Somerset Tour

After the exertions of the Yorkshire Tour and the pain of enduring such a string of narrow defeats had been somewhat alleviated by Carpe’s first victory of the season, it was time for the club’s annual trip to the Wild West, otherwise known as ThomsonTown or Kingsdon.

Your correspondent arrived just in time for the Second Lions Test, watched by literally tens of expectant fans in The Bull Inn in Illchester. Most of the rest of the team had been sampling the delights of regional clubbing the night before, an annual tradition that is no doubt as eagerly anticipated by the locals as it is by Carpe tourists.

As Leigh Halfpenny’s final kick sank beneath the posts to send Australians into orgasm, we duly sank our pints and headed to Kingsdon Cricket Club to see if we could do any better than the men in red. A crowd had gathered to watch this institution of a match and though they could not match the thousands of rugby fans in Melbourne in numbers, they certainly matched them in fervour, not least when taking the piss out of Strong.

They had also brought a surfeit of players, which made the game 13-aside, with Hewitt forced to spend the match as a spectator, a decision he accepted in good grace by promptly going to the pub.

Kingsdon batted first, but initially found runs hard to come by, with Captain Denny and Vice Captain Hilliard pounding in from either end and launching a barrage of fast-paced, tricky balls. Hilliard took the first three wickets, finishing with figures of 3-11, while Denny’s 2-16 further took the heart from Kingsdon. Strong and Manthorpe snaffled a wicket each as well to leave Carpe with a quite scalable target.

The batting got off to an inauspicious start when Davis returned to the pavilion rather earlier than he might have hoped with only four runs. However, this gave Carpe the chance to unleash their secret weapon – Thomson, who, on his home ground, swatted and slogged his way to a career best of eight. A batting collapse that in quick succession saw Greene, Phelps, Dingwall and Thomson back in their shorts, lounging in the sun, would have concerned lesser men.

But Denny and Hilliard, batting with gusto, gathered runs at a pace that betrayed their thirst for glory and for some cider at the pub round the corner.

After the game had been won and the plaudits handed out and a few more pints had been sunk at the pub, it was time for that other great Kingsdon tradition – the Parkfarm Party. With the sun still high in the sky, Carpe Vinum accepted the coveted Thomson Trophy for the first time with all the grace and humility that we have come to expect from such upstanding members of the cricketing fraternity – that is to say they cheered and sang, jeered and jumped about, taking great swigs from the cup, and didn’t stop until long after We Are The Champions had finished playing. Indeed the festivities did not stop until the early hours and for the hospitality and patience of the Thomson family we extend our warmest thanks.

The following morning Carpe Vinum ate a hearty breakfast in the glow that glinted off the cup, resplendent in a window arch, before heading eastwards to Wiltshire to play the fine members of Chitterne CC, another team that hitherto Carpe had failed to vanquish. Could lightening strike twice?

All things seemed possible as Chitterne started slowly, eeking out runs at a rate that was deeply encouraging. Wickets fell with comforting regularity with Strong to the fore. That was until Chitterne’s runner came into bat, a Rifleman called De Freitus who had, ironically enough, been called in to replace a player called Strong. Up to that point, Carpe’s slow spinner had been enjoying himself, taking the first three wickets and rather inexpensively at that.

One over later and Strong’s average lay in tatters – clattered and thumped to all corners, as leaky as a colander. His pain was shared by other bowlers. After overs of sterling control to stifle Chitterne’s run rate, Carpe suddenly found themselves staring at an increasingly daunting total. When De Freitus finally left the field, caught expertly off Hilliard, hope flickered once again. Even Strong got his mojo back, finishing with figures of 5-47.

Alas, the innings ended on a sad note, with Manthorpe’s finger badly bruised dropping a catch and Dingwall’s hamstring torn chasing down a boundary off the penultimate ball. However, though the final total was large, it was not insurmountable. All rested on the batsmen. Greene and Davis set about their task with relish, taking advantage of the short boundary on the south side and striking some fine cricketing blows. Spectators from Chitterne began to worry that a crushing defeat was on the cards. They did not reckon with the length of Carpe’s tail.

