but from what little I understand of the matter – after all, I was several yards away and paying close attention when he rashly got himself out one short of the landmark, I do think that there are circumstances, albeit unusual ones, when 49 does, after all, equal 50. Such unusual circumstances include dyscalculia, dementia, extreme drunkenness, wishful thinking and/or a pathological disregard for clear documentary evidence. Whether or not any or all of these obtain in the present question is far from clear. We are thus constrained to go on referring to de Lotbiniere’s knock at Montenotte Road as a North London-weighted “half-century”. Now can we all try to move on?

This then is a personal look back over the 2011 season, my first as a full-time member of the team. Calling it a personal view means that I can say what I like without Adam telling me to change what I’ve written.

If I look back over the season and condense it into a single imaginary game, it goes like this.

Arrive early. Heavy black clouds race over Ally Pally but so far no rain. Walk out to the middle and look at the pitch. I have no idea what I’m looking for. Go back to the pavilion, get bat out and swish it around a bit. Put bat back and get out ball. Throw myself a couple of catches. Bowl towards pitch. Walk over, retrieve ball and bowl it back towards pavilion. Repeat once. Briefly wish I had some rolling tobacco. Eat banana. People arrive, mainly from their team. Say hello and wonder whether they look any good and especially if they look like fast bowlers. (Fast bowlers: I hates them.)

Three minutes to the start, a few of our own players come into view: one is Roger or Tom P-S who, it transpires, sickeningly, is playing for them. The word is this: if we win the toss, we will bowl first and chase. We lose the toss and get put in.

Laddie goes in. He looks in awesome touch, hits some boundaries and then gets out for 19. Our other opener is Matt Woolston or some other stringer who will end up, having had a look at us, only playing for us about twice. Matt looks in awesome touch, hits some boundaries and then gets out for 39. Will Hoyle goes in. He looks in awesome touch, hits some boundaries and gets out for 29. Next in is Ian Reeve, who is looking much improved. In fact, with or without footwork, he is looking in pretty awesome touch, hits a couple of boundaries but then gets out. Dev goes in. He looks in awesome touch but gets a really good one from their opener, back for a second spell, and gets out. Kit goes in and makes a painstaking 11 in singles and is then out caught and bowled. Srikant goes in. He hits his first for four, misses his second by about eighteen inches, his third for two, his fourth for four and is then out for 10: a pity because he was looking in good touch there for a second. I go in, wearing a helmet and a sickly look, feeling like a sixteen year-old who has lied about his age, on the first morning of the Somme. First ball I get a fat edge which goes for four down to vacant third man. I stay in for the next three overs and only offer shots to anything well short and outside off: everything else I either miss or leave. I am on 19. I am actually beginning to feel in pretty awesome touch myself and am then out bowled. Disgusted with myself. Adam goes in, scores a careful 9 and is then run out. ADL goes in. He looks in awesome touch and scores a rapid, martial 19 before getting out to a total dribbler from their elderly fourth-change bowler. Andrew Lang goes in. As ever, he looks in awesome touch and starts scoring sweetly to all points of the wagon wheel as the remaining wickets fall at the other end. We are all out for 153, which is a fair score but may not be enough. We all know that runs went begging there. We change over.

Lang opens and bowls with grace and consistency but doesn’t break through. Tom P-S (if he is appearing for us that day) charges in from the other end and absolutely fires them down: he also gets no wickets, obviously. They have made a lively start here: one of their openers is that Kiwi wicket-keeper who is extremely good and hard to get out. They are on about 40 for none. Change of bowling: ADL runs in at a fast trundle and bowls somewhat erratically but breaks through, Srikant taking a good catch at mid-on. Jim Bonner comes on and bowls well, pretty fast and getting some movement. He too is soon in the wickets, Will Hoyle holding an absolute screamer at slip (this catch ends up being the third best catch of the season). James Oborne comes on and is utterly surgical. I have no idea how he does it. It is as if he presses a pause button and then threads the ball under the batsman’s bat by hand. He bowls two overs and finishes with four for, all of them clean bowled. They are on 96 for 6 and beginning to wobble. Adam comes on and bowls his loopy, deceptive spin. Batsmen’s eyes light up but one by one they are lulled into indiscretions. Catches are held including one, in the far deep, by me, believe it or not. I run forward sharply, back-pedal sharply and take the ball high over my head in one hand. I am amazed it sticks. My hand actually hurts quite a lot and I have hit my head as I fell over backwards. No matter. This, incidentally, ends up being the sixth best catch of the season. They are on 133 for 8. We are scenting blood here. Then either Ian Burge or Andy Tongue comes on and cleans them up. We have won by eight runs. Bloody marvellous. It is now dark. We go off. Then drink beer. Then get the train. Then home. Then pasta. Then telly, Then teeth. Then bed.

That’s how I remember it anyway. Something like that. I’m sorry if I have not mentioned you by name, but I couldn’t name-check everyone who has appeared for the team this year, because, as the little boy in Jude the Obscure says before killing himself and all his brothers and sisters, ‘We were too menny”.

I reckon I have probably played alongside about thirty or thirty-five blokes this season and yet every different Ladder team that took the field seemed to manifest some consistent sense of fairness, enthusiasm, generosity, all-round niceness and occasionally limited competence. I think that is rather to our credit, all of us.

What I have written here, then, is a condensation, a sketch of what was, I think, a highly enjoyable and not unsuccessful season which was played with just the right mix of gentlemanliness and cut-throat ruthlessness.

So, what was the season’s basic story then? What was its arc? Well, we were rubbish to begin with, improved sharply, won more than we lost (I think) and then faded slightly at the death.

On average we batted OK. Again, if I were to perform an imaginary condensation of every Ladder innings into one innings, it would be a free-wheeling, pugnacious knock containing exactly as many quite good shots as horrible, delinquent swishes. It would get a bit of luck and be dropped on three and then again on 9. Most of its runs would come from boundaries, the rest in sketchy singles. It would be going on quite nicely before getting out completely unnecessarily to a bad ball for somewhere between 14 and 31. Not a bad knock though. If we would only learn to play ourselves in, play the occasional defensive shot, look after the singles, take our eyes of the boundary rope and get out even 50% less frequently to bad balls, we would go from pretty good to formidable. I’ll highlight some of the best batting performances in a bit.

