The Bacchus XI vs the V&A CC

A little present for those taking the train today. Am I not kind?

MATCH REPORT

Bacchus XI vs V&A -- Stonor Park -- 22 June 2024

“By universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning, or has planned, your destruction.”
-- JAMES CLAVELL, Shogun

“One must consider Sisyphus happy.” So wrote the philosopher Albert Camus in 1942, not as a point of fact, but as encouragement to find fulfilment in the endless struggle against impossible odds. The Bacchus XI can’t quite claim moral parity with Camus (who ran an outlawed Resistance newspaper in occupied Paris) but credit where it’s due, we do keep playing the V&A. Admittedly, drawing meaning from futility comes easier on a balmy June day at Stonor Park, as Red Kites circle overhead and cold beer takes the edge off another 150-run battering. And, of course, we can draw hope from the fact that the French Resistance ultimately ended up on the winning side, even if casting the V&A as the Nazis seems a touch excessive. Therefore, with Lachlan, Jasper and Co. taking up station as the mountain, and our top order playing the role of ‘boulder’ to admiration, one must consider the Bacchants happy in their work. Except for Jeffers, for whom philosophy died with Seneca and who refuses to attend the V&A matches, seeing them for the punishment the Gods intended them to be.

It is fair to say the fixture doesn’t cause the same intellectual hardship for our opponents, who view the Bacchus game as a reasonable enough way to kill an afternoon, if there’s really nothing else on offer. They are our Olympus. We are their CandyCrush.

The pre-match proceeded as usual. Pat negotiated with David Pitlarge, the V&A’s designated skipper and payer of attention for the day, on how best to prolong events into the mid-afternoon. An agreement was reached on 42 overs of proper, full-blooded cricket, during which the home team would bat. This left a maximum of 38 overs for them to do some bowling, and Pitlarge benevolently agreed that we could be there during BOTH of these periods. The order of ceremonies was governed strictly by logistics: our hosts always lay on an excellent lunch, but such things take time to prepare, and time is the one thing our batsmen simply can’t give them. A coin was tossed for form’s sake (our respect for the pageantry of the game runs deep) but it might have been cast down a well for all the influence it had. One day we’ll mint a coin embossed with the words ‘Bacchus will bowl first’ on both sides. Eleven Bacchants thus took the field (five more than had made the last trip to Stonor, of which no tale tells). Pat positioned the team; Sutton Bill started his podcast and moved, cricketingly, to a position he deemed better.

If I have painted a slightly bleak picture of our prospects so far, allow me to add one crucial detail. There were clouds, and beneath said clouds stalked Sam [Nosfe]Riley, his bloodlust ill-concealed and far stronger when out of direct sunlight. He had seen Ben Willis, our keeper drawn to the game by the gravitational effect of Sutton Bill’s cricket, doing some frightfully legit-looking warmups, and duly activated ‘instant kill’ on his bowling arm. Second ball, a nick, a catch behind, and the V&A’s opener dismissed for a Gate. Naturally, this convinced everyone that it was Our Big Day, and the team took renewed joy from flinging themselves about the field. Riley and Hugh thus kept things tight, one eye on the scoreboard and another on the boundary, where a padded-up V&A bomb squad was pacing restlessly, unused as they were to single figure run-rates. Logic demanded they be kept there as long as possible (and by this measure some of the catching efforts in the field were very logical indeed) but logic does not a Michelle make, and Riley’s eldritch senses had caught the whiff of an approaching sunbeam. He was suddenly a man in a hurry, and promptly trapped the blameless second opener LBW, who had scored two runs from his eleven overs (I wouldn’t dare criticise, merely observe). Jasper Arnold replaced him, much as an industrial blender might replace a hand whisk, and set about mincing the knackered remnant of the Bacchant pace attack. Riley was hauled away to the sunniest part of the outfield to think about what he’d done (and possibly in the hope that he’d melt), while Pat and Sutton Bill attempted to contain the onslaught. Pat bowled the V&A’s number three with his second ball. As the parable doesn’t go, the steps we take to avoid our fate only hasten Lachlan to the crease.
Bacchus games are rarely more surreal than when our vaudeville bowling depth is called upon to dislodge the Jasper/Lachlan axis. Storied careers in the stratosphere of the semi-professional game should, by all rights, excuse them from facing whatever it is I do. Or Sutton Bill, who decides whether to bowl comparably filthy seam-up or off-spin on a ball-by-ball basis. That their lives have taken such a perplexing turn does little for the harmony of their relationship, tetchy at the best of times but stretched to breaking point when debating how best to see off one of Pat Hudson’s demonic outswingers. Notwithstanding an inevitable supply of slow, drifting deliveries on the leg side (which, I cannot stress enough, are ALWAYS spanked down the hill to the boundary) bitter experience has taught us that variety overs are the best way to keep their run rates in check. Sure enough, three short of his 50, Lachlan jammed his bat underneath one of Brassington’s bumpers just before it had time to bounce twice, and lifted the ball gently into the bemused bowler’s waiting hands. Never mind the 60 run partnership; we fucking got him.

Almost nothing else had time to happen before lunch (the V&A delight in taking lunch halfway through their innings, on the basis that this is also roughly the halfway point in the match). This was the usual splendid affair, heightened by Nicky Bird’s traditional address on the subject of cricketing etiquette, and how it may be exemplified through a dropped catch. The Bacchant fielders longed to hear more, but all too soon it was time to see which team could best overcome their post-lunch slump. For the first time in recorded history, it was us.

