The Bacchus XI vs Middleton Stoney CC

MATCH REPORT – Middleton Stoney CC vs The Bacchus XI – Middleton Stoney – 4 August 2024

No, no, you're right - I shouldn't have rushed it.

I often wish that I could have known the end at the beginning, so that each detail could have been savoured as it happened. But then, life isn’t a gramophone record one can play again and again till one feels one understands it. It is Now or Never for most of us, and we haven’t the time. But we shall tomorrow …
J L CARR, How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup

TIM RILEY doesn’t toss a coin. He hides a magic bean in one fist and asks you to guess which. I said the left.

‘Good choice – what’s it to be?’
‘Thanks Tim. I think we’ll have a bat.’
‘First ball in ten minutes?’
‘Grand.’

We started walking back towards the pavilion and the blood drained from my face, my head dizzy with a montage of Bacchus wickets from the first spectacular detonation of SU’s stumps in the Frieth sun, via every tortuous Larken lbw, up to whatever dismal looping catch Eoin offered in front of the bat at BNC the previous week (I wasn’t there, but we can guess) while a thousand ghostly batsmen stared reproachfully from a shadowy hutch and it occurred to me that at a respectable club such as Middleton Stoney, a given set of stumps could suffer more aggregate impact from balls, back feet and Freddie’s bat in a single Bacchus innings than in the entirety of the rest of the season and What, I asked myself, as Tim explained the irrelevant technicalities of declarations and bowlers’ limits in a timed match, the fuck have you done?

‘Sorry Tim – did I say bat?’

OUR BOWLING opened with Catwater and the Lamb (Riley and Hugh to those who don’t know). Neither the senior Middletonian opener nor his under-12 counterpart wore a St Christopher medal, so could do nothing against the Prince of Cloud Cover. The field was restless, bordering on gobby. The child stepped out to play at one there was a very wooden noise before the ball thudded into Dominic’s gloves and everybody howled like wolves. The child insisted that his pads were made of wood, which seemed reasonable enough to me. He insisted and insisted, like the Spartan boy who stole a fox cub and hid it in his tunic; it gnawed through his stomach and he kept denying the theft. Riley wandered down the wicket and bared his fangs at the child, who soiled himself and played on shortly after.

With blood in his nostrils, Riley could not be stopped. The surviving opener lived up to the soubriquet, surviving an LB call that reminds you there’s no honour in the Sunday game, before the next was damson and out. But in the next Catwater over his appalling powers seemed to wither – faint sunlight stroked the pitch – and the Middletonian no.4 paddled a gentle long hop towards square-leg and trotted off for the easy single. So much, we thought, for pacts with the devil.

It was the other batsman who spotted the red glow in Brassington’s eyes as he glided from mid-wicket to collect the ball. It was already too late: our man took aim at a single stump at the striker’s end and hit it before God had time to notice what was going on. Middleton Stoney were 14-3.

THINKING IT better, in the end, that evil did not prevail, I took off Riley and whatever curse that had contrived that run out. And wouldn’t we need to save some of his overs for later? For good measure, I suggested that Brassington swap off the field and take a rest (for we were twelve). Leo Wright, spotting a bad ‘un, made him play an intense and dynamic game with a plastic ball until he was begging to return to the match. But we didn’t notice that. We were watching Jeffers.

Representing, if not the forces of light, at least a more sympathetic shade of darkness, the Inevitable Man of Mystery began by bowling a wide to the somewhat narky no.5. His next ball? Wider still and wider. His next? Thrashed into the legside, only to be authoritatively halted by Olly Wright. No. 5 kept the strike. He was the only man on the field who didn’t know what happens next. Line, length and the curvature of the earth did all that Jeffers asked of them, and Dominic was once again left trying to remember how to reconstruct a set of stumps.

True art quenches the soul, and I needed no other succour than the quiet contemplation of that wicket for the next several overs. Meanwhile, the batsmen glorying in the names Carpenter and Merritt – plausibly allegorical figures in our indecipherable morality play – became settled. Bad news for a hunter-gatherer operation like the Bacchus. Hugh had been bowling with the kind of speed, precision and aggression which you don’t get from legal substances, and which will get you nowhere in this sort of match. He made way for Charlie Gee, whose satisfyingly metronomic action suggests he has just emerged from a clocktower in a small Swiss conurbation to strike the hour.