Once Davis had gone, the runs continued to accumulate through Greene and Denny, both of whom finished with 44 runs. When Greene departed, however, the wickets started to mount up and concern crept into the Carpe ranks. Keith, Hilliard and Strong batted gamely, but struggled to provide longstanding partners for Denny.

Disaster then struck as Denny was given out off a contentious LBW decision and the task of hauling Carpe over the line rested with Manthorpe and Dingwall, who were injured, and with Whitting and Thomson.

After being clean bowled for six Whitting acted as runner for brave young Dingwall, the eleventh batsman, who limped out to the wicket to the applause of all. With runs drying out, eventually time ran out as well, leaving Carpe agonisingly short of a victory that perhaps their defiance, discipline and tenacity had warranted.

We’ll get ‘em next year!

The Yorkshire Tour

From its earliest incarnation Carpe Vinum has been a nomadic team, a band of cricketers that has traipsed as far afield as the Balearic Islands in search of opposition, laying waste to the surrounding bars with the vigour of a Viking raiding party and asserting themselves on the pitch with the sort of dominance usually reserved for the monasteries being attacked by those same Viking raiding parties.

This season, however, rather than seeking out opposition in the sun-baked wickets of Ibiza and the South of France, Carpe decided that there were richer pickings to had to the north in Yorkshire. Surely there were teams in that cricketing wilderness against whom we could chalk up some hard earned wins?

The first challenge of the tour to be overcome was the journey up there itself. For Keith, the complications of getting to the station before the Lash Train left proved too much of an obstacle. For Thomson, the exertions of the Lash Train’s heavy drinking policy left him broken and bruised (although a rugby tackle onto the pavements of Leeds might better explain the bruising). For those who chose to drive, traffic hindered progress, but upon arrival it was the 45 minutes spent trapped in a lift with a panicking Hilliard that really took its toll. The first night in Leeds had proved a haphazard affair.

The following morning, a motley assortment of ‘pre-1995 sporting icons’ gathered in the Travel Lodge dining room to shovel down as much bacon and toast as humanly possible before heading to Headingley to watch the Test match between England and New Zealand. While some were recognisable figures –Redgrave, Pinsent and Mansell for example – others were more difficult to pin down. There were three tennis players... Pat Cash, Bjorn Borg and Sue Barker? There was an unnamed Scottish rugby player, Eddie the Eagle, someone claiming that Tiger Woods was a legitimate icon before 1995, a boxer claiming that Rocky’s fictionality did not detract from his fame and, most alarmingly of all, someone dressed like Mr Motivator.

What most of these costumes may have had in originality and authenticity, they lacked severely in insulation, a flaw that became painfully clear upon stepping out into the biting wind, lashing rain and debilitating cold that typifies a day at the cricket in Yorkshire.

Upon arrival at Headingley, beers were swiftly consumed to ward off the cold, but this resulted only in the team losing Adamson to the toilets. With Test match cricket looking increasingly unlikely and people struggling to feel their fingers, we did what any self respecting Carpe team would do and went to the pub.

Well, we went to various pubs, played some ‘touch’ rugby with some youths in a park, and went on to other pubs. While some people’s routes may have altered, all ended up eventually in Halo – a church that had found its true calling as a stonking great nightclub full of £1 drinks, ladies of ill repute and, for one night only, a group of arseholed cricketers who danced like Fred Flintstone, drank enough to bankroll Leeds for a week and engaged in insalubrious activities with the locals.

Having sampled its delights Carpe Vinum bid a bleary farewell to Leeds and headed to Harrogate, perhaps one of the most beautiful spa towns in the country. There we sampled the local beers in a variety of pubs, from the outstanding Alexandra to the well-named if disappointingly frequented Coach and Divorces. While nothing in this world may ever top a night out at Halo, Harrogate’s Viper Rooms did it level best to compete and certainly impressed, although your correspondent’s memories of it are alas slightly hazy.

We awoke on the fourth day, conscious that we had, as yet, neither seen nor played a minute’s cricket. So we hastened to Ripley CC for a 6-aside tournament, five overs to each innings. The weather by now was as glorious as it had been odious two days before and we lounged on the boundary sampling fine Yorkshire ale and talking to locals about table tennis tournaments.

