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| Month By Month
I’m not entirely sure that I know why it’s taken so long to write a review of the last six weeks or so of the season, and I’m actually struggling to recall some of what happened in that last month and a half. A quick glance at our list of results shows that we won three, drew two and lost just once in our last six matches, and a more detailed look at the scorecards of these matches shows Naveed and Sayeed going through their best spells of the season. Both scored hundreds, Sayeed 101 against Reading Lawyers, and Naveed a blazing 114 the following week against Kingsclere, but strangely, we didn’t win either game, although against Lawyers Ed Pettit-Mills bowled by far his best spell of the season and took 2 for 16 in six overs with his leg spinners. Kingsclere we got close, the visitors ending with 8 wickets down, and blocking out for a draw. When we broke our run of three successive draws, it was thanks to a fairly comfortable 42 run win over Wargrave, but our win the following week over Ramsdell was much harder fought. An unbeaten partnership of 72 between Mark Woodley and David Bardwell against Ramsdell, which occupied, as I noted at the time, 107 balls and 54 minutes. Possibly not our best partnership of the season in terms of runs, but definitely the most important in terms of the result of the game. The following week we were well on course for the 200 we needed to beat Bucklebury but ended up falling short on 173 all out. Another blazing innings, this time of 60 by Naveed, took us to the strong position of 95 for 1, but a match-winning spell of leg-spin by Bucklebury’s Justin Kerwin followed, and this proved our undoing Kerwin had a brilliant day after earlier scoring a vital unbeaten 42 at the end of the Bucklebury innings. So an enjoyable season ended in blazing sunshine at Ashford Hill in early September. As England’s one-day side were levelling their series with Pakistan at 2-2, we restricted our hosts to a miserly 100 for 8 off 40 overs, and then won the game in just 11 overs thanks to some more blazing batting, notably from our guest player, Waseem, who after bowling a miserly spell of 6 overs for just eight runs, left the field with an injured ankle (subsequently finding an interesting use for a chilled can of beer, in the temporary absence of an ice pack), opened the batting (with our other guest Rafeeq acting as his runner) and scored a rapid 25. Gary Masters and Naveed continued the fun, Gary hitting his first two balls for four and Naveed hitting two big sixes in his 25. The day also saw what Les Woodley claims to be his last game for the club, and if that does prove to be the case, we’ll certainly miss him in the team. Over the course of the last few weeks of the season I made a couple of unscheduled appearances as a substitute fielder, and somehow, despite the fact I did very little of any use at all, earned the nickname ‘Gary Pratt’ (perhaps not entirely inappropriate), after the Durham substitute fielder who earned the wrath of Ricky Ponting in 2005 by running out the Australian captain while on the field as a substitute. Certainly when I appeared, things started to happen, even if for the vast majority of the time, I had very little to do with these things directly. When we played Kingsclere at home, I arrived with two wickets down, came on as sub with four down, and more fell when I was on the field. No, I don’t understand it either. For the record, Gary Pratt’s international career seems to be well and truly over - he has been released by Durham and now plays non-league football in the North East of England. Hopes for next season - to have a dry May - as opposed to May 2006, the ‘wettest drought on record’, as someone eloquently put it, to catch something besides a cold, to score a run, maybe even two, to not expand my lengthening list of ways in which I’ve been dismissed beyond bowled, run out, caught and LBW - unlike Andrew Strauss this winter, I won’t be going on a mission to discover endlessly ridiculous ways of being out. If I ever let the ball go through my legs and end up getting stumped, I hereby give our captain permission to shoot me. Also, Gavin to stay injury free? Mark to stay controversy free? Mike to remember I’ve been in the team the whole afternoon when I try and hand over my match fee? (Sorry Mike!) Keith to score a run? It’s got to happen sooner or later. England to win the World Cup in the West Indies in April? (No sorry, that last suggestions is frankly ridiculous) In about 13 weeks or so, some, all or fewer of the above may or may happen.
