Far From The MCC
~ Est. in 1998 ~
History
*
Misremembered Days
(
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I - Beginnings I
wasn’t there at the beginning, which by all accounts took place on December
31st 1997 at Jude The
Obscure, in those days a
Early days, outside the pub. Noel Reilly front row second from
right. It
was this rarefied hothouse atmosphere, this Little |
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II - 1998 Records
for the first season of Jude The
Obscure CC are understandably sketchy and incomplete, for who could have
known then that now, records would be of any use at all? Few were kept, and
of those that were, many have now been sadly lost. Of those that were kept
and not lost, many are inaccurate, and of those that were kept, not lost, and
accurate, most make depressing reading. The
word went out, and players were gathered from here and there, i.e. the pub,
or places people went to after the pub had closed. It is known that the first
captain of Jude the Obscure CC was
Eddie Lester, or possibly Fred Townsend. Of players available for selection
in 2008, only It
was Simon Brandon who in 1998 topped the batting averages with 42.00 from 5
matches. He also took 6 wickets at 17.67 and justifiably won Player of the
Year. Simon was a young sporty guy, always welcome because he brought along
his girlfriend. She was a hot chick who wore mirror sunglasses, whom God had created specifically for sitting in the sun
watching cricket, and other things best left to your imagination. Where are
they now, those two, Simon and the sunglasses chick? Where? Eddie
Lester’s highest score in 1998 was 33 not out. He was a correct-looking
batsman but had a weakness for playing across the line which would plague him
in later years. He bowled looping spin with a slow-motion slingshot action,
and looked a bit liked Lasith Malinga
running through jelly. In those days, in fact always really, up until the
year he left, Eddie was the heart and soul of the team, a tall gangly
specimen with a shock of tousled blonde hair who exuded an almost otherwordly enthusiasm and optimism. Sometimes that faith
in human nature and the weather was borne out, sometimes it wasn’t. But the
sun was always shining for Ed.
The Jude’s first skipper, Eddie
Lester. Howard
Jones was The Jude’s first real
quick bowler, and he took a wicket with his first
delivery for the team. He also batted with an aggressive, natural style which
sometimes saw him go early, but more often took him into the 50s and beyond,
though he never managed to score a century. His temperament meant that his
mind wasn’t always on the game, but Howard was a founding member who had a
massive impact on the side. He’s someone who is missed to this day. In
1998, James Blann scored 46 runs at 6.57 and took 4
catches, but is best remembered for the time meningial
fluid leaked out of his nose as he dived for a catch. Meningial
fluid is the stuff which is in your head where your brain is. It’s white,
like runny snot. I can’t remember now why it leaked out of his nose, but I do
remember we all stood round watching and went, Oh, really? Is that meningial fluid? Well how about that, huh? Naturally
James shrugged it off and kept on playing, like we all would have. Antony
Mann joined the team late in the season after Eddie turned up at a party in
Walton Well Road, looking for players for the next day’s game. Because he was
an Aussie, everybody thought he would be a shit hot ringer, and was just
being modest when he said he was crap, but the truth was he hadn’t played
cricket since he was 12. He was determined not to be crap forever, though,
and went through the entire season not out, earning the nickname ‘Blocker’.
Which is me. Matt Bullock joined around the same
time Ant Mann did, and was destined to stay the distance as well. The wry and
phlegmatic Brummie became the team’s default wicket
keeper, then over the years the Chairman, chief statistician and primary
Voice of Reason, which is often useful among the Other
Jude players that year included the
affable Martin Hurley, a left-hander who batted like he was in the middle of
a game of hurling, which was kind of a weird coincidence when you looked at
his surname, but not so weird when you remembered he was Irish; and Chris
Legg, a rough diamond who managed The
Jude itself. He knew how to hit a ball and in those days was a batting
mainstay. He also bowled fast, quite often at your head. Then there were John
Moore and Richard Blann, who with James Blann and Simon Brandon made up the team’s quartet of
young dudes. Sam Pollard, with his thin, hunched frame and wiry dark hair,
who ran the second-hand bookshop on As
for how it was in 1998, I don’t
remember much, apart from how it felt. It seemed as though there was now a
fabric to the summer, newly woven, a fabric which hadn’t been there before,
as yet stretchy and flimsy and liable to blow about in the wind unless held
down by a big rock, but a fabric nonetheless. But the question remained.