Bowling likewise: a pretty good effort, with the established bowlers generally bowling tidily, with spirit and discipline and some of the non-regular bowlers bowling really really badly. This last comment is certainly directed at myself as much as anyone else. There were also some real stand-out performances from bowlers, some of which I will highlight later.

Fielding was a clear story of huge improvement. Some of our fielding, especially early-season, was indeed, as Adam despairingly pointed out at the time, abject. It cost us games. But it really did improve, markedly, across the board. And again, there were some stand-out performances, of which more later.

So let’s make the awards. These are, of course, completely subjective and only relate to games I played in. And the winners are …

Catch of the season: Brian Mack at slip in the last game at North Middlesex. A beautiful, beautiful moment. A very good Roger McCann delivery finds the edge of one of their best batsmen who is on nought. Mack performs a fast elegant sideways stoop to take the ball in one soft left hand. Brilliant catch, at any level.

Most improved batsman: Ian Reeve. Ian joined us for the latter part of Winter nets and looked horrible. By mid-season this had all changed, he had found his run-scoring mojo and was loving it. Best knock was a muscular 33 at All Pally.

Best fielding by a non-regular player 1: Matt Woolston. Even injured one evening on the far pitch at Ally Pally, Matt fielded and caught like a warrior. This was the kind of fielding that wins games and, on this occasion, did just that.

Best fielding by a non-regular player 2: Ollie Biles. It was the same game actually as the one in which Matt Woolston made those catches (see above). On this same occasion, Ollie Biles fielded with tremendous zest and aggression: there just weren’t any runs anywhere near him. It was the kind of fielding that reminded you of what it was like to be young. Or more precisely, of what it might be like to be young and a really good fielder.

Bowler of the Year: for me it’s James Oborne in the 20 20’s. I have probably said enough about James’s bowling above. In the first game I captained, the one that was rained off, I asked him to bowl first change. He came on and took five, each one of them clean bowled. Astonishing.

Equal best innings of the year: Lang’s fifty at Ally Pally in a 20 20 at the end of June. I know lefties often just look like better batsman than right-handers but this was a lovely innings. 50 retired and all done with elegance and economy.

Equal best innings of the year: as assured in its own way as Lang’s 50, but in a totally different vein was Will Hoyle’s stubborn 53 in a Sunday game at Ranulph Road. Against some fast, accurate bowling and in searing heat, Will’s knock combined patience, endurance and hefty hitting. This innings was the winning of a good game here. At the end of the innings, you could have fried an egg on Hoyle’s head but he probably wouldn’t have let you. And it would have been a waste of an egg.

Best fielding by a regular player and catch of the season (runner-up): Dwayne Baraka. Amazing performance this. Previous to this game, to be honest, I would not have placed Dwayne all that high in the fielder ratings. Seriously. Nor would I, in truth, have called him much of a catcher. This though was a brilliant performance in the field: aggressive, committed and almost entirely non-porous. Dwayne’s fielding alone would have won him this award but he also pulled off the most extraordinary lightning-fast, full-length, finger-tip catch at point. It’s always good to see cricket played well, but sometimes it’s a privilege: this catch was one of those moments.

Innings of the year (special mention): Kit Brown at Parliament Hill. As I may have hinted earlier, Kit has not generally been known for his aggressive batting style. This innings at Parliament Hill in poor conditions – rain, greasy pitch and ill-mannered opposition – was an exhibition of patience, solid defence and sweet striking of the bad ball. This half-century was the foundation of our innings and was also Kit’s maiden 50. A rather special innings.

Innings of the year (special mention): My fifty at Ally Pally. Awesome, obviously: DVD should be out in the Spring (£22.99).

Bowler of the Year (Runner-up): Adam. If a bowling attack can be likened to a cake then, having seen him in the nets pre-season, I had tended to think of Adam’s bowling as the sponge rather than either the jam or the icing. But a run of decisive performances in the 20 20’s disproved this. Along with James Oborne, Adam was probably our most consistent wicket-taker.

So there it belatedly is. The 2011 season can now be said to be over.

Watch this space for The Pledge – a genius idea, one of mine, that is going to win us a lot of games this coming season. A lot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half this game went a little under twice as well as might have been expected. The other half, sadly, went only a little over half as well. The result of this algorithm was defeat: a game not so much taken from us as given away, a game we certainly could have, arguably should have and, were it not for a naively generous concession by the day’s captain, probably would have won and somewhat easily at that. Not an undignified defeat by any means, but a disappointing one nevertheless.

At the end of the day (as they say), wondering whether it is a better, nobler thing to play in generous spirit but lose than to play hard-heartedly and win ignores the obvious third option which is to play nicely but still win. This last option was certainly wide open to us today. Agonizingly though, we ended up opting for the first.

So, this was to be the last proper fixture of a long season, long at least in duration if not, strictly speaking, in total numbers of games played. A disjointed season too with so much of the high part of the Summer passing cricketlessly. It felt rather odd to be gathering again now, in Autumn, with the air cooler and the outfield’s grass still silver-beaded with dew at midday.

North Middlesex was the venue, the farther of the two good pitches there. Highgate Irregulars were the opponents. And Andy Arkell was captain for the day: his first act was to lose the toss. We would bowl.

On paper perhaps we were not the strongest bowling side. But that was on paper. On the pitch it was a different story. Andy Tongue opened and bowled with skill and discipline, finding no little movement in the air and off the pitch. Roger McCann, from the other end, matched him for steady line and probing length. Their opening batsmen, known as hefty hitters of loose bowling, were reduced to watchful defence, deferential leaving and dark muttering, between overs, as to the prodigiousness of the turn that both bowlers were getting. Their total advanced at test match pace. A breakthrough was only a matter of time.

