New season 2026 Week 1

 A historic day for the club - we had 6 teams out on Saturday playing league cricket. What with an over-lap with that other game "Soccer", they end thier seasons with important games same as we do, some players don't show. The word is we had nearly 2 teams worth of regular players either injured, or not making themselves available, but we got 6 full teams out. 

I ended up in the 6th XI which I wasn't too fussed about because like last year, I've not had a great start health-wise. This time... A few weeks back I injured my lower back and hip lugging massive plant pots and buckets full of cobbles around whilst wearing flip-flops and something went. 3 weeks later it's slowly getting better, but still a bit sore. Coupled with that I had Hay Fever combined with a crappy cold, making me feel like crap with nose and eyes streaming, but the last couple of days leading into the game today, that too eased up. So by my reckoning I'm working at 65% capacity. 

The game was at Admirals Park in Chelmsford. 

Looking down the list of players there were a handful I'd never heard of, but the captain Joe had said there were kids in the game - under 16's.

Numbers 8,9 and 10 being them. No.11 Bhaskar Nayak is a new bloke I've never played with, Shane was around last season in the nets, but played very little if at all, Nauman is new for this season, but I've bowled with him in the nets this year. All the other lads I know and have played with last season.

I spoke to Joe about not knowing the team enough to know whether they could bat or not and suggsted if possible we'd bowl first and he agreed. 

We won the toss and the opposition were surprised when Joe said "We'll have a bowl". Admittedly the wicket looked good, it was sunny and warm with the promise of rain later towards the end of the game, but we're not the kind of team (As far as I'm aware) that would walk off if it was raining and we were losing to take advantage of the game abandoned rules?

Looking around the team there were no known pace/seam bowlers, Stanley said he was an opener and Shyam "Sham" said he'd bowl as an opener even though he's a slowish medium pacer. Sham got us off with a flying start with 2 wickets in his first 2 overs. Stanley looked threatening from the 'Park End' only going for 13 in his first 4 over spell with 4 No-Balls in amongst the 4 with one of them going for a 4, so without those he would have done exceptionally well. 

2nd change saw M.Baogujar come to the crease and start to assert himself against the young Leg-Spinner Alec Rogers and the faster Nauman Haider. Joe pushed the fielders out looking to restrict the runs to singles, but one boundary was very short and the car-park side boundary for the most part even though it's longer it is down-hill and the fielders have a job on their hands stopping anything that's hit that way. (In the darker zone A). One of the young lads was given the job of covering the diagonally opposite end with Alec bowing from the Road end. 

So in this phase the run rate went up dramatically from 3.62 an over to 6.06 an over by the 16th and then Joe changed it up again, bringing me on with Nauman. Nauman made no impact still going for 6 an over through the next 4 and bowled at 2.5 an over and took 2 wickets one of which was the bloke Baogujar who was taking the game away from us, I got him in my first over bowling Leg-Breaks and then the ball he miss-hit was the Flipper caught at cover point by Joe. The field was brought up forcing them to play more aggressively rather than hitting clean shots looking for singles or glances down the leg-side through A hit with no power that were running away for 4's. I pretty much maintained a middle and off or 4th/5th stump line. With my injuries I wasn't getting the ball to turn much so was bowling small leg-breaks and top-spinners. The 2nd wicket was a small boy and the Top-Spinner did for him - caught by Joe again in pretty much the same place, but coming forward. 

The opposition had put all the kids in first and to be fair the captain had said the best players were the kids, but I thought he was bluffing. I then had a RH kid and a bloke that looked like he had a 50 in him... Northerner, confident looking, decent bat, no helmet, playing in sun-glasses as well. His first two or three shots looked tidy and organised, not obviously looking to exploit the downhill slope down to fine leg (A). I think I got him with a top-spinner as well, that went leg-side and dipped and he tried to sweep it down to fine leg, but with the dip and bounce he top-edge it and it went up above him for Prasa the keeper to take a few steps back and catch him. 

Then the work of the Devil showed up... A left-hander, another kid, but a left-hander, everyone grabbed their crucifixes, but that never works...

My figures at this point were decent and this tends to happen, a kid comes out and ruins them, usually a Leftie. His mate at the other end looked rock solid, no rash shots, rotating the strike with singles, putting the bad balls away, quietly going about his work. I had him dropped off of one ball. But when it came to the Leftie as is the case I didn't have a lot of answers for him. I pretty much bowled at the stumps and he just walked across them, giving himself space and hit through square-leg and fine leg which similar to the situation with the RH bats that area ran off down a hill. At this point I was going for 2.6 an over and then LH kid hits me for 9 + a wide. The same kid made more runs in the final over and I ended up with 8-1-33-3 the maiden was a wicket maiden.

Then Bhaskar came on mixed the kids and Sham. Bhaskar bowled well taking one wicket, much faster than everyone else, he should have opened, maybe with Nauman? Again, once my spell was over the field went out and the kid who was hanging around and went on to get 55 not out just kept hitting the ball into gaps and to the fielders running easy singles rotating the strike. 

If you look at the batting analysis there's a stark difference between our batting and theirs, whereas (Especially at the end) they were looking to continually run singles we on the other hand were turning down singles and twos when they were there for the taking and that came down to either hogging the strike or not being fit enough to run the 22 yars continually. 