The width of the wides in Jeffers’ third over shook me from my stupor: I accepted that whatever mystery, magic and biodynamic agricultural techniques had been at work in his first were no more. I asked Olly Wright to bowl some of his off spin against these increasingly confident and attacking batsmen. He obliged, mournfully, like Kirk Douglas leading the insane attack on the Anthill at the start of Paths of Glory. We shuffled the deck at the other end while Leo kept up a scathing technical commentary from the boundary.

The Lamb returned, I had a go, Larken bowled one glorious over for 18, and both bats struck their half-centuries with nothing but a couple of dropped catches in the deep to show for it (Clem’s escapes censure because of the effort he put in, mine because the Author is Sovereign). Otherwise, much of the fielding was excellent, led by Hugh’s lunatic efforts at short-extra to which he brought the incongruous manic energy of a feral labrador. The only thing smoked through the covers was Brassington’s roll-up as he ambled around the offside. But still no wicket. If only, I thought, we could bring the deadly Catwater back on – but we would need his last overs at the end. Wouldn’t we?

WHY OLLY took the catch off one of Dominic’s offies – since re-designated “frothies” by MCC – nobody with any sense of justice could fathom. The first ball from our wicketkeeper-spinner had been spanked through mid-on, exactly as it deserved, and when his next ball received the same treatment most sane Bacchants would have thought another boundary against his name fair comeuppance.

Olly answers to a higher power, and did that extraordinary thing with his hands where he puts them in the way of the ball and holds onto it. Still, Dominic and the higher power were taking the piss to bowl the next man first ball. Rightly disgusted, Tim Riley called the Middletonians in with 33 overs bowled. And our Riley hadn’t even had his second spell. What, I wondered, does this mean for the bowlers’ limits?

IT WAS DURING J Floyd’s eleventh over that I understood. Before that, we ate an outstanding tea of chapli kebab, malai boti and pastel de nata, and drank exactly the right number of bottles of beer to chase 178 to win. You could almost count that high on your fingers and toes. We were, the experts told me, well in the game.

Those experts weren’t taking the stand while Larken spaghettified. Wides in the opening over from Singh betrayed only that the ball was moving more than our man’s feet. I discreetly warmed up my index finger while they ran a bye. At the other end was Merritt, one of the half-centurions, running in from just over the horizon and bowling Exocets. Decorous to a fault, Larken recognised Middleton Stoney’s slips as a rare compliment to his ability to make contact with the ball, and did his best to deserve it; he manfully offered the edge and was left tremoring by the impact. The ball rocketed into the cordon, but they denied him so honourable a demise.

Freddie, meanwhile, was batting in his customary Hapsburg fashion: stately, watchful, doomed. The swing of Singh turned a legitimate legside shot into a steepling top edge behind square, and fine leg came running in like a marionette with every appearance of not being about to catch the ball. He did. Hugh came in, his pupils no less dilated, and began hitting boundaries and running quick singles. That used up what little mobility Larken had left; he really couldn’t do anything but watch as another in-Singh-er gently changed its course to thud into his pad, placed with satellite precision in front of middle stump.

The stage was set for another of Eoin’s Elmer Fudd cameos, in which his bat goes crudely, metaphorically limp in his hands. And then explodes. But the expected dismal prod to midwicket turned into a stylish flick to the boundary. Eoin was as astonished as anyone. The innings was away.

WATCHING BACCHUS bat is horrible, which is why we don’t do much of it. Hugh was seeing the ball in chemically-enhanced definition while Eoin was batting like the player George Jones described to us five years ago; the spectators took no pleasure in the spectacle beyond muttering ‘strokeplay’ in the brief intervals their mouths weren’t occupied with cigarettes, Old Speckled Hen or fingernails. Every frenetic single caused a shudder.

For a while these negative vibes mattered not a jot. Hugh bashed Singh about the place and Eoin flayed the normally lethal straight balls of Paul Wordsworth. They ran hard and the field wilted. Then Middleton Stoney brought on Floyd: slow-ish, thoughtful left arm around the wicket. It got the same treatment as the rest from our happy bats. His next over was a little more thoughtful; the next more thoughtful again. Hugh and Eoin, poor loves, began to think. Before long, they couldn’t get the ball off the square.