Carpe split its forces – Reading vs The World – both of whom set about losing their opening games. Of particular note was Alex Keith’s over in which he seemingly forgot how to bowl, with the first ball soaring over the keeper’s head and the second driving into the ground inches from the bowler’s feet. With wides worth four runs and almost every man required to bowl, most players’ averages took a bit of a caning.

It soon transpired that Carpe Reading (aka Carpe Vinum AGM) would face Carpe The World (Carpe Vinum Vipers) for a place in the semi final (Christ knows how), so the two teams strode out, aware that whoever won might end up missing out on a round of beers. In the end, Heineken-sponsored AGM failed to set a fearsome enough target and The Vipers went through the semis, where they were beaten in remarkably close match by some schoolchildren.

Still, Carpe returned to the hotel in high spirits, for in defeating ourselves, we did at least have one victory in the bank. Not only that, but we had the luxurious delights of the Studley Royal CC Black Tie Dinner to look forward to. Conversely, the staff at our hotel had another two nights of late-night carousing and chair breaking shenanigans (courtesy of Hewitt and Manthorpe) and the resulting guest complaints to endure. Still, we’ll get over it.

The dinner was a triumph, with Carpe players drinking and dancing with aplomb, befriending everyone (except perhaps a few disgruntled husbands) and ensuring that the party went on at least 20 songs after the DJ had called time.

It was, therefore, a team with bloodshot eyes and dragging feet that rocked up at Studley Royal’s ground the following morning for our first proper game of the tour. We were at least partially encouraged by the knowledge that we couldn't be feeling much worse than our opponents whom we had witnessed necking glasses of wine with the best of us the night before.

It was a slight surprise, then, to find a gaggle of teenagers come bouncing into the pavilion, fresh faced and ready to play, with only a few of the revellers from the previous night in their midst.

The match turned out to be quite the thriller. Having put Studley Royal into bat, Carpe made early inroads, bowling tight and keeping the run rate down, whilst still creating the occasional chance. The first wicket, an athletic caught and bowled from Saunders, was met with exultant cheers. But the No.3 batsman was a man firmly in the Robert Key mould and he proceeded to smash the ball to all corners of the pitch. The fact that the shots were frequently through the air did not pose many risks, with the Carpe having one of those days in the field where they seemed to have as much chance of catching the ball as Dick Dastardly did of catching a pigeon.

The worst was a true howler, the campest thing that Studley Royal had ever seen, the ball flying into the air, rising with Carpe’s hopes of finally dispatching this bruising batsman back to the pavilion, only to land harmlessly between Whitting and Thomson with neither of them wishing to call for the catch. Eventually the batsman retired after reaching his half century, but Carpe’s bowlers continued to cede runs.

Manthorpe, bowling manfully with a gammy shoulder, took two more wickets, with Hewitt taking a fine catch off Strong and Saunders running a man out. But Studley Royal took tea in higher spirits, having ratcheted up a total of 167 for 5.

When Bremakumar departed for 1 and was followed shortly afterwards by a player kindly loaned to us by Studley Royal, things looked bleak. But just as he had taken the first wicket, Saunders set about taking control, his assured 52, ably assisted by Strong’s 20, wrestling the match back towards Carpe. Flickering embers of hope were cruelly extinguished however, by Saunders’ retirement upon reaching his own half century. Where Studley Royal’s batsmen had continued to gain runs, Carpe’s lost wickets. Though Hilliard made a gutsy 20, a procession of batsmen – Whitting, Phelps and Thomson – strode out to the crease, only to return moments later empty-handed. Carpe finshed 120 all out, their chase petering out in disappointing fashion.

All that remained was the matter of Tour Court, which was staged in the finest establishment Harrogate had to offer – Wetherspoons. After downing a plethora of drinks of questionable quality, some of which quickly resurfaced, Carpe Vinum strode out into the night. Accordingly to the Wetherspoons staff, we had been engaged in some ‘weird public school ritual’.

So we returned from Yorkshire a largely un-conquering side, but a side that had taken Tour, drunk it to the lees and returned for more. We’ve even got a few invitations to return (although not from Grant’s Hotel in Harrogate bizarrely!).