Friday 4 August 2017  at Sunbury CC

Result: Stragglers of Asia won by 31 runs

Report:

Following the sad and sudden passing of Bill Kincaid last September, the club was delighted to receive an invitation from Sunbury to play a mixed XI during Sunbury’s Cricket Week in his memory. Thanks to some liaising between the match managers in the run up to the game, both clubs raised sides that had a blend of senior players who had played regularly with Bill over the years together with some of the younger players he had infused with his good humour and love of the game. Before the start of play the sides went out onto to the pitch to pay their respects to Bill in the form of some words of welcome – (including reminding us with good natured mischief of the roles that the two clubs had in Bill’s cricketing life with Sunbury in the role of his cricket “wife” for over 45 years with the Stragglers as his “cricket mistress”!)  followed by a minute silence before play got under way.

Tim Lerwill, as skipper for the day won the toss for the Stragglers and elected to bat first on a firm, yellowing pitch under a clear blue sky. Although the pitch looked tailor made for batting, the Sunbury bowlers were never going to make scoring easy but Joe Cavanagh and Hugo Hadcock batted patiently in a manner a few England Test players could have done well to watch until Joe went into England Test batsman mode and slashed hard at a full wide delivery to be caught behind. Hugo and James Allsop then continued to build the innings mixing stout defence with some robust clubbing of the rare bad ball that the bowlers produced to put on a stand of 41 before Hugo went on the attack once too often and skied a ball to cover for the first of Mick Mumford’s three wickets. James followed soon after in similar vein this time skying a catch back to the canny Mumford and Rob Bell, an Adastrian on “dayboo” for the Stragglers also fell to the same bowler LBW pinned back on the crease. Matt Cavanagh smote hard for his 18 but when he was out also LBW the Stragglers were looking shaky at 112-5 as the pitch started to show signs of turn and slightly uneven bounce to the evident delight of the Sunbury slow bowlers. Candidate Chris Brewster and Will Russell sought to regroup and raised the score to 141 before both were dismissed caught at the wicket off Serpen to give Nicholls three catches for the innings. It was left to the two senior Stragglers of the day Tim Lerwill and Prashant Patel to drag the Stragglers score to the realms of respectability, the latter notwithstanding the fact that he only had two hours sleep before the game following his night shift at Heathrow but when Tim was the last man out, giving S Bedi his third catch of the innings, the Stragglers total of 182 looked to be at least 30 runs below par.

Following a sumptuous tea and a group photograph of the two teams with Bill’s widow, Hilary, the Stragglers trooped out to the field. More by accident than design the Stragglers attack was devoid of pace and as none of the bowlers had the faintest idea how to make use of the new ball they asked if they could use the old one instead. It turned out to be a shrewd move as Tim Lerwill induced the Sunbury opener to glove the last ball of his first over down the legside which was well taken by Rob Baxter.  Tim then snared Nicholls LBW and had the dangerous looking R Bedi caught by Hugo Hadcock to leave Sunbury reeling at 37-3 before removing the obdurate Manro for 34 to finish with well-deserved figures of 4-28 off 11 overs. Although the Stragglers bowlers were making inroads, the experienced Sunbury middle order was not inclined to panic and the score inched higher and higher until Rob Bell, anxious to avenge his duck, struck in his first over by bowling Serpen and bringing the Stragglers back into the game.  But at the start of the last hour, the game was finely poised with Sunbury only needing 3 an over and the Stragglers requiring 3 wickets and with the Sunbury no 9, smiting the ball with a cleanness that belied his low place in the batting line up, the pendulum started to swing back Sunbury’s way until he went down the track to Joe Cavanagh and was well stumped by Baxter. But Sunbury kept on scoring and it was clear that run rate was not going to be an issue and so the Stragglers would have to bowl Sunbury out if they were to avoid defeat.  It was only once the Stragglers finally prised out Nobby Clarke (25,000 Sunbury runs and counting) LBW to Pollock-Hill that Sunbury finally gave up the run chase and settled down to grim defence in a manner reminiscent of Bill himself but Joe Cavanagh had other ideas and by tossing the ball ever higher succeeded in inducing the Sunbury no.11 into playing across the line to a straight one and be given out LBW to bring to a close a game played by both sides with a cheerful good natured competitiveness that Bill himself brought to every game he played and which continued in the bar after the game with both sides expressing the firm desire to make this a regular fixture.

Team Batting First: Stragglers of Asia

 

  Batsman How Out Bowler Score
1 J Cavanagh Ct Nicholls (wkt) S Bedi 16
2 H Hadcock Ct S Bedi Mumford 34
3 J Allsop Ct & Bowled Mumford 32
4 M Cavanagh LBW Salter 18
5 R Bell LBW Mumford 0
6 C Brewster Ct Nicholls Serpen 26
7 W Russell Ct Nicholls Serpen 12
8 T Lerwill (capt) Ct S Bedi Price 25
9 P Patel Ct S Bedi R Bedi 10
10 R Baxter Ct Salter Price 1
11

 

R Pollock-Hill (MM) NOT OUT 1
      Extras: 7 TOTAL:182 all out

FoW 1-34; 2-75; 3-92; 4-92; 5-112; 6-141; 7-142; 8-172; 9-175; 10-182

Bowler Overs Maidens Runs Wickets
D Price 7.2 1 29 2
S Bedi 8 2 26 1
G Salter 10 1 41 1
M Mumford 8 1 27 3
N Clark 7 0 27 0
M Serpen 5 1 21 2
R Bedi 3 2 6 1

 

Team Batting Second: Sunbury XI

  Batsman How Out Bowler Score
1 G Havard Ct R Baxter (wkt) Lerwill 2
2 A Manro Bowled Lerwill 34
3 L Nicholls LBW Lerwill 2
4 R Bedi Ct H Hadcock Lerwill 15
5 G Birchall Ct Russell Pollock-Hill 2
6 M Serpen Bowled Bell 32
7 N Clarke LBW Pollock-Hill 18
8 D Price Ct J Cavanagh P Patel 10
9 S Bedi St Baxter J Cavanagh 14
10 M Mumford Not Out 7
11 G Salter LBW J Cavanagh 4
      Extras: 11 TOTAL:151 all out

FoW 1-2; 2-16; 3-37; 4-50; 5-60; 6-94; 7-111; 8-139; 9-139; 10-151

 

Bowler Overs Maidens Runs Wickets
T Lerwill 11 2 28 4
R Pollock-Hill 18 7 50 2
C Brewster 3 0 13 0
R Bell 4 0 12 1
P Patel 5 0 29 1
J Cavanagh 6 2 17 2

 

Umpires: Eyre Maunsell & A Edwards
Scorer(s): Christopher Clayton & Richard Lewis