AUSSIES RAISE THE BAR AGAIN

NTCC 86 all out

WCC 87 - 5

WCC won by 5 wickets

Don Bradman trained his hand eye co-ordination by hitting a golf ball with a stump against a water-butt in his back yard. Christopher Johnstone does it by getting Fiona Blair to bowl a tennis ball at him in their palatial appartments overlooking the Persian Gulf. Chris and Fiona are currently based in the diplomatic district of Bahrain, working as lawyers by day and putting in the hard yards of practice in chandeliered splendour by night. Like Bowral in the early years of the last century, Bahrain offers few distractions and the benefits to Chris are dazzlingly evident – he’s got far too much money and a new-found ability to stop the straight ones.

Just as the Don had to take a boneshaker bus to his early games, Johnners subjected himself to the rigours BA business class on Saturday to be with the boys at Mottingham’s lovely YMCA ground in SE 9. It’s possibly the furthest in miles travelled to a Weekenders match though far from being the lengthiest journey - one thinks of Rich Edwards' 2003 trip from Halifax to Penn Street by train and bicycle, or Emmett and Desmeules' epic walk from Faversham to Boughton while the lads lunched at Whitstable… the list goes on.

The game began with a shocking reminder of how uncertain is our grasp on life and its pleasures when Dave Hargroves, feeling unwell, had to drop out and admit himself to hospital. When the news broke, the same sickening thought occurred to all ten of us – ‘Dave’s got the kit’. Fortunately all was well as the oppo kindly lent us some wicket keeping gloves.

The home side started cautiously on a good but very slow pitch. Vettickat struck a double blow early doors then after a further lull while Douglas, the human pause button, strutted his stuff, Johnstone pulled off the most astonishing diving legside strangle to give the senior seamer his first wicket in May. Gallagher struck twice with some clever offies and at 26 for five the Nash looked dead and buried. But then came ‘drinks’, so often the Weekeneders’ downfall in all forms of the game – and indeed in life as well. What followed surpassed all previous excesses – including our bowling in the Woolpit six-a-side last year and that night at the Rouge Club in 2002. Once again it was the Aussies who pushed the envelope.

A mere month after PJ Harvey raised the bar for the longest over in the club’s history (11 balls), and just a fortnight after his brother demolished the teatime meringue Pavlova record (3), Mick Gallagher stepped up to join the immortals. His first ball pitched within a few inches of his front foot and plugged. The next came within a whisker of the off stump - unfortunately it was the non-striker’s off-stump and a second dead-ball was signalled. Although the over hadn’t yet officially begun all kinds of teasing possibilities and scenarios were presenting themselves. Gallagher shifted his line to the opposite end of the pitch and found his range with an aerial wide followed by a no-ball grubber which the batsman somehow jabbed to fine leg. As the batter set off for the dubious sanctuary of the non-striker’s end the tension, understandably, got to the fielding side who needed several minutes to return the ball to the bowler. First it went frustratingly wide of mid-wicket then mid-on hurled it several yards to the bowler’s left. Mid-off, backing up, was unable to field it which in turn brought point, cover and long-off into the game. At last the skipper brought all his experience to bear by lying on the ball. Calmy d’Inverno then got to his feet and buzzed it to Gallagher. Alas the throw was inaccurate and mid-on had to move smartly to pull off a diving save as the ball headed for the boundary. But before long the ball was once again airborne and safely on its way into Gallagher’s hands at waist height. Nine times out of ten Porschy would have caught it but these things tend to go in cycles. Meanwile the scorers were still waiting to record the first legitimate delivery of the over - a measure of how inadequate stats can sometimes be.

Attempted delivery number five was another multiple-bouncing grubber but the umpire decided in the interests of progress that the over was now officially underway. A near wide was ruled legal but not the skyer that followed (cleverly snaffled by Fiona’s protégé, leaping like a plump Tay salmon). Next came a regulation wide, and just as the game appeared to be stagnating again the character of the over changed dramatically. Gallagher stunned the entire ground by stringing together a sequence legal deliveries, three in all – interrupted by a solitary no-ball - none of them especially straight but each posing a different challenge to the batsman’s reach and patience. It was now a question of when rather than if the National number 7’s resolve would crack. The tension was unbearable. Relief came in the form of another wide which not only added a run to the score but brought to an end PJ Harvey’s month of record-holding glory. When the celebrations had died down it was very much game-on and with Gallagher having now made 13 attempts to deliver the ball we sensed that this over, were it ever to be completed, could well decide the game. Gallagher produced a leg-stump half-volley which batsman Mayana, now insane with frustration, cross-batted to mid-wicket where Simmonds tumbling forward took a superb catch. 12 balls, 7 runs and one wicket.

It knocked the stuffing out of the home side and after a testing spell from Narayanan it was left to Simmonds to mop up the tail.

After tea Johnstone once again showed the benefit of Fiona’s coaching with a pugnacious yet controlled 19 that rebuilt the WCC innings after a disastrous start. Hopefully Johnners’ Bradmanesque development will end here or he’ll turn into a stingy sod who never buys a drink and plays the piano like a donkey. Chiari sparkled as much as a stuck-up, pampered, blond-haired, silver spoon-fed, namby-pamby, ‘Ooh look at my lovely footwork’, bloody public schoolboy ever can. d’Inverno played a gem of a knock which stopped us getting bogged down and Douglas and Gallagher eked out the remaining runs.

* * *

After this glorious victory it’s sad to have to report two grave instances of commitment deficit. It emerged over the following 24 hours that Dave Hargroves had been given a clean bill of health by the doctors, so he could have played and brought the kit after all. Yet more disappointing was the revelation on Monday that Johnstone’s flight from Bahrain to play this game proved to be no more than a shabby cover for a trip to Hatton Garden to buy an engagement ring for Fiona. That Blair accepted his proposal reflects very poorly on her professionalism as a coach and it will need a massive piss-up and a great many of her sausage rolls to resolve this issue.

STATS

NTCC 86 all out (32.4 overs)

Singh 28

Bowling:

Douglas 9-4-8-2, Vettickat 7-0-12-2, Gallagher 5-3-13-3,

Narayanan 4-2-13-0, M d’Inverno 3-0-13-0, Simmonds 3.4-0-15-3,

Chiari 1-0-7-0.

Catches: Douglas 2, Chiari 1, Johnstone 1, M. Harvey 1, Simmonds 1, d’Inverno 1,

WCC 87-5

Chiari 16, M. Harvey 0, Emmett 0, Johnstone 19, Douglas 19*, M d’Inverno 15, Gallagher 10*.

Simmonds, Vettickat, Narayanan DNB