To adequately describe the scenes at Wandsworth Common’s
cricket ground a few weeks ago would require a level of hyperbole not heard
since Dennis Lillee was hurling balls at stumps.
Carpe Vinum CC spent its off-season recruiting heavily and
these new additions have brought added energy to the field, aggression to the
batting, but most notably, venom to the bowling. The match started in typical
Carpe fashion however – that is to say, the stumps arrived seconds before play
was due to start and some players got lost on their way to the ground.
Put into bat under the glorious summer sun by The Baker
Street Irregulars, Carpe’s openers set about their task. Freddie Cunningham and
Will Finch formed a strong partnership to blunt the attack of the new ball,
smearing boundaries and rotating the strike whenever possible. They looked to
be building comfortably before a humdinger of a ball from Bailey clattered into
Finch’s stumps and brought aggressive batsmen Jason Quick to the crease. While
Cunningham continued to build his score through a series of singles, Quick
attacked the bowlers. Spin bowler Rahull was enraged to see a series of balls
thundering to boundary, but was howling when he hit the wicket, only to see the
bails remain resolutely on the stumps. Quick’s innings, though entertaining,
was overshadowed by his stupendous dismissal. Lining up for a mammoth swing
against Harrod, he missed the ball, lost his balance and, spinning round a few
times, collapsed into his stumps. He returned to the boundary with fifteen runs,
welcomed by howls of laughter.
The next two batsmen, Charlie Whitting and captain Ben
Wilson, added little to the score, but Johnny Hilliard strode to the middle
with real intent. As Cunningham made his half century, Hilliard was bludgeoning
balls with merry abandon. While the partnership lasted, Carpe looked well set,
but once Cunningham was found out lbw, the inevitable Carpe collapse left
Hilliard stranded on 35. Tom Nias left with two runs, Australian debutant Lewis
Barker made a composed five and Charlie Southgate contributed a run to the
total. Adam Rostrum, asked to bat twice with Carpe fielding only ten men,
failed to add to his initial duck, caught out first ball in his second
‘innings’ to leave with a king pair in a 27-over innings.
With a total of 167 and only ten men to defend it, Carpe
knew that they would have to depend on their bowlers to be accurate. And boy were
they. Rostrum opened the bowling, clearly determined that, if he couldn’t score
any runs, then no one from BSI would either. The ball was whistling past the
bat, past the chin, past the ears, and the umpires even felt it necessary to
‘have a word’.
After a vicious opening maiden over, the batsmen might have
expected some light relief from Nias. They got none of it, his first ball
clattering into the stumps and sending the man back to the hutch runless. His
replacement didn’t add to the score. Then the carnage really began. After a
snorter had unsettled his target, Rostrum’s next delivery was awkwardly edged
to the slips. The following ball sent the bails flying and the next was spooned
into the air and grasped by a chasing Wilson. In three overs, BSI had lost four
wickets without troubling the scoreboard. Charging like a rhino about to miss
the last train, Rostrum struck terror into the hearts and minds of every
batsmen that shuffled nervously to the wicket, while at the other end dead-eyed
Nias was no less terrifying.
After six overs of brutality that saw six wickets fall for a
handful of runs, Wilson dragged Nias and Rostrum away and slowed things down
with some spin, starting with himself. He was initially rewarded with two
wickets in two balls to leave the BSI innings hanging by a thread. But then the
inevitable fightback happened. Without the quicks terrorising them Bailey and
Harrod started to claw back into the contest, gaining revenge on Wilson by
slogging 27 runs off one over.
Carpe might have entertained
thoughts that this flurry of runs in the lower order was merely making a game
of what could have been an absolute hammering, but watching each over pass with
the ball passing over their heads and the boundary, nonchalance turned to
amusement, then irritation, then downright concern. The history of Carpe is
littered with plenty of ignominious defeats but to lose from this position –
surely not?
Chances were coming, with
Hilliard coming close and Barker enduring a litany of dropped catches and edges
not going to hand, but there was no breakthrough. Then, just after BSI had
sailed past 100, Wilson decided enough was enough, and brought Rostrum and Nias
back to the attack. With almost immediate effect. The final two wickets fell
and Carpe Vinum had triumphed by 48 runs. But for Harrod’s 74 not out, more
than half his side’s total, the winning margin could well have been 148.
While such a commanding display
might not be necessarily familiar to all Carpe fans, the lengthy celebrations
at the nearby County Arms certainly were.
