Another Sunday, another afternoon of leather on willow at fortress Ex Blues and this time we hosted a late addition to the fixture list in Eastside CC, whoe travelled to West Wickham from Forest Gate in East London.
This week, the Ramblas were missing a number of stalwarts from the previous fixture – outgoings were Duane Hall, Drew Smith, Rehan Qureshi, former captain Jon Stocks and most surprisingly the Ramblas’ leading appearance maker and current captain Michael Cooper.
Into the side came Neil Missen, Kieran Gibbons and father and son duo Neil and Koby Radburn – all Ex Blues who have helped out the Ramblas on previous occasions as well as JP Aubin-Parvin who has cemented his place as a Rambla in a very short period of time.
Matt Rudgyard skippered the side in Cooper’s absence and his first action was to lose the toss, with Eastside taking the opportunity to bat first on a sweltering day.
Rudgyard went with the tried and trusted opening bowling partnership of James Dilley and Chris Thomas. Thomas bowled a tight initial four-over spell and was rewarded with a maiden first up and a wicket in his third over with a peach of a ball to trap the opener County LBW after he was beginning to look settled at the crease. Dilley, by his own admission, was not at his best and was unable to find his usual rhythm.
Given the temperatures and clear blue skies, Rudgyard made a double bowling change after eight overs and brought Koby Radburn and JP Aubin-Parvin into the fray. Radburn gave the batsmen lots to think about and was turning the ball some distance and was unlucky not to take a wicket in his first spell. JP on the other hand had an immediate effect, dismissing the other opener Umair in his first over – a wicket maiden, no less. He then bowled a further maiden and took a second wicket in his third over – again clattering the stumps, this time of the visitors’ number three.
Rudgyard maintained his approach of not asking the bowlers to give him more than four-over spells and asked Gibbons and Luke Sheridan to see what they could achieve with the ball. The answer from Gibbons was emphatic: a wicket maiden in his first over. This was starting to look like genius captaincy from the stand-in skipper. The wicket came as a result of an early contender for catch of the season from Ben Sheridan who stayed balanced as the ball swirled high in the air.
Luke Sheridan initially started off his long run and his first over brought another maiden, however whilst his line was good, his length needed more consistency and to be fair fell apart in his second over where he decided to come off a couple of paces.
Deciding to turn to a seventh bowler, Rudgyard tossed the ball to Missen who bowled tightly and was rewarded in his second over with the wicket of the Eastside captain Farkhan – a little movement off the seam castling the dangerous batsman.
Thomas returned and again kept things tight and took another wicket maiden with the first over of his second spell bowling the young batsman Adam with another of his lovely cutters.
Koby Radburn and JP Aubin-Parvin finished off the innings with a couple of overs each – again Radburn unlucky not to make a breakthrough, but JP getting his third wicket of the day.
The visitors ended their innings 191/7 and Rudgyard was confident that given their batting exploits of the last few weeks that this was an achievable target. The home side had bowled and fielded well, the only disappointment being that extras top scored for the visitors with 30.
Tea was taken and again was a delight – the Lidl over Waitrose taste test was passed and after a well earned break the Ramblas set about chasing down the target under darkening skies and the threat of storms.
Older readers will remember Alan Hansen making a comment about a youthful Manchester United team back in August 1995 and will know what happened next…
So far in the report, the writer has not mentioned that five members of the Eastside XI were colts of various ages ranging from around 11 to 15. Now, over the years the Ramblas have had varying degrees of success against sides containing colts and it isn’t always easy to gauge the levels that they will play to. Given this, the skipper changed up the batting order a little to allow for this.
In the same way that the ‘Class of 92’ took little heed of the warning from Hansen nor did the visitors.
Rudgyard asked the Neils of Radburn and Missen to open the batting and whilst steady to start with, they struggled to deal with the tight line and length of the opening bowlers Isa and Armaan. Isa was rewarded with the wicket of Missen in his third over – the batsmen trapped LBW. Jason Christensen came to crease to join Radburn. Christensen was hoping to find some form having had a few weeks off with injury but did not locate it – his innings earned him the nickname ‘the cat’ having been dropped twice in consecutive balls – unfortunately, there was no respite as he was caught at square leg of the bowling of Isa.
After his maiden half century the week before, Ben Sheridan came to the middle and with no thought for finding his way into his innings, went big and was caught at square leg without scoring. Older brother Luke, whose batting over the last few weeks has been nothing short of explosive, joined Radburn and started as watchfully as we have become accustomed to.
With so few runs on the board, the captain Farkhan brought himself off as first change and the already slow run rate became a crawl with a maiden followed by a wicket maiden off his first couple of overs gave the Ramblas plenty of food for thought. Radburn was his first victim when his first shot in anger flew hard but straight to the fielder at deep mid on.
At the first drinks break (at the end of the 12th over due to the heat) Ramblas were rocking at 24/4. James Dilley and Luke – having negotiated their way to a brief respite – knew they needed to stick around deep into the innings.
On resumption the runs began to arrive – both batsmen finding the boundary early. However, another blow for the Ramblas came with Dilley finding the hands of a fielder rather than the boundary off the bowling of Adam.
Kieran Gibbons was up next and another catch followed shortly off the bowling of Farkaan.
Koby Radburn, who scored a ton the last time he played under the captaincy of Rudgyard, was next up and the skipper still had faint hopes of a win while he remained there with Sheridan.
Then the hammer blow came and the pitch played its part. Having made 30, Sheridan was then on the receiving end of a ball that, totally out of the blue, pitched and stayed low to the surface and trickled below his bat and onto his stumps.
The skipper coming in at number nine was quickly caught and bowled by Farkaan having already played through a shot to a slower ball.
JP Aubin-Parvin, having hit the winning runs in his last innings, was in at 10 and knew he had a great deal to do in order to make the Ramblas’ score even slightly respectable.
Koby Radburn stuck around for a couple of overs but once again a catch came off the bowling of Armaan and Ramblas had lost three wickets for no runs.
Last man in was Thomas and for a brief time the tail wagged – Aubin-Parvin plundering three boundaries in consecutive balls (admittedly off the bowling of the youngest and shortest of the visitors).
Thomas provided stout resistance, but was eventually bowled by the pick of the Eastside bowlers, Isa as the Ramblas were humbled for 70 all out and a 121-run defeat.
All credit to the visitors who were clearly superior and there is no doubt those youngsters will go on to do great things in their cricket careers, but your devil-may-care Ramblas will rue a poor batting performance where they gave most of their wickets away.
Ramblas MVP: It’s never easy to select a player of the match in these circumstances. However, whilst giving credit to Luke Sheridan for his 30 runs, JP Aubin-Arvin has the questionable honour of being this week’s Ramblas player of the match for his three wickets and for making sure the tail wagged a little at the end of the innings.