At the age of 63, 2023 looks to have been my best season ever. I've never played so much cricket and as a result got my first ever five-fer and came in as the 4th highest wicket-taker at the club!
I've played in two teams, primarily the 5th XI made up of younger kids and old blokes and the 3rd XI made up of the better kids, usually who've got Dads that are cricket players that are generally looking to push on and become 1st XI players when they're 18 years old and blokes in their 30's and 40's. The other teams I play in are friendlies which are a broader mix and often include first XI players down to the 5th X and I'm usually the 5th XI player down to my bowling. These teams I love because the 1st, 2nd and 3rd XI players are often fit, agile and fully committed and therefore take catches off my bowling and prevent boundaries - very different to the 5th XI where the kids are still a bit wary of the ball and still haven't reached that point where they're willing to put their bodies on the line to stop a ball. The rest of the team are usually less than agile older who don't put in the time and effort to stay fit and agile and take their strength and agility far less seriously than I do.
As a result...
Of the top five here Kirby Jennings is the only other 5th XI player and up till last week she'd been in front of me as she is such a good bowler. As you can see her Strike rate is better than mine which is the figure I always feel is the one to pursue and get as low as possible. She bowls completely differently to me - tossing the ball up really high above the eye-line on a good length. She's often brought on when there's a batter that is destroying us and as you can see from her strike rate she gets the wicket that we need in a matter of overs and seems non-plussed when she's hit for 4's and 6's, she just seems to be un-phased and she bowls the same ball again and takes the wicket - often making the batters look foolish, I love playing in the same matches as her watching her do her work. She bowls SLA and says she doesn't get the ball to turn much and says it's the flight, line and length accuracy that works for her.
Again as with last season, I've bowled Flippers. Primarily cross or mixed seam back-spinners, I rarely bowl with the seam up. I have a back-spinning off-break variation which I bowl rarely, this season I've taken at least a couple with it. But for me one of the good things about the season having played in the mixed level games is that I've been encouraged to bowl Leg-Breaks by the better players and they've worked with a few wickets which has been nice. The season came to a close with some experimentation with bowling classic Top-Spinners (See previous post) and all through Sept (last night being the most recent) and these are coming out pretty well and look very promising. It looks like I might go in to the 2024 season with a range of Flipper variations and a Top-Spinner, with some Leg-Breaks on the rare occasion, but I'm still wary about bowling my Leggies in 5th XI games.
Friendly team captain?
We've had a pretty amazing Sept, today (30th) the weather is sunny and around 22-24 degrees in the South East of the country where I am and every Saturday through Sept we've had very similar weather and very little rain, so we could have easily played right through every weekend. The last league game was back in August and so many people were gutted that the season had finished and were all saying that they'd play through Sept into Oct as the pro's do. This is mainly the Indian lads at the club. We've been netting all the way through Sept - last night included and there may be more to come before the nets are removed on the 7th of Oct. Talking about it there seemed to be a consensus that we should look to somehow continue playing, so I enquired about this with some senior members of the club and got some vague answers; It seems that because our ground is council maintained, the wickets are only prepped during the league season - but there may be some scope to extend that further, but there was a general reluctance to do so as there was a belief that it would be nigh on impossible to get teams out beyond the end of the league season based on previous experience. It was emphasised, that if there was some interest in playing through Sept it would probably be better to make all the fixtures 'Away' games as clubs that owned and maintained their own wickets would have more say with regards the availability of their wickets and not be restricted by Council schedules.
The conversation then moved on to whether there was enough interest in playing through September and how viable the idea was. Then the key issue was brought up "The club is always looking for people to take the lead on these things and if you would be the skipper and arrange the fixtures, there's no reason this can't happen if you feel there's the interest in it... You could be the Friendly team skipper and sort out Sunday games as well through the season and we'd get more cricket being played"?
So, it looks like there's scope for this if I volunteer to be the Friendly captain and sort the fixtures. I've been the captain before (4th XI) years ago when they were desperate and had an awful season with really small kids in the team and a series of older blokes who were brought out of retirement to try and save the 4th XI side. It included games with only 8 players with 3 of them being only 13, it was pretty awful and I don't think we won one game, so it's not something I have a good vibe about. But since then the club has been transformed and is so much better with so many more players. Add to that I'm a better player now and have more of an idea with regards captaincy, so I may consider it. I've got till Jan to think about it and see if the interest is quantified as talking about it is so much easier than showing up for it. The idea of the mixed level Sunday team is really appealing though.