It began, bizarrely, with a catch (no record survives of who took it. The V&A’s match report (now almost a year old) merely describes “a lame glide to gully’s midriff, where there was sufficient cushioning to allow time for the fielder’s hands to locate the ball”. It is to the XI’s great credit that this doesn’t especially narrow things down). Then another, this time through the more usually reliable caught-and-bowled method to dismiss the opposition skipper for 1. Soon after, Eoin Simpkins, who these days feels like a pillar of a decadent establishment but whose corporeal existence back then represented a startling innovation, startled us further by bowling a genuine googly to begin removing the tail. Jasper had seen enough, and promptly retired before his own wicket went the way of Lachlan’s, over whom he maintained a crowing superiority. One day they’ll either fight a duel or get married, and we’ll probably be blamed either way.

All that remained of the innings was for Simpkins, taking a turn with the gloves, to claim a stumping, for that to be declared that (literally, as some primal driver in the V&A psyche refuses to let us bowl them out). It had, all considered, been our best ever fielding performance, keeping a team who had previously run up scores of 300 against us to a mere 170. A chaseable total, under the correct circumstances. V&A circumstances, to the relief of the village cricketing community, are not normal. Are greater achievements against equal futility equally meaningless? The Bacchants remain obdurately happy in their work.

The rituals demanded to be performed. Freddie and I marched out and chatted about “seeing off their quicks” before building our own scores. Lachlan measured out a half runup (a mere 30 yards). Felicity, part-time scorer, full-time sicko, climbed a tree so as not to miss a detail of the spectacle. I stepped out to meet the first the ball with my most regulation forward defence; it nearly knocked the bat out of my hands, and as the thick outside edge streaked to the boundary I earnestly contemplated the merits of The Other End. I scampered a quick single off the next ball, and the curse Fred muttered at me as we crossed took root in my very soul. The third ball just missed his off stump. The fourth ball didn’t, and Fred departed as Edmond Dantes might have departed the harbour at Marseille, and for a Gate no less. The rollcall of Lachlan’s clean-bowled Bacchants makes for bloody copy. Calum Drysdale scampered a stylish four before his stumps duly shattered: Simpkins and Ramsy had to content themselves with ducks in consecutive overs, but by then his runup had doubled in length. He was dragged from the attack before he could complete his five-for, and spent the rest of the match on the boundary, rolling his sleeves up to expose what had once, presumably, been some impressive biceps to the ever-strengthening sun. I asked whether we could find him a smaller shirt (only bringing a collective team fantasy into the real world, for what Bacchant hasn’t undressed Lachlan with their eyes?) and received my second withering look of the day. After the match, he asked whether I might like to play for the V&A in future, and I cravenly handed over my contact details. We haven’t spoken since, but I’ve been signed up to a mailing list for erectile dysfunction. I’d do it all again.
Our innings was not without merit on its own account. Sutton Bill, a cricketing machine precision-engineered to thundertwat every single delivery over the cow corner boundary, duly thundertwatted his way to a rapidfire 23. The genuine half-tracker that snuck under his guard should merely reaffirm the axiom that shit will forever get wickets (amen, amen). Closing cameos from Hugh (11) and George Smyth (16), a man who had emerged seemingly from nowhere earlier in the day and declared himself one of us, even lent a certain lustre to proceedings, as we combined our fewest runs conceded against the V&A with our highest runs scored. Riley was last in, but he’s no daywalker, and the puddle where he had once been did little to prevent his splintering stumps bringing the whole affair to an end.

What had we learned? Certainly nothing that will prevent us accepting V&A fixtures for as long as they struggle for willing opposition. To question why we do it surely betrays a misunderstanding of fate. However, an explanation may be sought for why, after what was in fact another drubbing, we ledt Stonor feeling so thoroughly pleased with ourselves. If defeat is inevitable (and I assure our readers that, on these occasions, it really is) then what is the merit of losing by a mere hundred runs? Something to ponder next time, when we return to find the boulder precisely where we left it, but the mountain, possibly, if you squint from the wrong angle, just a very little bit lower.

Scorecard

V&A
M Carpmael (Caught Willis, Bowled Riley) 0
C Kulasingam (LBW Riley) 2
N Constantine (Bowled Hudson P) 39
J Arnold (Retired) 43
L Nieboer (Caught+Bowled Brassington) 47
D De Caries (Caught(?), Bowled Riley) 9
D Pitlarge (Caught+Bowled Riley) 1
A Wayland (Bowled Simpkins) 0
D Scott (NOT OUT)
C Jonkers (Stumped Simpkins)
A Jacot (Did Not Bat)

Bacchus XI
EST Larken (LBW Jonkers) 7
F Gate (Bowled Nieboer) 0
B Willis (Bowled Jonkers) 0
C Drysdale (Bowled Nieboer) 4
W Sutton-Mattocks (Bowled De Caries) 23
E Simpkins (Bowled Nieboer) 0
R Polding (Bowled Nieboer) 0
G Smyth (Bowled Wayland) 16
S Riley (Bowled Jacot) 0
H Hudson (Bowled Kulasingam) 11
J Brassington (NOT OUT) 0