Would that – could that – fabric be made into an item of clothing, a shirt,
perhaps? Would that shirt be a cricket shirt, by any chance? Was that
metaphor really necessary? |
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III - 1999 The
Jude The Obscure Cricket Team 1999
Pre-Season Newsletter is necessarily full of bad jokes, but also talks in
some detail about a Committee Meeting held in March of 1999 in which it was
mooted that elections for committee positions should conceivably be held,
although, what’s the rush? The possibility of running a Saturday League team along
with the Sunday side, in the manner of a proper cricket club, was also
raised. This is an idea often mooted by Sunday pub teams, usually about once
every two or three years, but it is rarely acted upon. The transition from
casual to ‘proper’ team is fraught with difficulties. League teams need to
provide a ground, train up their own umpires, have insurance, answer to
pernickety and unreasonable local committees, and worst of all, turn up for
games. Sunday teams just need to be able to drink a lot. In
addition, even though every Sunday player harbours a secret desire to test
themselves against Saturday opposition, every Sunday player also knows that
league teams are overflowing with ridiculous prima donnas who take themselves
and the game much too seriously. Sometimes these Saturday guys turn out for
their Sunday teams. You can tell who they are by the way they screech in
pathetic indignation whenever a decision goes against them. Even
in those early times, members of The
Jude’s ‘ghost’ committee were fully aware of the need to maintain an
authentic Sunday ethos and to preserve the individual’s right, while playing
sport, not to be a sportsman. It is this philosophy of Sundayism
which has underpinned the development of Jude
The Obscure CC in all its incarnations, and helped to forge the spirit of
the side, creating a small bastion of competitive fun in a world of barbarism
and malaria. The Jude of 1999 was comprised entirely
of Sundayists, and there was little to distinguish
them from the intake of 1998, although of course some faces were new, and
other players had got so pissed off with the message Eddie left on their
phones after they failed to turn up for the mid-week game against St Clare’s, they left in a huff. Of
Simon Brandon, there was no sign. Nor did his girlfriend appear to be
anywhere about, nor her sunglasses. Where had they gone? This is a rhetorical
question and doesn’t require an answer. The small, tight group of young dudes
– James and Richard Blann, James Moore and John
Moore – played only six games between them in the whole season and were never
heard from again (see above, phone call, pissed off etc). But
much of the core of the 1998 side remained, notably Howard Jones, Chris Legg,
Eddie Lester,
Ben (left) and Tony Mander (suit)
join the ranks of Jude The Obscure. The Jude played thirteen games in 1999 under the
continuing captaincy of Eddie Lester, winning four, drawing two and losing
seven. The good teams made up of experienced players, such as Isis and The Team With No Name, usually beat The Jude easily, whereas against the poorer sides such as
Weymouth’s The Quayside Occasionals, comprising local clowns and pissheads dragged at short notice from the pub or gutter,
The Jude had more of a chance. The Jude’s sole proper victory in 1999
came against The Marlborough at Cuttleslowe Upper Ground, the first of many encounters
between the two sides in the seasons to follow. One
thing Sunday teams need is someone to play against, and the best kind of
opposition is that which comes back year after year, allowing rivalries and
even friendships to develop. Sunday teams in the same area often end up
trading players as one team dissolves and another springs
up to fill the void. The average lifespan of a Sunday cricket team is 8.2
years, although of course some go on for much longer than that. Any Sunday
team which can’t make it to 5 years just isn’t trying, though conversely, any
Sunday side which makes it past 25, or which boasts celebrities amongst its
ranks, is showing off. Despite
a fine 102 out of 166-8 from Mike Reeves, The
Marlborough went down by 4 wickets thanks to a colourful 68 from Lee
Davie, one of several important Victory
against Marcham,
reaching their total of 85 with 5 wickets to spare despite playing with only
nine men, was achieved primarily through Stanton
St John Willows ringer Simon Dickens in one of his only two ever
appearances for The Jude. Called up
at three minute’s notice to fill in for the bastards who promised they’d play
but didn’t show, Dickens took 6-23 opening the bowling on an uneven pitch and
then scored 13, hitting the winning runs back over the bowler’s head while
stand-in skipper Ant Mann remained as usual nought not out watching from the
other end. At
that time Simon Dickens was manager of the Threshers on It’s
also a well-known fact that from a bowler’s point of view cricket is a
batsman’s game, though no amount of whingeing about it will make a batsman
give a damn. Bowlers win matches, are generally good-looking and intelligent,
kind to animals, and the sort of people you’d want to have with you in the