In the end we just prevented them from reaching 200 at 197. 

Some of the bowling figures aren't that good. I felt I did OK given that I'm knackred at the moment and I completely messed up with the Leftie and I need to work on them, but I think that'll come with more practice and the return to full fitness. We had another Wrist-Spinner Alec Rogers, not sure how old he is - 14 maybe? Quite tall. I think he bowled well given this was his first Adult game, he looked a bit Richie Benaud with his height and he tossed the ball up with nice loop and I think he was unlucky not to have got more wickets... 6-0-53-1 I tried to speak to him during his bowling but it was a bit tricky, but he seemed to have a plan and seemed very confident and un-phased by how many runs he went for. I also think that was good captaincy from Joe giving him the chance and the wicket he got - it was the Lefty, bowled him through the gate. 

So the table above shows what's happeing after this week - first league game with 2 friendlies preceding today. With Rob Brookes at the top in front of the ex pro player Yannick. This might have changed over-night - Sri and Tony? 

Our Innings

With a bunch of kids and blokes that we had no knowledge of in terms of ability with the bat, Joe was in a situation as to what would be the best approach and so he just put it out there - "Who wants to bat"? and went with that. I ended up number 11 as per usual because of the scoring situation e.g. I'm the only one in the team that can score. 

We were off to haphazard start but with some positive batting by Prasad and Shane, but they were soon dismissed. That then brought on Waleed who we suspected might try and hit every ball for a 4 and he did, but, to be fair 75% of the time he kept the ball along the ground and negated any chance of being caught and it looked like he was on for a 60 and he fell short by six runs bowled by the kid Thakare who'd had a traumatic first over, but then settled over the following 2 and took Waleeds wicket. That was a key point in the game as Waleed was striking at 231!

In the middle of the innings, Nauman took control playing in a measured manner, he was joined by Joe and the runs accumulated with the target increasingly looking achievable. The oppo in the field were silent with their fate seemingly secured. There was a bloke bowling from the park end who had his full allocation of overs who appeared to be their best bowler... Hitchen with an average of 5.13 who came away wicketless. As the game got to the point where we needed less than 30 runs to win, they brought on the smallest kid, he looked about 12 and was about 4'10". He marked out a long run up and then ran in and bowled with a beautiful action (Connor Harrison) within an over or two Both Joe and Nauman were dismissed, Joe by the kid and Nauman by Karunya off a stumping, Nauman saying as he came back to the sheds he was knackered and couldn't get back, Joe to be honest looked shot as well. This was evident because in this phase of the game, both of them were turning down easily achievable singles and not coming back for 2's when they were there for the taking. Looking on I thought they should have done so, the game wasn't won.

When Joe was dismissed I said to the others... "That's probably the game there, they needed to be there till the end, there's a chance of an almightly collapse now" and sure enough (see below). 3 more runs were made for 4 wickets and Springfield won easily. 

Later in the week this got posted on the Club Instgram site... It's a compilation of the best batters and bowlers across all 6 teams presented as "Team of the week". 

At the end of the weekend a rumour went round that my old captain Lee Dutton was coming back to the club to play for the season. Lee's one of the captains in my learning years that would always pretty much give me my full allocation of overs, back then it was 10 as I recall despite much of the time bowling pretty poorly. 

He'd also take things a step too far and field at Silly mid-wicket really close in hoping that I'd bowl a middle and leg line with the turning ball, the truth is the discrepiancy error margin was around 0.3 meters either side of middle and leg and he'd end up wearing the ball off a slog sweep.

So, that was good news for the start of the season. He himself is one of the best finger spinners at the club historically, but also a good bloke. 

So on Tuesday night (Nets) I got there just after Lee had finished batting, I'd liked to have bowled at him! He was just starting to bowl and bowled three good length and line balls and then walked in for his 4th making a concious effort to get up on his toes and 'Ping' tore his calf muscle! He was gutted. Today he's been icing it, but he reckons it'll be a few week before he can even consider a comeback and he's even saying it might be next season. What a shame!

Initially I bowled pretty crap, short and trying to put too much effort into it, I was bowling against Mo Ali who plays 1st/2nd XI. The only balls that beat him were Top-Spinners outside of off. Once he was gone, I began to relax a little more then began to get the ball coming out nicely, more accuracy, better length and turn. But the highlight of the night was right at the end bowling against Koush (2nd XI) batter. He was hitting the ball cleanly, coming down the wicket as well. I then decided to bowl the Flipper out of the back of the hand, this is a remnant of the wrong-wrong un I used to bowl 14-15 years ago. I recent times when I've experimented with it, it's come out with diaganol back-spin with nothing really happening off the deck. The first one to Koush was outside of leg and he came down to it and completely missed it as it stayed really low and broke to leg!... The Wrong-Wrong Un!!!!

I bowled another 4 or 5 with the same outcome once he'd packed up, but then lost it and it ended up with the diagonal back-spin. The other interesting aspect was the accuracy. My usual mixed seam back-spinners haven't been coming out that well, but this variation did - very full, skidding low and straight at the stumps. Looks promising. I just hope my hip gets better soon as it's still sore and is causing slight issues.