It was McCann’s relentless line and length that did for their opener, clean bowled. And there was more to come in the over. Only a ball or so later, their number three was gone too: it was one of the plays of the Summer.

Both bowlers, as well as finding movement, were getting the odd ball to pop, to jump up off a length. Only certain lines did it but McCann found one now, outside off stump to the new man, a left-hander. The ball reared just enough on him, he parried with a straight bat, got a fat edge and sent the ball low, fast and well wide of Brian Mack at first slip.

Wide of Mack it may have been, wide of his deft left hand it was not. Over he went, in a swift, sharp arc to his left. The ball went straight into his hand, stuck and the rest was celebration.

There are moments in sport that reduce all present, other players included, to awe-struck spectation. This was one of them. As good as any catch at any level of cricket, Mack’s catch was instantly enshrined as Catch of the Season: not a but the, a beautiful bit of cricket. We were making inroads here. And more was to come.

Tongue was rewarded for a good spell with the wicket of their number four. Raj Desai came on to replace him and then came another magic moment. Their number two had been unusually tentative but was showing ominous signs of finding his range when he flashed at a wider Desai delivery. Fast and hard it went, fizzing out past point with four written all over it, where, stunningly, Dwayne Baraka waited.

Had we not just been witness to the Catch of the Season, this would certainly have been it. Baraka launched to his right and intercepted the ball low, at diving stretch and in the very tips of his fingers. It was a catch of tremendous instinct and commitment, another catch that would sit well in any youtube best-catch countdown. To witness two catches of this quality, in one innings, by men of your own team, is no small thing indeed.

Further changes to the bowling were rung. Srikant Chakravarti came on and bowled some well-judged and varied spin, finishing nine overs with figures of 1 for 39. Late arrival Andrew de Lotbiniere came on and bowled six good and economical overs finishing with 1 for 12, a very good spell. Desai also bowled six overs, finishing with an equally good 1 for 14. Tongue bowled ten overs over two spells and finished with an excellent 2 for 35. But bowling honours surely went to Roger McCann who, with the final ball of his second spell, clinched a richly deserved five-for. He finished his fifteen overs with a first-rate 5 for 33. (A five-for is splendid enough. That this was McCann’s maiden five-for made it only the more so.)

So we had bowled well indeed and we had needed to. Never ones for the timely declaration, our opponents had required that we bowl them all out. And not once, but in the case of their number three, twice. Which is where, largely due to a naïve concession by Arkell, the captain, the plot of the match thickened against us.

What happened was this. At the start of the game, our team numbers both stood at 10 men. Ours pending the arrival of A de L, theirs more permanently. Courteously but misguidedly, our captain asked theirs whether he would object to our bringing on our late arrival when he arrived. No objection, he said, on condition that he could bat one of their men again. Sadly, Arkell, our captain, did not have the acumen to deem this unfair and agreed. Therein lay the seed of our troubles and, it transpired, the key to the outcome of the game.

When it came to our batting, it must also be said, we did little enough to help ourselves. It was a performance with the bat as lacklustre and strangely stricken as our bowling and fielding had been assured. Some fell to good balls and some to bad, but sure enough, like one of those dreams when you cannot move your legs to run, one by one, inexorably, our batsmen fell.

Batting highlights today were lamentably few. James Laddie, top-scoring with 24, provided one or two moments of characteristic belligerence. Two of his hard flat pulls to midwicket stand out in the memory. As does one almost vertical six from Andrew de Lotbiniere down the order. The ball, in the case of this shot, a tremendous lofted hoik over the midwicket boundary, travelled about five hundred yards, most of them straight upwards: it was the earth’s rotation more than lateral force that took the ball over the boundary rope.

Survival at the crease alone would, I think, have brought us victory in this game. Apart from Laddie, only Ben Bishop with 11 runs and Raj Desai with 14, looked like sticking around for any length of time. We were all out, in the end for 134, close enough to the target to save face, not so close as to save the game.

A warm and sunny day in West Hampstead greeted The Ladder CC and UCS Old Boys who were both looking forward to getting on the field and playing some cricket given the rarity of sunshine recently. The game was a closely fought affair although both teams at various stages will have felt they were going to ease to victory.

UCS won the toss and elected to bat, much to the relief of Ladder skipper Adam Coffman who was unsure whether to bat or bowl first as while the weather was ideal for batting, the pitch had more than a tinge of green to it. We opened the bowling with two law lecturers from the London School of Economics - debutant (and sometime oppo for the Unavoidables) Charlie Webband Andrew Lboth of whom found early movement with the new ball. We dropped a couple of early chances and the second dropped chance (a caught and bowled) resulted in Andrew rushing to the local A&E with a dislocated and split finger; we wish him a speedy recovery. A special mention should go to the UCS skipper Joe Craig, who gave up his position in the batting order to take Andrew to hospital.

After the break for Andrew’s injury we took three wickets in quick succession (two to Charlie and one to Jim who had replaced the injured Andrew). For the next 15 overs we were on top taking wickets at regular intervals, including two from rank full tosses from Charlie and Srikant, to reduce UCS to first 79 for 7 and 108 for 8. Baji (another debutant) in particular was proving difficult to get away and bowled three maidens on the trot.

However, some loose bowling combined with some good shots let UCS off the hook and their 9^th wicket partnership of 49 took them to a sporting declaration of 157 for 8 at tea (again a special mention to Joe for deciding to give us a score to chase rather than trying to bat us out of the game after tea). Our bowling figures were Andrew 4.1-2-14-0, Charlie 12-2-39-3, Jim 9-0-37-2, Srik 9-2-36-2, Baji 9-3-22-1

We opened the batting with Ben Bishop and Sam Martin who made a steady start progressing the score to around 20 for 0. How much of this initial reply other team members saw is open to debate, as most were distracted by Stuart Broad taking a hat trick in the Test Match, which was being shown in the bar! (We would shortly witness a less welcome hat trick!) Sam was dismissed for 5 bowled by Ben Bloom, which brought Tom Harlow (the 3^rd debutant) to the crease who having just opened his account with a boundary was stood at the other end while Bloom possessing a Malinga like action blew away our middle order with a hat trick. First to go was Ben for 15, bowled after the ball rolled onto his stumps from a defensive shot, second was Ian Reeve who perhaps played a slightly too aggressive shot first up and was bowled, third was Tim Owen who got a full straight ball and was out LBW.