It was a Benjamin Button innings, as bats that had started so authoritatively declined into first-ball jitters. We were 90-2, with overs galore to spare, but Simpkins was becoming twitchy while whatever Hugh was on began either to wear off or take effect. The result was a story as old as time – I’m sure something similar happens in Genesis. Simpkins called a single he wasn’t quite sure about, Hugh launched himself down the pitch and they were nose-to-nose by the time Eoin had decided there probably wasn’t one there. Hugh was run out for 42 and stormed – now horribly, angrily sober – from the pitch. “What happened?” shouted Jeffers, cheerfully. How Jeffers still lives, none know.

A little bell rang in heaven to announce the resumption of Bacchant batting. Simpkins waited mournfully for a wicket ball he could stick his pad into; Floyd immediately obliged. Ollie Wright chipped one back to Tim Riley, who’d been offering similar food for thought at the other end, then Floyd bowled Brassington, and the terrifying Merritt returned to knock over Clem. We were 117-7 – a relatively gentle collapse. Relieved spectators returned to their drinks, now more interested in Simpkins’ bid for reconciliation with Hugh than whatever Riley and Dominic were up to at the crease. I padded up and asked Leo for some throwdowns, thus declaring the game medically dead.

BUT WHEN WE looked up it was still twitching, artificially sustained by our sick-minded batsmen. Disgusted fascination turned to bafflement, and then the cheering started. Riley hit some gorgeous shots using Merritt’s speed, Dominic found the gaps and with the score at 140 Tim Riley began to worry there were enough overs left in the game to score the runs. Happily, I was worrying there were enough overs left to take the wickets, and we agreed – without any reference to the facts – that the scoreboard was two behind the count. We had five overs and 39 runs to make things interesting. Riley hit a difficult but catchable ball towards the Bacchus ultras, where the juvenile opener was fielding; he fumbled it over the rope. Felicity howled.

Hugh was back on the field, though to say he was an umpire is a calumny on the laws of the game. It turned out that the child on the boundary we were barracking and pelting with beer bottles was Floyd’s, and he responded by squeezing his already-desiccated overs again. Riley, weakened by the sun, took a quick single not at all quickly and was run out. Or wasn’t, according to Hugh, very much buying into the diabolical conspiracy conceit. I quaked to imagine how the higher power would avenge this. It took a few balls (hoho) before Tim Riley sent a gentle full toss down the wicket, which missed our Riley’s swipe and hit him in the box. Larken – a notorious agent of justice and connoisseur of the gentle full toss – gave it out. How, without detailing too much about our beloved Catwater’s anatomy, could a ball to his crotch have hit the stumps? Curvature of the earth, I suppose.

Jeffers loves challenges; he could watch them for hours. So he shepherded his second ball to slip and Bacchus were nine down, thirty behind, with four overs to go. I could have left my bat with Fr Phil for all the chance it had of touching a delivery from Merritt, who had replaced Floyd, so Dominic farmed the strike like it was agribusiness. Then he mashed the next Riley over and let me face the last ball. My forward defensive hit him out of the attack. Dominic clawed a single off the last of Merritt’s next over, and we needed thirteen to win as Floyd returned for his twelfth.

DOES IT matter that Dominic was almost stumped on his first ball? That he couldn’t clear the square for the next two while the field crept ominously closer? That he hit a four to put all results in play? That his attempts to hit a winning six were in vain? That in the end one of the great Bacchus results was no result at all?

Not a bit. I cannot, for contractual reasons, call it my favourite day of 2024. I would like to say that same reasons stopped me finishing this report for eighteen months, but in truth I just enjoyed dwelling on the memory. And it turns out there are no bowlers’ limits in a timed game.

SCORECARD

Middleton Stoney
G Floyd b S Riley 5
M Ford-Langstaff lbw b S Riley 0
M Carpenter not out 69
H Lancaster run out Brassington 0
J Mumtaz b Jefferies 4
B Merritt c Wright b D Hudson 69
S Jackson b D Hudson 0

Extras b 6 lb 1 w 15 nb 8 30
TOTAL (33 overs) 177

*Bacchus XI
E S T Larken lbw b Singh 3
F Gate c Jackson b Singh 2
H E C Hudson run out T Riley 42
E Simpkins lbw b J Floyd 38
O Wright c & b T Riley 6
J Brassington b J Floyd 5
C Giuseppetti b Merritt 4
S C Riley lbw b T Rile y 23
D A Hudson not out 37
W Jefferies c Ford-Langstaff b T Riley 0
P H Hudson not out 0

Extras b 4 lb 1 w 3 nb 3 11
TOTAL (45 overs) 171

MATCH DRAWN