trenches. Batsmen on the other hand are usually overrated, are a bit thick
and tend to be distracted easily by bright shiny objects. Being a bowler
myself, I know what I’m talking about. The
best batsman in the world can walk out to the crease and get bowled first
ball, but no-one will blame him, because he ‘got a good one’. Hmm, bad luck, that was unplayable. Nothing you can do when you get a good
one like that. Sympathy rains down on the unfortunate batsman from all
sides, just because he got a decent delivery. Meanwhile, the bowler can send
down a torrent of fantastic stuff, the best he has ever bowled, but
continually miss the edge and the stumps by millimetres, or if he does catch
an edge, have it dropped in the slips (usually made up of batsmen). But
nobody remembers that. They look in the wickets column and all they see is
the big fat zero. Oddly, though, everybody would rather bat than bowl,
especially in Sunday cricket. Batting’s just more fun, and all you need is a
quick 25 to get Man of the Match, whereas a bowler needs at least five
wickets against top-class opposition, and even then there’s no guarantee. The Jude might well have beaten The Team With No Name at Horspath that
season after scoring only 71 all out (Lee Davie 34), if not for a torrential
downpour which ended the contest with the visitors in tatters on 8-4. Howard
Jones’ spell of bowling that day was the most venomous that any Sundayist had witnessed. Howard was an often sensitive
soul, and Fred Townsend at mid-on, his pants as usual hitched up to his
chest, spent the time between deliveries goading him and telling him that the
opposition had been insulting him. Consequently, Howard took 3-3 against a
strong top order, in doing so showing the kind of form which saw him
deservedly win 1999’s Player of the Year trophy. His overall bowling average
of 18 wickets at 13.94 (best of 5-9) was second only to Simon Dicken’s 9 wickets at 9.44. Jones also topped the batting
averages with 242 runs at 26.89 and a top score of 53. 1999
saw The Jude’s first Tour, to Apart from all that bucolic farmer-boy
stuff, the highlight of the tour was the entire team spending three hours on
a pebble-strewn beach throwing rocks of various sizes at a plastic football
until, with the sun setting, the ball had at last been forced down the sand
and into the water. Jeez, it makes you wonder – because I really do remember
that afternoon being a lot of fun.
The Jude on tour
in 1999. Eddie Lester is
middle row second from right holding a bat. Chris Legg front
middle. Chris Legg’s top score for Jude The
Obscure CC in 1999 was
49. He was second in the averages with 162 runs at 20.25, and took 13 wickets
at 19.31. Eddie Lester was third in the batting averages with 152 runs at
19.00 and a top score of 32 not out. His best bowling figures were 3-11. This
season, in only six of his eleven innings did Ant Mann finish not out, with a
high score of 31. Matt Bullock played in all 13 games in 1999, scoring 67
runs at 7.44. In Martin Hurley’s last full season for The Jude his top
score was 20. Fred Townsend managed 5 games, 12 runs and 1 wicket before he
was banned from the pub by Noel for that ‘incident’. I can’t even remember
now what it was all about. In fact, to be honest, nobody ever told me.
Bastards. Mike Thorburn
registered a series of drunken ducks before getting his act together and
scoring 51 pissed runs at a slaughtered 6.38. Mike liked a drink, especially
when he was conscious, and was also a useful half-tanked length bowler with a
knack for taking wickets while boozed up – 5 in 1999 at 14.80. Clare Norris
stood out from the rest of team because she was an Ben Mander played his cricket in a rough and
ready way, almost like a rugby player. He had the rugged good looks which
many cricketers aspire to when they first start playing, and the ability to
drink 26 beers on the night before any given game, then turn up having had no
sleep still drunk and yet even then a decent bloke, but he tended to hold his
bat rigidly at the crease, and when he did hit it, it was with no backswing
at all. His bowling was head-down spin, Windmill Variety No. 3,
unpredictable, and thus often potent. His father Tony, a noted gynaecologist,
was a steady batsman who always played his best when asked to fill in for the
opposition. Then, playing against his own team, he was transformed
from a calm blocker into a violent stroke-maker and sledger. After hanging about on the Cuttleslowe boundary watching The Jude play for
most of an afternoon, James Hoskins was finally invited onto the field and as
it transpired, into the team. In his 10 games in 1999 he scored 15 runs at
2.14 and took 3 wickets at 26.00. The friendly James – or J-Mo – soon became
one of The Jude’s core players. Competitive, naturally open and
friendly, almost at times as optimistic as Eddie Lester, James was the player
most likely to approach the complete stranger sitting on the pier and ask him
what type of fish he was trying to catch. As with many Jude players,
he started out knowing not much about cricket, but over the years developed
the skills which made him a dangerous bowler and a key part of the attack.
