Friendly Match vs Camberwell Beauties, 13th July 2008, Camberwell

The Gr-eight Escape
by Chris Skinner

After a combination of illness, sudden injury and inexcusable slackness reduced our side to just 8, we headed down to Dulwich with more than a few concerns. We had scraped a one wicket win against the Camberwell Beauties just a few weeks back and our chances of a double seemed pretty slim.

The pitch was an uncut minefield, but batting first gave us a chance of avoiding several hours of chasing the ball around with just 6 fielders. I win the toss about frequently as Mohammed Asif stays off the drugs, and this was no exception. I was then shocked and delighted when we were put in, the home team obviously lacking any faith in their strip.

The next five hours turned out to be surreal and unexpectedly glorious…

When Vince Croft hits the first ball of an innings for four, you know that something is up. When he finally fell, we already had 47 on the board and Steve Fernbank was already playing some classy shots. Travis Willis was next in and started crashing the ball to all corners of the ground. Neither batsmen were put off by early (and extremely costly) drops, and at tea we were just a wicket down and both men had 50's.

The assault just kept gathering momentum as fours and sixes were biffed around the picturesque park, albeit with some short boundaries in places. One memorable over saw Steve top edge a six, follow it up by guiding a high no ball for another and then lifting a third over the rope (via a Camberwell fielder) two balls later.

25 overs in, we had 235 and Travis had registered his first 100 for the club. With that, he retired and was soon followed by Steve, with another maiden ton for the Fields. When Matt Cowie was dismissed on 260, it was the first wicket to fall for 213 runs! We then engineered a spectacular collapse, only to see our two centurions return at the end, Travis bunting a few more boundaries before falling on 128 and Steve stumped for 102. 306 all out (i.e.for 7) was, all things considered, pretty good.

Early in the game we had been trying to convince some friends, and even my girlfriend, to pad up, fortunately for all, they weren't needed.

With small boundaries and so few in the field, there was still everything to play for but everyone stepped up. Extremely smart bowling from Tony Tedore and Matt Cowie forced defensive batting when attack was required and we slid around the field with vim and gusto. The improving Vince also kept extremely well. Two wickets for Matt seemed to break the resolve of the opposition who still seemed shell shocked, a strong contrast to their earlier chipper demeanour.

I had a bowl early on and was terrible, as luck would have it, my one decent ball got their best batsman out; sometimes you know it's your day.

Wickets steadily fell with all bowlers offering a challenge, from Troy Utz's turn to Misha Maruma's bounce. I learnt how to bowl properly later on, and even with a fine 50 from their opening bowler they were never close, scraping just over 200 in what was a well humoured end to a long game.

We were exhausted but everyone contributed even more than the 137.5% that my calculator tells me we technically needed to put us on a level playing field. A great win, but if anyone thinks they can pull out when I'm skippering in the future they will get their door kicked in.

A footnote: Despite all this we still had time to drop about 6 catches. I was the most guilty, spilling 3 (I'm not proud), off the bowling of Tony, Misha and me. Sorry guys.

Another footnote: Massive congratulations to Travis and Steve. Steve playing from the text book, and Travis from the comic book, put on the best partnership I've seen for this club. It sent the oppo so quiet we were whispering on the touchline for fear of being heard between the clattering of boundaries.

Another footnote: This was the first time we have won with 8 men since 7th May.

Here's the scorecard:

London Fields Batting

Batsman	Scoring	How Out	Bowler	Total
Steve F		stumped	Joel	102
Vince		bowled	Dennis	7
Travis		lbw	Joel	128
Matt C		bowled	Peter	15
Chris		run	out	7
Misha		caught	Joel	0
Troy		caught	Tony	13
Tony		not	out	14
			Extras	26
Total 306-7 from 35 overs

Camberwell Beauties Batting

206 all out in 35 overs

London Fields Bowling

Name	Overs	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	Average
Matt C	7	0	26	2	13
Tony	7	0	28	1	28
Misha	7	0	32	1	32
Chris	7	0	29	2	14.5
Troy	6	0	32	1	32
Travis	1	0	6	1	6