The Bacchus XI vs V&A CC

Much, much later...

MATCH REPORT – The Bacchus XI vs V&A CC – Stonor Park, Oxfordshire – 17th June 2023

‘I am also aware that before very long the story of the boys must finish, that you and I must also say good-bye to Brendon Chase. And the public will demand a MORAL! they will also, in duty bound, side with Aunt Ellen and Bunting, and I shall not have a leg to stand on. The action of the boys in running away was wrong, terribly wrong. They would, as Robin once said, have to take what was coming to them. And quite rightly too. If everyone acted as the boys had acted and thought only of self, we should all be in a fine old pickle and the British Empire would cease to be. Life demands that every individual must contribute something towards the good of the community and not live and think entirely for self. // But in the case of the boys their passion for hunting and fishing – in Robin’s case especially – their love of the open air and nature, had got the better of them. Perhaps they were ‘throwbacks’ to the time when every man and woman lived as they were living, hunting for food and dwelling in caves and holes in trees. All I will say is, that there are worse things in life than that. // To these three boys had come the opportunity to live that wild savage existence for a while. They had seized it, damning the consequences. We will leave it to the moralist to say whether their action was right or wrong. I doubt anyone would call Robin Hood a bad man.’
-- BB, Brendon Chase

WE ARRIVED ON time, mostly; Patrick in a foul mood, Phil late.

The XI – or VI as we were then – steeled ourselves to bat first, willing to sacrifice the Proper Batting Order to get the show on the road. However, with a touch of Sadism the V&A announced that no, they really did not mind waiting, whilst very clearly minding waiting. Such stuff gets the blood pumping far more effectively than any warmup, so with that, we set out to field, and Pat Hall wandered around in the shade.

Champness on debut was assertive. Such did he like bowling for The XI in the first over of the match that he kept himself on for a full eight balls, rather than the customary six. At the other end I took a more traditional approach, and, partnership established we delivered some cricket to the V&A’s openers, Pitlarge and Arnold.

Theirs was a stylish opening partnership marred only by two things. Firstly: Pitlarge, gent that he is suggested that after hitting the ball some distance, Arnold might like to ‘Go’; Arnold thought this sounded like ‘No’ and gave Arnold a bollocking, whilst we looked at the ground sheepishly. Secondly: Pitlarge got out for a duck, trapped LBW. I suspect this was good manners as opposed to bad cricket – rather than raising his voice at Arnold, much more politely Pitlarge simply recused himself from the whole situation.

So far, so Bacchic. Had the V&A become less whip smart in their mode of winning? Alas, The XI had yet again overlooked TACTICS. We had forgotten that although taking wickets was all well and good, with each one we took, the closer we came to experiencing the wrath of someone who should-have-got-but-did-not-get his cricket Blue some decades ago, damned instead to haunt the Chilterns village circuit in bellicose perpetuity. And whilst we knew that Lachlan Nieboer was our Damoclean sword, we did not know that the thread which held it over our heads was merely the wicket of Pitlarge.

Undeterred, I welcomed his Byronic stride to the crease with a sledge Larken and I had rehearsed in meticulous detail the evening before, somewhere between the Royal Thames Yacht Club and Philbeach Gardens:
‘Look boys, it’s the only actor in the world to have a LinkedIn profile!’
(I was quite pleased with this; some thought it too much. Lachlan shook my hand during the lunch break for it.)

Recognising – correctly – that the format of the game we were playing was indeed a short one, Lachlan dispatched his first ball with languor over the boundary for a maximum. Settled gently in, he took 18 runs from his first over.

This show of firepower did little to calm Arnold, deciding that taking it out on our opening bowlers was insufficient, instead smiting turf with bat for good measure. Yet this violence was to be the hamartia that caused Arnold’s downfall. He sought to dispatch one of Champness’ aspirational bouncers to the boundary, but instead pulled it to square leg where – to everyone’s surprise – it was caught. Without seeing the irony in the matter, Arnold blamed the turf that he had himself spoiled. Even though it was a very small divot (umpire Bird claimed he couldn’t see it at all) this did not prevent a parting shot from an unnamed Bacchant who suggested that the landscaping was so dramatic that Arnold could take a helicopter tour of its canyon if he wished. This is characteristic of a worrying development that’s come to light this season, namely of Bacchants being deathly silent when good cricket is being played but really quite nasty to the oppo when they’re on their fucking uppers.