This brought Charlie to the crease who along with Tom began a recovery operation. However, this was brought to an end when Bloom had Tom adjudged LBW to complete his 5 wicket haul. This brought skipper Adam to the crease, with us needing a captains knock.

Charlie was given out LBW for 27 by the neutral (UCS) umpire, which from the scorers’ hut seemed to be missing leg, but as the umpire is always right Charlie had to go. Adam was denied the chance to be the hero when adjudged LBW for 8, although there was more than a hint of an inside edge.

However, Jim and Srikant mounted a fight back with dealing mostly in boundaries and suddenly we were within touching distance of victory. UCS from a period of relative strength were suddenly bringing back their strongest bowlers (James who bowled well without reward and the ‘5 for’ Bloom) in an attempt to stop the free flow of runs. Immediately this had an impact with Srik being bowled for 31 by Bloom’s first ball upon his return. With our last wicket pair at the crease (Andrew being unable to bat due to his finger injury) and 20 still needed to win, it seemed that perhaps we would come up just short. However, arrangements were hastily made for Sam’s future father in law to pad up and take Andrew’s place at number eleven if required.

With 13 to win Jim was run out after a misunderstanding with Baji and the usual ‘can we send in a non-fielder tobat’ conversations were being had on the sidelines. The consensus was he had looked ok in the nets earlier. However, Bloom who finished with excellent figures of 11-1-31-7 bowled Sam’s future father-in-law first ball, to end a closely fought game of cricket, which was played in an excellent spirit.

On a final note a thank you must go to Peter and Tony from UCS who sub fielded for us due to Andrew’s injury - Peter also took a great catch to get rid of one of their best batsmen!

It was a English summer evening straight out of an Antipodean cliché. A heavy drizzle had settled in, there were clouds as far as the eye could see, and no wind to move them on. A sheen of moisture graced the surface of the pitch. Only madmen would play on a day like today, surely. But by 6.10pm there were two enthusiastic teams on the pitch, facilitated by an accommodating groundsman.

The Unavoidables won the toss and decided to bat, and for the first few overs it looked like an excellent decision. After five dot balls to start the first over, Lang’s sixth ball was hit for six as cleanly as you like, almost hitting the front carriage of the passing 18.15 to Potter’s Bar. The same opener – all muscle, only moderate technique – continued the rampage in the following overs, clobbering three more sixes, all over Cow Corner. By five overs, the Unavoidables were flying along almost at a healthy 7 per over.

All this changed once Oborne came on to bowl. Late swerve into the batsmen, deceptive pace on a skiddy pitch, and pinpoint accuracy. After four overs the opposition was O(over)borne, with young James O finishing with game-changing figures of 5-11 – all clean bowled. It could have been 6 if not for a dropped catch from a distracted first slip.

With Oborne bowled out, it fell to Burdge to maintain the pressure. He stepped up admirably, bowling a beautiful line, and finishing with three well-deserved wickets. Again, all clean bowled, with one in particularly sticking in the memory – a perfectly judged off cutter that took the very top of the off bail.

After the usual mad panic at the end of the innings, the Unavoidables finished with a creditable 8-91 off 16 overs, and both teams thought that they had a chance at victory - though experience at the Ally Pally pitch suggests the total was sub-par, even in the wet conditions.

Unfortunately, we never found out which team’s confidence was more justified. After struggling through a handful of difficult overs in increasingly heavy rain (Yates looking good at the end on 13 not out) saner heads prevailed and the teams called it a day, to continue the battle in a more rhetorical fashion over a couple of beers. A promising match curtailed.

The relationship between a sport’s professionals and its enthusiastic amateurs is a complex one and not always what one might expect. In technique, of course, in skill and, to some degree, in style, we are right to emulate them, but not always, I think, in spirit. In cricket this is especially so.

These days, the white heat of commerce and competition bear on cricket as much as on any other sport. And even cricket, this loveliest of games, is vulnerable to the unbeautiful influence of those atmospheres. Which is, I think, the reason why responsibility for the spirit of the game lies more with the cricketing proletariat than with its elite. We should admire our professional idols for their game, but not always for their gamesmanship.

Drawing the line between what ones sees – and even admires – in the professional game and how one plays oneself, is a delicate matter. The double high-five has become a routine part of almost every fielding side’s celebrations but we caught that naff mannerism from the pros. When a key wicket falls we have even occasionally started hugging like soccer players for heaven’s sake: what next?

Well, what about sledging? We have all seen it and heard it done. We would probably all admit to the thrill of the well-judged piece of trash talk. Eddo Brandes’s cricket has been forgotten but his biscuit-themed retort to Glenn McGrath’s sledge will live forever. And who can forget Freddie ‘talking’ Tino Best out at Old Trafford in 2004? Or Jimmy Anderson’s classic counter-sledge against Mitchell Johnson in Perth last year?

The trouble with sledging is that only at its very best is it any good at all. Most of the time it is like any other form of attempted bullying: low, moronic and unworthy. And, as such, like the reverse-sweep, it is probably best left to the professionals.

Anyway, to the match.

I remember this same fixture last year, the same ground but later in the year. There was a rock and roll band playing badly in the bandstand: fifteen encores to a tiny crowd, every song as lousy as the last. We set them a total of 211, I remember that, including my own rather dashing 31. And I remember The Lashes. They were sweet and hopeless and collapsed for around a third of what we’d set them. We nearly put them in again, for fun and to make a match of it. But in the end we didn’t. We pencilled in a rematch for this year and we all went home.