The clubs doing really well
At the end of the season like most clubs we had an awards night. I haven't been to many of these for years - not since my own kids were in the frame for awards. I'm not a drinker, so that side of it isn't a draw for me. But having played in the 5th XI with other people's kids who'd done really well, I thought I'd show up this year and have a look and show some support. I was amazed! The event was well attended, but the amount of under 16 players was surprising, but even better was there was loads of girls. I new there was a girls team, but the sense I had from stuff I'd seen on social media was that there wasn't enough of them, but there were stacks of them - loads of wannabe Maddy Villiers and Charlie Deans! Girls in the 14 - 15 year old age bracket and all the way down to 8 year olds, so good to see. The club is a different place in comparison to 5 or 6 years ago.
Highlight of the year
There were a number, but if I was to choose just one it would be the game against Hornchurch Athletic cc. Their ground is at a school and the facilities are pretty basic as the changing room and toilets are inside the school a distance from the ground, so we get changed outside. The wicket's okay though and the outfield is OK too - usually with a very short boundary on one side that is down-hill. In the past we've been absolutely hammered by them - our team being the usual old geezers and young kids finding their way. Whereas they seem to have a good core of about 3-4 decent batters in their mid 30's to mid 40's who play correctly, surrounded by younger and similar aged players of different ethnicities who play far more aggressively. Their bowling is a little erratic, but because of this, they're difficult to score runs off of mixing quite fast with spinners with unusual but affective approaches. With this mix of players all the games I've played in we've lost. Added to this, they come across as having a really aggressive win at all costs mindset and just seem to come across as being really stand-offish.
In this game, all these aspects seem to be in place, but we had a couple of players 'Harry' an Indian bloke who was playing for the first time and claimed to be able to bat a bit and my son Joe, who hardly ever plays - twice a year, who's a decent bowler. We had a different wicket keeper Tom Tonnison who's about 15 and "Super Kirby" the destroyer of aggressive batters.
We batted first and there were some major mishaps in the first couple of overs with their bowling - really high full tosses off pretty fast bowling and then our captain copped one on the head (no helmet) almost knocking him out and he had to retire with suspected concussion. We trundled along at a relatively slow scoring rate with Brian Waterman and Reece Eustace playing well, building a good partnership of ones and two's and the occasional boundary. Both almost reached 50 (see below) and that eventually brought Harry Suthar to the crease. The unknown Harry come in around the middle somewhere and then things picked up. It turned out he could bat. We have quite a few new blokes turn up and they're asked 'Do you bat or bowl' and they'll say 'Yeah I'm a batter' and they'll then go into full short format mode hit a few fours and get out, not playing the situation, keeping in mind the need to stay in and accrue runs at a steady rate. We're looking on thinking - damn he was looking good - should have played differently. Not Harry, he was decent and went on to score a solid 50 and then was out bowled S.Hunt the mystery spinner with a Paul Adams bowling action. We came off with a better than normal score of 193 with those three players playing crucial innings. We were buoyant, with the bowling attack we had, we were in with a shout, but we knew these blokes were good and very determined.
The usual two blokes came out and we started with Joe and Henry as I recall. Henry bowled OK, but Joe brought out his A game and bowled accurately and at a good pace. Shah took on 14 year old Henry and hit him for a few fours, but had nothing to combat Joe...
Joe went through them with relative ease and they looked gutted.
We went through their top order easily, some of the blokes who came out looked really determined, but between Kirby Jennings and me we pretty much finished them off. One of Kirby's was great to watch, because she bowls so loopy and slow she generally gets some tap, but she doesn't change anything - she just keeps doing what she does. K.Murford came out at number 7 and looked like a man on a mission. But had a look at Kirby, hit her for 4, but at the same time realised that she was potentially dangerous and gave her some respect, not playing expansive shots between hitting her for some 6's and 4's, but on his last big hit he holed out to deep mid-on with a great catch taken by Ted Currington as I recall running in from the boundary.