We’ve had a bit of everything in July, where the weather has been, generally speaking, perfect, from a nail-biting, one wicket defeat at Purley which frankly could have gone either way until the last ball, (although it was a bit galling to lose, it was a terrific game) to an almighty hammering at home against Ashford Hill, when the margin of defeat was nine wickets. We also suffered a bit of a hiding at Mortimer, by 93 runs, and from there, things had to improve really, and we achieved an excellent 53 Run win at Kingsclere to break our losing streak. Our final match of the month may also have ended in any of four results, in the end, our high-scoring encounter with Woodley was drawn. And our slight upturn in fortune has been mirrored, I’m pleased to say, by the national side. After the abysmal performance against Sri Lanka in the final Test and the one-day series, England dominated the First Test against Pakistan at Lord’s but couldn’t quite finish the job, but won the second Test with ease - by an innings and with time to spare. Hopefully August will bring a continued improvement. Stats wise, out of our regular players Gary is still at the top of the batting averages, with 246 runs at an average of exactly 41, although Haseeb Raja scored 43 last week in thus far his only appearance for us this season, and Asif Butt, who has played just three times, has an average of 45. Naveed is our top run scorer, with 299 runs, Gary’s two unbeaten innings in one less match puts him at the top of the averages, but behind Naveed and Sayeed (253 runs at 31.63). Of the bowlers, Naveed is top wicket-taker with 19 thus far, he also has the best average and the best strike rate. Sayeed has had a couple of good weeks and now has 16 wickets, but he has some ground to make up on the previous two seasons, when he finished on 40 wickets on both occasions.
Although we’ve had a much better month in terms of both results and weather, our success is not exactly mirrored by the national side at the moment, or in the place cricket currently has in the list of English sporting priorities. As England were failing to defend a total of over 300 yesterday at Headingley, and so lost the one-day series to Sri Lanka five-nil, the nation’s attention was firmly switched elsewhere. And they didn’t see an England win either. Anyway, back to the cricket, and our fortunes at Aldermaston were pretty good this month, twice chasing down totals of in excess of 200 to win games, although the month ended with a defeat at Woolhampton last weekend, our first in ten months (and ten matches). This time, we failed to chase down 241 by a considerable margin, although we did very little different to previous weeks. And three spilt catches at fine leg has to be some sort of record, but I won’t go into too much detail, nor will I post any pictures of bruises sustained in the process. (Actually, the worst bruise was from the occasion where I actually did something useful and dived to stop the ball). I also will not, after due considerations, and despite popular request, be launching a new site under the name gavinssportinginjuries (dot com) as I’m not sure Freeserve/Wanadoo/Oranage/whatever they’re calling themselves this week would want to encourage or allow that kind of content.... I will hopefully be posting some averages on the web site soon, but a quick glance at the stats so far puts Naveed at the top of the batting (154 runs at an average of 38.50) among regular players, although Asif Butt managed 52 on his one and only appearance at Bucklebury, while Gary Masters is second, with 101 runs in 3 completed innings (average 33.67), 63 of those runs came in an unbeaten knock at Whitchurch, on a pitch, where incidentally, the all-star Lashings World XI had piled up over 400 nine days earlier. Sayeed is third with 96 in three completed innings, average 32 with a top score of 57 not out. Of the bowlers, Naveed’s six wickets at Pangbourne mean he is leading taker this season so far, with 11, Mark Woodley and Sayeed Munir each have 6 victims. We’ve had some glorious weather these past few weeks, in contrast to what happened in May, playing in glorious hot sunshine at Bucklebury, and watery but pleasant conditions at Whitchurch. The only blip was last week, when although it was perfectly warm, the light was not great, and we even had a few spots of rain falling not long after the match concluded.
My idea of reviewing our season a month at a time was to avoid having to remember everything at the end of the season and forget loads of things. Well with the past four weeks that isn’t really a problem - four scheduled matches, one match played, three cancellations. May, amidst drought orders and hose-pipe bans, has turned into a wash-out. The one game we did play was on a not entirely warm afternoon at Pangbourne College, and was a low-scoring game on a low, slow pitch, in keeping with our previous matches there over the last two seasons. With Sayeed and Naveed in blistering early-season form with the ball, perhaps our eight run win, even after being bowled out for 77, was not such a surprise. Neither was my contribution with the bat, which failed to trouble the scorer, which is just as well, as he had troubles of his own, having to deal with a thoroughly broken scoreboard. After last year’s mourning of the passing of live Test cricket on terrestrial TV, reality set in in the middle of the month, as England began their Test series against Sri Lanka, which was the first to be broadcast exclusively live by Sky, with highlights on Channel Five, presentation by three of the stalwarts of Channel Four’s coverage of the past seven seasons. Atherton may have gone to Sky, Beneud may have retired from UK broadcasting, and ‘Slats’may have disappeared back to Channel Nine, but Nicholas, Hughes and Boycott remain. The Test series itself has been relatively unscathed by the weather all things considered, although snow has stopped play on Channel Five a couple of times, if you see what I mean.
Last updated 4 February 2007
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