How things change. There is a small, uncomfortable difference between wanting to win and wanting to beat the team you’re playing and this was the case today. Not all of their team behaved badly, it’s true, but the several that did set their team’s tone and the somewhat joyless mood of the game. But we did win and it was good that we did. It ended up as more of a satisfaction than a pleasure, like killing moles in the garden, you do it because you have to.

We certainly shouldn’t play this team again. The Lashes are like a slightly amusing person one has met on holiday, and rashly kept in touch with. Back then, for about five minutes, they may have seemed fun but the moment has passed. Now they should be dropped from the fixture list, firmly and without regret.

John McMullan was our captain today. His first act, he told us, taking shelter from the rain, was gracefully to have acceded to a list of rules, invented by the opposition, and presumably to their taste, governing the number of overs to be bowled, the spreading of the bowling throughout the team and retirements etc.

His second act, unfortunately, was to lose the toss. We were to bat. Once the rain had abated, Kit Brown and Andy Arkell padded up and went in. And the sledging started.

A greasy pitch, a capricious bounce – or lack of bounce -, a crosswind, more rain in the air, a slippery crease: to these factors, already trying enough to any batsman, the opposition added a constant barrage of jibes, wind-ups, criticism and name-calling. Not softly spoken either, this was a full-volume, ball-by-ball stream of intended underminings. Much of this raillery was, it’s true, not personally insulting, although some of it was. But it was constant. It wore thin in about the third over and ever painfully, annoyingly thinner from then on. Had there been a captain worthy of the name on the pitch, he might have piped it down a bit. Perhaps his cigarettes and swigs from a cider bottle kept him too busy for so fine a judgment.

Both openers – and especially Brown - deserve credit for weathering this deluge of verbal dysentery as well as they did. They even started, albeit somewhat cautiously, somewhat laboriously, to make a few runs.

Of the two batsmen, Arkell struggled more to cope with the atmosphere. He made some runs, seriously contemplated a bracing bit of manslaughter and then failed to get to the pitch of a slower delivery and was bowled under the bat for twenty-one. Not a bad opener’s innings though.

This was to be Kit Brown’s day however. He is not the most flamboyant batsman, it’s true, but – and this is no small thing – he has a textbook forward defence and knows how to use it. He also knows very well how to hit the loose ball which he did to good effect. His drive through the off side to anything overpitched, was both effective and elegant. His innings also showed that he has both the equilibrium and the doggedness to bat through and build a patient total no matter what the conditions and for this too, he deserves credit.

With Arkell’s demise, Ian Reeve went in. The derogatory chirping from behind the wicket and square leg resumed, intensified if anything. Reeve though, for a moment, looked in imperious touch, opening his account with a pair of booming fours. Sadly it was not to last. He was caught soon after, out for eight.

Roger McCann, returning to The Ladder after recent truancies, went to the middle. McCann’s batting can be a distressing experience, if you’re on the side trying to get him out. When he’s one of yours, it can be like watching a thunderstorm from safe indoors. You almost pity the opposition, or in this case, not. He and Brown went about building a partnership and did so well before, unsettled by the tricky pitch, McCann got not quite enough on one and was caught, for a valuable twenty-two.

Brian Mack went in next, scored two and was bowled. Mike Ripley came out to join Brown. It was these two who really guaranteed our score.

Ripley is a proper batsman and he played an innings here of style and power. I even have the impression that the sledging eased off, the fielders perhaps needing to conserve their breath for running to the bushes to fetch the ball. After a couple of sighters, Ripley himself needed to do very little running. Only moments, it seemed, after arriving at the crease, his score had leapt to just short of fifty. As had Brown’s, although, in his case, rather than leaping, it had got there at rather more of a cautious stalk. 

A double retirement was not to be however. On forty-nine, Ripley holed out to midwicket. Not an especially fitting end but an innings of tremendous verve nevertheless. Simon Yule came in and was sadly out almost straightaway, stumped for nought. Dwayne Baraka came to the crease.

This was also the moment for Kit Brown to complete his innings by retiring for fifty. It had been an innings, as I have said, of patience and quiet skillfulness lit by moments of elegant, well-judged stroke-making. It was also the only time in this batsman’s life when he will score his first ever fifty. Very well done indeed.

Ian Burge came out to join Baraka.

It is sometimes easy to overlook these short sharp final partnerships. But not, I think, in this case. We were, at the time, on 178, which was not unadjacent to par on a wet pitch on a wet day. Without much ceremony, however, these two added thirty in not very much time at all. They hit whatever came their way and ran hard. And in retrospect, no matter what had come before, these were the runs we could not have done without. Baraka finished on sixteen not out and Burge on eleven, also undefeated.

We closed then on 211, the same score as the previous year: an omen. The fielding side collected their empty bottles from behind the stumps, left the cigarette butts where they lay and traipsed off.

With rain in the constant offing, we switched quickly and took the field. Bowling-wise, what with the rules with which we had been saddled, this afternoon was a case of The Ladder expecting every man to do his duty.

The more established bowlers such as Ian Burge (1 for 12), Mike Ripley (1 for 10) and Roger McCann (1 for 19) did well, but, limited to four overs apiece as we were, others also had to step up and bowl. In all cases, these others, Ian Reeve (2 for 22), Simon Yule (0 for 17), Dwayne Baraka (1 for 24), Brian Mack (1 for 17), Andy Arkell (0 for 22) and Kit Brown (1 for 21) also did well.

Particular honours from what was definitely a team effort should probably go to Burge for being especially economical and Baraka for removing their key remaining batsman.

Even despite all this occasionally makeshift bowling effort – did I mention we were only ever ten men in the field? – they had, largely due to a very decent fifty from their number five, managed to get themselves alarmingly close to our total. With only a very achievable fourteen runs to get, it fell to the courageous Ian Reeve to bowl the final over.