Possessed of an admirable resilience, James has had to deal at various times
with a horrendous dancing injury, the strange spontaneous combustion of his
car, a bunch of weirdos living in his house, some
burst pipes in his bathroom, and being continually reminded of his
misfortunes by sentences such as this, but every time, he has come up smiling.
James Hoskins. Once he
started playing, he just couldn’t stop. If there was a Club |
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IV - 2000 By
all accounts the Year 2000 was the turn of the millennium, and a momentous
time to be alive. There was suddenly a big ‘2’ where a tiny ‘1’ had used to
be. Except for the ones who committed mass suicide, millennium cultists
everywhere were disappointed that the world hadn’t been destroyed in an
inferno, though secretly relieved that they were still alive and could now
find something else whacky to believe in. There were parties, there were
fireworks, there was an expectation of things to
come. Then, after the Y2K Bug turned out to be a global con organized by IT
consultants, everyone became bitter and disillusioned and began to hate life
just as much as they had before. All the hope in everyone’s hearts faded,
just because of those IT guys, who would never again earn a hundred quid per
hour for sitting round doing nothing, but what did that matter when most of
them could now afford to retire? Anyhow, Y2K was a big let-down and nobody
gave a damn about it in the final wash-up. The world wouldn’t be properly
changing until the 11th of September the following year. Chris
Legg, manager of The Jude, played
only one game for the team in 2000 before marrying his girlfriend and moving
up north to manage a sports store. Of course, we were sad to see Chris go.
Because it meant that his nurse fiancée was going too. We all wanted that
nurse, we wanted her bad, there was something about
her, something hot, something nursy. We wished we
knew what she looked like in uniform, we wondered if she ever wore it off
duty. We wanted to get injured or beaten up, go to A&E, see if she was
there. But Chris got her, and we could never figure that out. Was he sick?
Did he need looking after? Was that it? Martin Hurley was only around for a
single game too. He went off to work in Howard
Jones, Mike Thorburn, Eddie Lester, James Hoskins,
Matt Bullock, Clare Norris, Antony Mann – the spine of the team remained
constant, but there were new players as well, some who would hang around,
others who made but fleeting appearances. Tony Mander and his son Ben played
almost 30 games between them in 2000, and young quick Greg Le Tocq from Jericho, who was not as quick as he thought he
was, played 12 in his only season for the team. Future captain Leo Phillips –
concert violinist, conductor, and son of the painter Tom Phillips – made his
debut, as did Adrian Fisher, whose own side, The Team With No Name, had lately become The Name With No Team.
Local baker
Ade Fisher on a break from his pie making. Jake
Hotson’s first game for The Jude was against Stokenchurch at the Cowley Marsh
minefield-cum-rabbit warren, in the preliminary round of the Bernard Tollett Cup. Ant Mann was skipper that evening, and as
usual had been scrabbling around for days trying to get an XI together. In
desperation he rang his friend Simon Image, who had never played cricket
before in his life. To punish Mann for interrupting his drinking session, he
put him onto Jake. A portent of things to come, Jake turned up late, wearing
black jeans and Doc Martins, and spent the whole game staring at the sky
trying to find Mandelbrot Sets in the clouds. Fractal, man, fractal. “Hmm,”
said Stokenchurch on the way to their 120-run
victory, “We had no idea. We could have put out our second team. Or the
thirds. Or fourths.” Now, eight years on, Jake has cemented his place in the
team’s history, developing into a useful batsman, skippering on several
notable occasions, and taking on the role of the gavel-wielding Judge at team
fines sessions.
Not how it started for Jake. Winning
the quiz down at The Jude one
night, local melancholic and poet Andrew Morley joined the team as his prize,
and went on to play 8 games that season, in a melancholic and poetic way.
2000 saw Lorcan Kennan’s
only 5 games for the team, with 4 from Paul Drake, 3 from Nick Watney, and 6 from Paul Grant, who was Ed’s neighbour in Bladon, and who copped my knee in his head one game while
we were both going for the same catch. At least I caught it, though. I still
remember the batsman – Mick There
are people who die trying to take catches. They run into a team mate at
twenty miles per hour, who is also running. That’s forty miles per hour of
impact. It can get nasty. On this occasion Paul didn’t die, though he didn’t
last long in the team. He met a girl who didn’t think cricket was much fun,
for her, anyway. And whilst it is true that all wives and girlfriends,
without exception, don’t think cricket is fun, and really do not understand
why their better halves have such a passion for such a ridiculous game, there
are some who tolerate the strange obsession, and some who don’t. Paul’s
girlfriend didn’t, though maybe as well Paul wasn’t as obsessed as we thought
he ought to be.