Lachlan delivered an innings very similar to the one Mills had played weeks before, for another team, against another side. The most telling sign that our failure to attend the promised pre-match Mass had provoked the ire of the cricketing gods was when we deployed Jeffers and his Mystery Balls to no avail. Runs conceded? Resolutely. But blinding, valuable wickets? Atmospheric pressure disobliged.

Instead, our captain delivered a full seven over spell, during which Herr Vittenklop felt that Purple Emperors were more likely to be found by the deep long on boundary, even when gentle botanical direction from the skip suggested he might help the cricket more on the off. Vittenklop’s single track mind prompted an increasingly characteristic outburst from Patrick:

‘Freddie what the fuck are you doing?’

Discipline established, Patrick conjured up a Proper Cricket Wicket in his second over, taking Arnold’s replacement, Taylor, for what had been a threatening 38.
Ultimately Lachlan’s innings was one of ten dots, and almost as many balls lost over the boundary rope, for a total of 102 (retd.). Over the course of this innings, it became apparent that Charlie Aithrie had not yet completed the Aggressive Strike Bowling course at Sandhurst (we’re told this was the reason for the other Charlie’s absence), so instead of the precision guerrilla bowling asked for, he merely yielded 27 runs in two overs. The only other noteworthy bit of cricket was Zwak’s handy wicket of Terblanche, who was beginning to look rather like Lachlan in disguise.

Around lunchtime, lunch happened, and Nicky Bird made some comments about Justerini & Brooks and public schools. Then, after some more cricket, tea happened and Pat Hall was driven to the station, ‘because he got the shits’. We did not have subtitles switched on for the Reverend Doctor, so I can only assume this was literal reportage.
Down but not out, the Bacchus innings got off to a flying start. The three-run discrepancy between Larken’s first ball scrambled single and Zak Crawley’s first-ball-of-the-Ashes-four epitomised not any difference in skill, but instead highlighted the fundamentally swashbuckling approach to the game we share with Messrs McCullum & Stokes.

When the first over finished with two runs on the board for no wickets lost, we were optimistic. When the second over finished with Swann having faced, kept his wicket, and ticked the total on the board up to five, we were jubilant. Yet when Christiaan (and it seems the second ‘a’ very much is pronounced) Jonkers ran out Swann – this is one of our opening pair’s biggest problems, along with runs – and Gated Freddie in the third over, we were despondent.

Hope, in the form of SU, strode to the crease, not quite Byronically, but certainly with the swagger of a man who knows that in his teammates’ eyes it is upon his shoulders the future of the match rests. And in fairness, he dealt with the pace and varying line of Pitlarge, A., with alacrity and fought off the needling precision of Jonkers with skill. So successfully, in fact, that he was bowled by someone else for 18. High score of the day was instead left to Aithrie, perhaps actually our truest Hope that day, who scored the vaunted fifth century, still in form after his debut at BBC Caversham. Beyond another run out (ours is not to reason why, Champness’ but to do and die), some latter stage entertainment came in a typically gung-ho cameo from our Captain. An onlooker shouted ‘run em up Pat!’, to which another concernedly replied ‘did you see how much red he put away at lunch?’. Not to be deterred, Patrick got out.

Realising that – after the fall of the tenth wicket - it would be deeply disingenuous to try and pass off Chalk as one of the Eleven, we politely asked if ‘someone who had never played cricket before’ could have a go. The V&A assented; Chalk engaged sport mode in his Hedge-Fund-Manager-Relaxing outfit and sauntered out to the wicket.

Now, we should have warned Chalk that the V&A enjoy putting off newcomers to the sport (one is reminded of a splendid but distinctly unsporting slip catch last year), but we didn’t. As it was, they deployed their time honoured ‘put the newbies in their place’ tactic, bowled an absolute peach, found a flashing edge and took another screamer in the slips. With that, the match finished and all that remained was for us to stay at the ground until the V&A had all decamped to The Golden Ball, just long enough for Le Nis to break a cast iron manhole cover, and deglove his left shin.

BACCHUS XI
LARKIN 6
SWANN 2
GATE 0
SPENCER-UNDERHILL 18
PERK 7
AITHRIE 20
RILEY 2
POLDING 9
CHAMPNESS 5
HUDSON, P. 0 (?)
JEFFERIES (did not face)

E X TRAS 19
TOTAL 88

V&A CC
ARNOLD 20
PITLARGE,D. 0
NIEBOER 102 (retd.)
TAYLOR, A. 38
TERBLANCHE 58
JONKERS 26
PITLARGE, A. 8

E X TRAS 54
TOTAL 306

V&A WIN BY 209 RUNS