His first ball was clunked to the midwicket boundary for four but the second scraped for a single. Ball three was a beautiful dot. As was the fourth. Ball five a single. And ball six, now needing to be a miraculous seven, dribbled down to square leg for just the one and we had won. Bloody marvellous.

I have probably made plain what I think about sledging. So where is the line? In my view, it is quite acceptable, at our level, to encourage your own bowlers, even loudly, pointedly and persistently. Such encouragement is often certainly calculated to fill the batsman’s ears and fair enough. But by addressing your comments directly to the batsman himself, you have, in my view, crossed the line. The only things that should really ever be directed at the batsman by the fielding side are light applause on his arrival, brief congratulations on any especially comely stroke and, perhaps, a word of commiseration when he is dismissed as, with our versatile and hardworking bowling attack, he surely will be. Anything much beyond this, as The Lashes amply demonstrated today, is just Tourettes.

Anyway, once upon a time, Ian Botham went in to bat. Arriving at the crease, he was met by Rod Marsh who snarled, “How’s your wife? And my kids?” Botham naturally didn’t miss a beat, “Wife’s fine,” he said, “But the kids are retarded.”

This world is, of course, a circus of dissolvings. Things change, seasons change, we change. Few things stand still even for the time it takes to pad up. There is comfort, then, when something lasts, holds its own, builds upon itself and just such a castle of constancy has been The Ladder’s habit of winning, on Wednesday nights, up at the racetrack at Alexandra Palace.

Even so, it was a shock, this evening, to find ourselves without the talents of team stalwart and, lately, talisman bowler, Adam Coffman, who, we are told, was out with his mother. Whatever the case, we would have to make do without him.

We were back on the main pitch again this evening, under a sky of massed grey cloud that spoke of rain but never, in the end, delivered it. The track looked promising, dry and hard under its short blond crop. It looked like it might have some spice, this pitch, some pace, maybe some bounce but until the first ball pitches, you can really never tell.

Andrew de Lotbiniere was captain tonight. He and the redoubtable figure of Roger McCann strolled to the middle to decide, with a coin, the order of play. De Lotbiniere won it and determined that we should bat.

James Laddie and Chirag Ratila went to the middle to open. Chirag looks an assured and well-organised bat but did not, on this occasion, last long. Playing around a straight one he was bowled for just one.

Andy Tongue joined Laddie and between them they decisively steadied the ship. Both played well and similarly, blocking well when necessary and bludgeoning the bad ball. What became clear in the stand of over fifty they built together was how strangely slow, for all its appearance of tautness, this pitch really was. Time and again, both these able batsmen were ‘through’ their shots before the ball deigned to arrive. This phenomenon sometimes gave the impression of runs going begging but, actually, they did well, these two batsmen. By the time first Laddie and then Tongue were removed in quick succession, the former bowled for twenty-eight, the latter caught for a no less valuable twenty-five, we had moved ahead to 58 for 3, a fair enough start.

Hoping to continue his bright form of the previous Wednesday, Tim Yates went in. He was joined by the skipper, Andrew de Lotbiniere. Yates marched to a brisk six and was then taken in by that slow pitch and bowled. Andy Arkell was in. His first ball faced, a quicker one angling in and across from leg to off, found that much-used portion of Arkell’s bat, the edge, and scooted away for four, a not untypically streaky start.

De Lotbiniere, having scored two, got a good one from their useful, if eccentrically actioned, left-armer and was bowled. James Oborne came out.

Modesty, normally so appropriate to my actual performance, should not prevent me from saying that Arkell was on the way to playing a reasonably capable innings: a kind soul has already referred to it, rather too glowingly, in these pages. After that streaky start, he did seem to strike the ball with more fluency than usual. A couple of his drives for four through cover – through cover’s legs on one occasion – did make up in timing what they lacked in footwork. And two fours even went to the leg side, terra generally pretty much incognita to this batsman.

Meanwhile at the other end, also hoping to continue his rollicking form of seven days previous, Oborne scored six but, momentarily duped by the pitch, was then bowled. At this point we were 105 for 6. There was work still to do. Tim Owen came in.

Owen played a compact and powerful innings, timing the ball well: most of his runs came to well-struck, well-placed boundaries. He also ran with exemplary sharpness between the wickets, a practice that was occasionally to alarm his more sluggish batting partner but which nevertheless found runs where more timid running would have yielded only dots.

Owen and Arkell kept their heads and marched the total resolutely towards – and even rather beyond – respectability, before Arkell retired at fifty-one. John Byrne came in, scored two and was unlucky to be run out. Sunny Saikia came in at the death and was caught and bowled on the final ball of the innings. Owen was unbeaten for a very valuable twenty-three.

With a generous contribution of wides and other extras, 163 was what we had set them. Mindful of the light, we quickly switched over.

These 20:20’s can be all about the start you get. And Dev Pathak, opening the bowling, gave us a perfect one: one for one in his first, a maiden in his second. Sunny Saikia was equally destructive from the other end, one for one in his first and another wicket in his second. This was, indeed, a fine start. Things did slow down for us thereafter, mainly because of Roger McCann.

If McCann’s jumper had a badge on it for every team he appears for, there’d be no wool visible and it would weigh twenty pounds. Batting with him can be an exhilarating thing: against can be dispiriting and this evening he was in one of those moods. His fifty – and mercifully retired – was made of sixes mainly and a withering display of hitting it was too.

With Roger gone, or resting, at least, between onslaughts, our bowlers did extremely well. Chirag varied pace and action well and finished with two for thirty-two.

James Oborne, another of our short-form talisman bowlers was also in dangerous form. What is so impressive about Oborne’s bowling is its implacable consistency of line and length. He also varies his pace to tremendous effect. The result this evening was a truly excellent three for eighteen, outstanding in this form of the game. These wickets and a fine run-out of a useful batsman made it Oborne’s game with the ball.

None of their other batsmen stood much in our way, especially with Oborne and Chirag firing well in tandem but the fall of their ninth wicket brought the grim prospect of Roger’s reincarnation, as a half-centurion retiree. And this time we could not merely throw him another fifty and hope he’d go away. This time he could bat on until either he or his partner fell.

