Sunday 2 June 2024
Willesden CC 290-6 (40 overs)
SCCC 264-8 (40 overs)
Willesden won by 26 runs
40 over match
SCCC won the toss
Scorecard

Richard Seeckts writes:

Early season poor weather and lack of games called for a conference fixture with all the usual unknowns. Willesden CC has no real home ground but welcomed the Cryptics to a ground in Isleworth. A joyful group of cricket loving gents mostly of Jamaican extraction entertained throughout, hit the ball mighty hard, fielded with energy and appealed with passion.

Gossy set a traditional field at first. Crash bang wallop. Spread out lads….and most of us were too far apart for a chat until tea. The ball travelled far and wide before being abandoned in a nearby garden and replaced by another equally itinerant lump of leather.

This report being written rather late and the scorebook offering almost no detail beyond some ugly bowling figures, Daddy Grinders’ (283) pursuit of PAJA’s career tally of 284 wickets was the main fascination. The other was of seven hours in Heathrow’s noisy inbound flightpath, appropriate only insofar as both PAJA and Grinders are avgeeks of note. After hitting the stumps early in his spell, Grinders adopted the less reliable wicket taking method of inviting the batsmen to hit the ball in the air at fielders. Some just got out of the way, three others dropped catches, two of them in his final over, the second of which somehow hit Bridges ‘amidships’ leaving the fielder rolling around, the ball rolling downhill and the batsmen scampering as many runs as their laughter would allow. Bridges recovered to bowl the best spell of the innings, taking 2-21 off his much missed long run. He had countless LBW appeals rejected, detail he completely forgot over an extended tea break. Grinders would have to wait for his record breaking day.

The chase was never really on from 69-3 after 12 overs with Lucas stumped for a duck, Pup briefly entertaining and Hugs getting a (straight) beauty early on. Jimmy Grinders defiantly built a classy innings, picking the right balls to wallop and finished with 79 in the 29th over when caught on the boundary. Seeckts had stuck around for 11 before being triggered by Bridges for being hit on the leg while scoring too slowly. The lower order of Daddy G, Mulae, Bridges and Roly all swung the bat to good effect, collecting 100 runs in the final 12 overs as the hosts’ earlier intensity floated off on some sort of cloud. Joe Witt, who had left the field before tea with a back twinge, wasn’t required and a merry afternoon ended just before 8pm.

Astonishingly, 80 overs and a tea break took almost seven hours, one side losing much time hunting and fetching the ball, the other deliberating in the field. In excess of 400 planes landed at Heathrow in that time and the bar had closed over an hour before the game ended.