Andrew
Morley putting in a call for more Tennant’s. Richard
Hadfield played twice for The Jude
in 2000, I don’t remember now the connection which brought him into the side.
He scored 72 against OUP at Jordan
Hill on debut, a record which stands to this day. He was the co-author of a
novelty book which was big that year, The
Cheeky Guide to Oxford. Richard
went off to have children, but a tiny flame lingered in his heart, never
extinguished, ever burning, a desire gnawing away at him, and six years
later, in 2006, he came back to the side, walked out to bat, and scored a
duck. All
in all, 30 players turned out for side that year, many for only one game, but
it didn’t make any difference who played – season 2000 was one of several Jude nadirs which had begun with the
team’s foundation in 1998. All teams have their peaks and troughs, but The Jude were
no idiots. They had the foresight to get all their troughs out of the way in
one go. 2000 was particularly troughy. Of 17 games,
The Jude won only 4, and once
again, these victories were mainly against weaker, scratch teams drawn from
irregulars. Once again the friendly natives of There
were many low points. All out 65 against The
Baldons. All out 45 against The Marlborough (a recovery from
14-5). All out 50 in the game against Stokenchurch, during which five wickets fell with the
score on 19.. All out 34 against The Isis, after being 11-6. And then –
the usual insult – they brought their rubbish bowlers on, the guys who only
ever got a bowl when the game was so far won that it didn’t matter. But The Jude were so crap, that’s all they
deserved, the guys could only bowl full tosses and half-trackers at six miles
an hour. The guys who sometimes hit the pitch between the wides.
Every team has them, or if they don’t, then they should. They’re an important
part of Sunday cricket. They make it what it is, a game for everyone, and
everyone for a game.
No caption required. There
were half decent performances against Lions
Club and OUP – the latter of
which was to become an annual fixture – but the only ‘proper’ win of the
season came against The Beehive.
This was only the second Jude game
played at In
retrospect, it was important to find a permanent home. The Jude was not a village team, so didn’t have a green to play
on, and the
Pembroke, our Theatre of Dreams. The
Beehive fixture was a turning point
of sorts. In these days The Jude were easy-beats, and it was always an embarrassment to
lose against them. Sure, they could take the odd game here and there if Lee
Davie turned up and played well, or if someone incited Howard Jones to bowl
like a man possessed, but this was the first time they had won a true contest
on their own merits, and a sign of the gradual improvement to come. Set up
nicely by a 73 from none other than Jones, The Jude defended 163-5 against a strong Beehive side riddled with Antipodeans and desperate to win, or
rather, not to lose. But from 127-2, the ’Hive
collapsed in the pouring rain to all out 149 with 2 balls to spare, and
for a change it was entirely due to The
Jude’s bowling and catching. In fact, this was the year in which The Jude’s began to have a bowling attack, although the
batting remained wretched for some time to come. James
Hoskins had settled in nicely with his slow right-armers,
taking 10 wickets in 7 matches at 19.00. Mike Thorburn
once again went through the year in an alcoholic haze, slurring and stumbling
his way to 115 runs at 16.43 and 9 wickets at 22.77. Though handicapped
somewhat by his love of the amber nectar, Mike was a sound length bowler who
just about always broke partnerships – he very rarely went a game without
bagging a scalp. In 2000 Andrew Morley took a wicket and had an economy rate
of 4.57 runs per over. Ben Mander took 4 wickets, but also bashed 64 runs at 4.92. Matt Bullock scored 65 runs at 4.65, but
made a remarkable 14 catches and 8 stumpings behind
the wicket. Clare Norris scored 18 runs in her 10 games, she was still
finding it hard to get the ball off the square, while Jake Hotson scored 24
in 9 at an average of 3.43, ditto: ball, hard to get off square. Leo Phillips
actually looked like a batsman, which confused everybody for a while,
especially his own team mates. He played in 8 games, making 177 runs at
19.50. In his first year, Tony Mander was 4th in the batting
averages, very hard to dismiss, scoring at 19.33. Come
to think of it, I remember it well, this year. I remember Noel Reilly playing
against The Beehive at ‘Blocker’ |