In the event we did it though. Their eleventh man went for a risky one and was run out. The figures make it look easier than it was in the end but for a moment there, with McCann in martial mode, it could have gone either way. But there we are, another Ally Pally evening, another short-form victory for The Ladder.

 

 

Bring on the good news.  Tonight the Ladder won yet another 20.20.  The match report will come, but given the writer of the report is far too modest to blow his own trumpet, it is left to me to point out that, yes we won, yes we kind of won easily, but the reason we won so easily was that Andy Arkell hit one of the most effortless, languid, easy fifties of the season.

We played a good team, but we had a good start - Andy Tongue and James Laddie getting us up and running with their usual approach of biff and bash, but just when the stuttering was beginning, Arkell came in at number 7 and played beautifully for his 50.  Shot after shot raced through the off-side, fielders were split with ease and the ball remained firmly on the floor.

163 seemed a big total.

But the opposition despite being 30 odd for four after their first 7 overs, then made a great match of it Roger McCann a sometime ladderite, hit six after six as the ladder was reduced to fielding 9 men on the boundary yet still watching the ball sail 15 yards over their head, no-one bowled badly, yet the ball kept flying to the fence, retired on 50, he didn’t have to wait long until he was back in with them 9 wickets down and needing 15 an over off the last four, he still threatened to pull off an unlikely win, until a needless run-out as he chased the strike ended the match in the 19th over.  A victory by 20-odd runs and another fine effort led by Arkell from the Ladder.

On this day, Alastair Cook, England captain and honorary member of The Ladder CC, made a ruthless 95 from 75 balls to rout the Sri Lankans at Trent Bridge, many of these runs coming, extraordinarily for him, in front of the wicket. Make no mistake then, this is the season of miraculous cricketing make-overs.

In our case, there is, in all probability, no single factor that has brought about the transformation. A month ago we couldn’t buy a victory. These days, The Ladder CC looks itself in the mirror and sees nothing other than the square jaw and steely gaze of a bona fide match-winning machine.

We were on the side pitch, this time, up at Alexandra Palace, with a chilly, fitful wind pushing across the ground, promising to meddle with the bowlers’ line and length. Adam Coffman, returning to his place – some would say, his rightful place – as the team captain, lost the toss, a toss he would, as ever, like to have won. No matter though, we would have to field.

Felix Frey, opening, bowled steadily from the far end, with that gusting breeze drifting his medium pace across onto the legs of the right-hander. The wind was even more disruptive of the slower bowling of Duncan Nicholas, opening at this end. Nicholas did seem to struggle for line and length and was punished for it. His spell had a sting in its tail, however: his final ball, lollopingly slow but dead straight, trapped their opening bat plum in front LBW. Well done the bowler.

James Oborne came on and he too did not settle into anything like his lethal best. He finished with none for twenty-six from his ration of four overs.

Bowling-wise, Andy Tongue, from the far end, did much to steady the ship, creaking in the face of muscular, hungry batting from their numbers two and three. Two wickets he took in a fine, tight first over and the tide, imperceptibly, started to turn in our favour. Tongue ably varied pace and line in a good tight spell that finished with two for nineteen, excellent going in the circumstances.

Raj Desai came on and did good work with his wristy slow-medium pacers. He took a quick wicket and finished with one for twenty-three from three.

The scoring rate, by this stage, had slowed noticeably. Earlier they had looked well set for a big total. Now though, efficient bowling and alertness in the field looked like keeping them to something closer to 150 than 200. The in-form Coffman came on further to tighten the tourniquet.

In the two games prior to this one, Coffman had taken seven wickets for only forty-six runs. He did well again here, was well supported by his fielders and finished with two for sixteen from his three overs. Across a trying wind and on a pitch with reasonably close boundaries, this is good bowling.

So with the help of a further run-out, their innings ground to a halt. A belligerent start had been reined in by bowling that was steady more than flamboyant and they had set us a target of 150 runs.

Now, 150 in the twenty over form of the game is a curious thing. It is hard to tell, just by looking at it, how big it really is. In the short form, 150 will win games as often as it loses them.

Newcomer Michael Davidson and James Oborne were the first of our batsmen to pad up and set out to discover which kind of 150 we were dealing with here. The answer soon became clear. This particular total was the kind that responds to bullying. Filling his pockets with the smaller boys’ lunch money, in this case, was James Oborne.

Oborne himself would probably agree that his thirty-four in just eleven scoring shots was a thing of agricultural more than classical beauty, with all parts of the bat being used to equally powerful effect. He had, nevertheless, given us a purposeful start before, swinging heavily at a slower one, he was bowled. Good knock that though. In, despite recent injury, came James Laddie.

Meanwhile, Davidson, our other opener, had been having a slightly more restrained start. He soon got going though. I don’t know what it is that seems to make a good left-hander appear (to my eye at least) more stylish and economical in his shot-making than a right-hander. Whatever it is, Davidson had started to play an innings of deft placement and timing: especially elegant were some of his strokes late and fine on the off side. His exhibition of stroke-play ended with his retirement by agreement for an excellent fifty. Joining Laddie in the middle was Tim Yates.

As has been said before, you can never be sure which James Laddie you’re going to see batting, the intemperate swisher or the forceful run-getter. Happily, on this occasion, it was certainly the latter. After what, for him, was a rather guarded start, he started scoring freely. The latter part of his innings was made up of boundaries in the main, including two towering sixes. By the close, Laddie had moved to thirty-four, not out.

Rashness also sometimes gets the better of Yates’s better batting nature but, again happily, not this evening. In his innings tonight of fifteen, not out, he kept his head over the ball with the bulk of his runs coming from well-struck boundaries.

And so it was, with five overs to spare, we eased past the target and retired to the pavilion for beer. 150 can sometimes seem like an impossible total to chase down. Certainly we have ourselves won with a lot fewer runs on this very ground. Tonight though, good-enough bowling and belligerent batting were enough to get us through. We even made it look rather easy.

