"That's just good cricket." A phrase that conjures images of sunny afternoons, immaculate pitches, gritty batting, and clinical fielding. Tuesday's fixture against AdHoc provided none of these. And yet it also gave us so much more: from controversial umpiring calls to Mike's colourful responses to those calls. And isn't that why we really love this game?
To set the scene, I arrived late at the ground and walked up under dismal grey skies to see Abhi open the bowling, running in hard on a particularly wonky astro strip. Within a few deliveries he produced a dolly to cover which was, unfortunately, a bad drop. Oof, tough one Charlie. Luckily Stockers removed the danger man in the next over, out on a poorly attempted sweep as the ball passed cleanly by everything and into the stumps. Abhi returned to rapidly dismiss a batter who couldn't even see the ball, let alone play a shot, against his rapid pace.
Things got properly heated in Stockers' second over, when a delivery outside off tempted the batter into a wild, heaving swing which was knicked behind and well taken by keeper Ralph. Despite the fact that every player in the field, and the children on the playground, and the birds nesting in nearby foliage, all heard the obvious contact of an outside edge, and appealed in full voice, the batsman refused to walk and the umpire stared placidly into the middle distance. Reactions to this brazen missed call were mixed. I nervously started fiddling with my socks. The non-striker looked helplessly at the square leg umpire, both awkwardly aware that their teammate was commiting a cricketing faux pas. Mike could be heard shouting "are you fucking serious sunshine?!"
Back to the action and another clinical Abhi over, dishing the ball back to Matt, who got his (other) man when Charlie took a somewhat more difficult catch- as they say, any fielder worth his salt wants the ball to come to him to atone for an error. The scorecard for the remaining balls of Matt's over suggest that the new batter settled in with four dots; what it doesn't reflect is that one of those was a leg-side snick off the bat into the well-placed mitts of the captain. Surely this would force a dismissal decision from the umpire, right? No? Mike erupted- Ralph had to step in to try and smooth things out before it came to blows while, again, everyone else felt the supreme cringe of another egregious miscall. Or was that just me who felt like I'd wandered into a painful Peep Show sketch? To complete a hat trick of would-be wickets, aka the five-for that wasn't, Jack proceeded to drop another soft catch inside the ring off Stockers' bowling. The scorecard may not remember but rest assured that we do chairman!
Jack and Aamir were introduced at first change to good effect. With the last ball of his first over, Aamir finally took the valuable wicket of the original deaf batter- on a knick behind to the keeper, naturally! And a new umpire, it should be stressed. Buoyed as we were by such a turn, the batting side did start to settle into the innings. There were several calls of 'catch' in Jack and Aamir's spells as the AdHoc batters lofted consistently catchable shots to everywhere in the field except where fielders were positioned. So who do you bring in when you need that crucial wicket? Satya of course. Within four balls he had a batter trapped LBW and was bowling in full flow, only pausing in his path of destruction when Brendan stepped in for a single over and a single wicket: first ball, outside off, a huge noise as Ralph collected his fifth/third catch of the innings, a massive appeal- does this sound familiar? Except this time our new umpire put his finger in the air. Sure, he might have been completely unable to count how many deliveries were in an over, which was somehow always three, but at least he could hear. Sat back into the attack, three wickets left to fall. First up, flicking off the edge through to Ralph again for a total of four 'official' catches plus the two others. Next up, bowled through the gate, plastic stumps flying. Last man up, hat-trick ball... and Sat produces another beauty to splatter the stumps again and finish the innings in tremendous style: a hat trick and incredibly impressive final figures of 4-for-none in nine balls bowled.
AdHoc managed only 81 runs in the end and Dodgers began quickly and confidently in reply. Tamal picked out the bowlers quickly, crunching fours by beating both mid-off and mid-on at his choosing. Mike also found joy with his trademark late cut, which AdHoc curiously chose not to defend with a fielder, and punished anything outside off. Tamal retired at 25* in the seventh over, while Mike was leisurely and hung around until his own 25* in the ninth. Charlie clearly thought that the openers' strike rates in the range of 135 was far too slow, and launched a powerful 21* in only ten balls. So it was that Dodgers found themselves with scores level and a new man at the crease, Jack, with a chance to end the game in style (and ten overs spare). So naturally he decided to prod his first ball straight back to the bowler, who fumbled it straight into the hands of his teammate for a comical relay catch. Sorry Jack, not your day. Send in the chairman to finish the job: one ball, punched for four. Game, set, match.
When the AdHoc umpire had asked, bewildered, at the end of Satya's hat trick, "is that over?" after somehow losing count of both the number of deliveries bowled (three) and the number of wickets remaining for his side (zero), I think we can conclusively say that it was, indeed, all over.
Scorecard: dodgers.play-cricket.com/website/results/7711874
Man of the Match
Satya 6
Ralph 4
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