Far From The MCC

~ Est. in 1998 ~

 

“Sanity Restored

As The Mad Notch Maiden Win”

 

 

Sunday 19th May 2002

Result:  Won by 101 Runs

Venue:  Wootton & Boars Hill CC

35 overs

FFTMCCC

183 - 6

L. Davie  58,  J. Hoskins  35,  A. Mann  28

Marlborough House

82 ao

A. Mann  3 - 19,  A. Fisher  2 - 2

 

 

 

With little more than most of the entire rest of the season stretching before them, both players and hangers-on alike must have been wondering just where the first Far From The Madding Crowd victory was going to spring from. Various theories had been broached. Some maintained that the win would eventually be found under a very large stone. Others had been heard to mutter that the victory had been walled up in a Victorian terrace on Observatory Road, and would not be discovered until chance renovations exposed its dusty bones to the harsh glare of daylight. Yet with such lunatic ravings dismissed for the insane musings of the damned that they were, it came as little more than surprise when the summer’s first win unfolded at Wootton and Boar’s Hill CC ground Sunday last. And what a win it turned out to be.

 

 

Wootton is nice, but not too nice.

 

The ground at Wootton is a picture, if not an entirely pretty one. Country things, like fields and cow turds, surround the compact oval, and there is a squat church away beyond the car park. Indolent rednecks watch their offspring swinging from the climbing frames in the public park. At one stage a horse walked past, showing that lack of interest in cricket so typical of equine creatures. There had been murmurings amongst the Madsters for some time that Marlborough House were looking formidable this year: a competitive eagerness and an influx of strong new players – two concepts alien to the Mad – had been noted by the spies who had attended the Marlborough’s pre-season indoor net sessions. So much the more remarkable the turn of events, then, as the Marlborough bubble, for this game at least, was resoundingly burst.

 

Mad tyro captain M. Bullock won the toss and elected to bat, and A. Mann (28) and A. Fisher (10) put on 41 in quick order to set the tone for the innings. H. Jones (13) contributed, and L. Davie top-scored with a typically robust yet cultured 58, but the highlight of the first session was surely the energetic 35 from J. Hoskins, by a distance said player’s best knock for either Jude or Mad, and definitive proof that he has fully recovered from the horrific dancing injury that at one stage threatened his career. Hoskins has let his bat do the talking on this one, and shown that cricket and dancing are not after all mutually exclusive activities. Hoskins and Davie shared a 111-run partnership, a team record for all wickets, eclipsing R. Hadfield and H. Jones’s 108 for the 3rd wicket against OUP in 2000. Both A. Mander (1) and J. Hotson (0) were brutally run out as they sacrificed their wickets in the search for quick runs at the end of the innings, while T. Smith (2) remained calm and not out for the second week running. Of the Marlborough bowlers, the doughty M. Shelley (2-15) stood out.

 

 

The Mad had set Marlborough a demanding 183, and at first the home team went about their task with admirable restraint. G. Lal (4) looked comfortable, and was just settling into the all-important anchor role, when in the fifth over A. Mann (3-19) sent his off-stump not so much cartwheeling as leaning quite a long way back. Three balls later, Marlborough captain M. Cox (1) flayed a short delivery to on, where T. Smith took an astonishing catch on the run at midwicket, plucking the ball from the air at ankle height as blades of grass brushed his knuckles and crickets chirka-chirked at his fingertips. It is an effort that already has ‘Catch of the Season’ written all over it.

 

The rot had set in. The Marlborough batsmen looked the part, but threw away their wickets in a chase for quick runs that never came. S. Dobner (1-23) and L. Davie (2-8) routed the rest of the top and middle order, and it was left to A. Fisher (2-2), H. Jones (1-17) and T. Smith (1-5) to mop up the tail. Fisher especially contrived to bamboozle the opposition with his lobbed grenades – B. Dalton (1) leapt away from one such gentle bomb only to see his stumps go boink behind him, and the all-round astonishment level was middling to highish. Despite V. Sculley (0) and (0) batting twice, for a unique single-innings pair, the Marlborough effort ended on 82, 101 runs short of the Mad.

 

Once again the Madsters’ fielding was top drawer, with no outfield catches batted down, and M. Bullock was able to celebrate his first win as captain in a style, perhaps, which few would have anticipated.

 

Crazy stuff. Insane. Mental. Mad.

 

 

‘Blocker’

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

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