 

 

 

Ranulf Road, the main pitch: sunshine and wood-pigeons on the outfield, magpies bicker and joust over by the cemetery wall. Men in white gather. There are worse ways to spend a Summer Sunday.

Despite steady improvement and a string of wins (two is a string) in the short form, we had yet to record our first long-form victory of the year.

As the teams assembled, all the normal pre-match ruminations took place: form was discussed, bats swished, the pitch strolled over to and appraised. Jim Bonner, the day’s captain, started turning over potential batting orders and bowling combinations. Players threw each other catches on the outfield.

Only one fly in the ointment: but what a fly! With bare minutes to go before the start, who should shamble into view but the simian form of Tom Piggott-Smith. Come to play for us perhaps? To lend support from the touch-line? Hand round sandwiches at the break? Not a bit of it. Piggott-Smith was here, it soon transpired, to play for the opposition, for the enemy, for them. The perfidy.

Even with the pall of this betrayal in the air, the game went ahead. The toss lost, we were to bowl first. Not what we might have chosen perhaps, but with clouds beginning to shroud the sky, the new ball might be inclined to swing. So we took the field.

Our opening bowlers, Andrew Lang and new recruit, Adam Mellows-Facer, laboured away capably, restricting their opening batsmen but never quite breaking through. One of their openers was, however, most unfortunate to top-edge a good-length ball hard up into his own face. Bleeding from a deep tear in his lip, he was helped from the field and straight to A & E. A graphic illustration of the usefulness of protective headwear.

Neither Lang nor Mellows-Facer did find a way through a determined, careful stand by their re-formed opening pair. It took a bowling change and another quirk of fortune to break it.

Adam Coffman must be enjoying his exeat from wicket-keeping duties: he is bowling with good flight and needling length. Coffman had clearly begun to rattle their opening bat before he, the batsman, was unfortunate to be given out LBW. True, the batsman was all the way back and plum in front but the umpire must have been the only man in North London not to have heard the edge he got. In retrospect, we might have called the unlucky man back but relief at his demise drowned out such fine notions and away he went.

Jim Bonner came on, took an over or so to bowl the knots out of his shoulders and then did really well, with good length, plenty of movement and increasing heat. He removed their strong number three, well caught by Lang at mid-off and with that, the soft underbelly of their batting order was exposed.

Most of the damage was done by Coffman, finishing with a remarkable three for sixteen off eight and Bonner, who himself finished with three for twenty-two off eight including four maidens. Those are great sets of figures, both of them, by any standard.

These two bowlers were well supported by Richard ‘Tricks’ Spring (two for twelve), Lang, Kit Brown and Mellows-Facer who contributed the final key wicket and finished with one for nineteen off most of eight, fair reward for a good, accurate spell.

There are two other very honourable mentions to make from this half of the match. Guess how many extras there were in the whole innings … Two. That’s right, two. Remarkable, really, and a great credit to the bowlers’ discipline and to the concentration and skill behind the wicket of Ben Bishop.

The second mention-in-despatches has to go to Will Hoyle for a truly impressive fast, face-high catch at first slip off a fiery climbing Bonner delivery. This one went like the proverbial rocket. Wonder Woman used to catch speeding bullets but she had a spandex unitard and magic bracelets. Hoyle was in whites and used his bare hands. Glorious catch that, one of two he took on what would later turn out to be his day.

So, tea-time. We had bowled them out, save for the one unfortunate retirement, for a threadbare 109. On a nice flat track, surely that wouldn’t be too hard to overhaul.

After the break, welcome in the humid heat that had settled over the ground, our two openers, Will Hoyle and Andy Arkell went out to the middle.

It has been said before that Hoyle often looks as if he will score all your runs for you. This afternoon, he came close to doing just that, or just short of 50% of them in any case. His innings was certainly the foundation of the win that was in the making. Only the heat of the day seemed to bother him at all as he crafted a careful, powerful innings. He was on twenty odd before his partner was off the mark.

Andy Arkell played an innings of characteristic flakiness and good fortune. He does have the odd shot, it’s true – a square cut from a fast lifting ball fairly sang its way to the fence - but he has to survive an awful lot of his own bad shots before he gets to play a good one. Even his most ardent supporter would have to describe his footwork this afternoon as sub-optimal. But he did contrive to stay put, that much can be said: his major contribution was probably in encouraging his partner to bear with the heat and hang in for his fifty. He was eventually out, Arkell was, as, in fairness, he deserved to be, caught behind, for a not un-useful 19. Adam Mellows-Facer went in at three.

Hoyle continued to play an innings of substance. He has a good defence, knows how to leave the ball outside off and hits the bad ball hard. His fifty came from a gloriously well-timed cover drive which thumped into the fence and took him to 53. And then he was out, almost more of a retirement really, as he skied the ball to be caught by the keeper. Lovely innings that though, a match-winning innings. he was replaced by Andrew Lang.

The rest was more or less of a formality. Mellows-Facer scored three and was desperately unlucky to be given out LBW. Bill Booth went in. Lang steadied the ship and scored ten, not out, including the winning runs. Booth finished not out for one.

And that was that, all over by a shade after six in the evening. A most satisfactory win it was too, especially since its recipe contained just a pinch or two of that spice called schadenfreude.

I personally still think that Tom-Piggott could make it back into the team. Maybe not this year and maybe not the first team, but he should definitely stay in touch.

Will Hoyle on his way to a match winning 53

I think Arkell does himself a dis-service by not fully describing his role in the shot of the day….

Not only does the cheeky little number 5 think he can reverse sweep Coffman to the empty third-man area, but he actually connects pretty well and as the ball is travelling swiftly and to the left of Arkell at backwards point, he takes off like a cross between Gordon Banks and Billy the Fish and plucks the ball out the sky before tumbling safely to the turf….  

Coupled with his one-handed running backwards from mid-on effort against Archway Graces the week before, this puts him at the top of the catch of the month charts for June.