Everybody was hoping for those final wickets, runs or catches to keep in the memory to tide them over until next spring. The day started inauspiciously, with Cash pulling out on the morning with Covid. A like-for-like replacement was sought, and Poleboina answered the call for his comeback match after wrist surgery.

Apart from that withdrawal, the day was full of promise. The sun was out and it was shaping up to be a perfect late summer day. The opposition was Addington (1743). The number in brackets suggested a club with a rich history, and a picturesque ground on the green in the middle of the village, perhaps with a duck pond, and an old inn alongside. It wasn’t quite like that, but it was a very pleasant little ground on a slope, far prettier than you would expect from a place accessible on the Croydon tram network.

The oppo had asked for a 12:00 start. When I was the only one there at 11:35 I was beginning to wonder if I had misread the time, or had come to the wrong place, but then some opposition players turned up, and then most of the Plough, although Giordy then left almost immediately as he realised he had forgotten his spikes and he thought that driving back to Brixton to collect them was the best course of action. Finally, Suri roared up on his motorbike and we were good to go.

Iqbal and Britto strode out to bat only 15 minutes after the designated start time. It was a solid, watchful innings, with Britto putting away the bad balls. With the score on 20, Iqbal was bowled by a ball that kept low. That will not be the last time those words will be needed in this report.

Rohan, Cosgrove and Lonnen all came and went without much addition to the score, but Junaid Ahmed held firm. From his first forward defensive he looked like a classy player, and he batted really nicely, driving well, and hitting one beautifully-struck straight six. He was supported well with some clean striking from Gordon-Walker. Those two put on 38, but the rest of the team didn’t last much longer. Poleboina’s innings was brief, but at least that meant he didn’t do any damage to his recovering wrist.

At the end, every batter had been bowled, mostly by balls that kept low. Nobody could remember playing in a match where all wickets had fallen to balls hitting the stumps, although Ahmed should have been caught but the fielder put down a dolly.

After a very good tea, we went out to field. We knew we were well short of a competitive score, especially as we hadn’t batted out our full 35 overs. We new that if we had any chance of defending 125 we would have to be super tight in the field, and take all our chances. So things weren’t looking good when Rohan’s first ball short through everybody for 4 byes. Or when, in Lonnen’s first over, he got a little bit of away movement off the seam, induced a little edge, and the ball went straight into Poleboina’s gloves… and out again.

But the batters were struggling against Rohan’s pace and he bowled one opener. In Lonnen’s next over he got bigger movement off the seam and found a thicker edge that went to Rohan at second slip. The next bat charged his first ball, had a wild swipe and missed, much to Lonnen’s amusement. The second ball was a more conventional on drive but hit hard. Lonnen decided the bat was going to swing a everything and stationed a fly slip. The next ball flew off the edge straight to that man… who couldn’t hold on. As you can imagine, Lonnen chuckled nonchalantly and said ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine’. His sunny disposition was more evident when the next ball was crashed over extra cover for four, and the one after disappeared straight and high and long into the woods next door, never to be seen again.

That meant we had lost a brand new ball and the proffered replacement was a doggy old thing that looked like it had done 40 overs. Realising we need a breakthrough, Britto called up our secret weapon, and threw the ball to Azharul. We all know what happens next – the batters are relieved they have seen off Rohan, relax against the apparently innocuous Azharul and… what, smash his first over for 19 runs? Are you sure?

At 61/2 after 8 overs the game was in danger of running away from us and finishing very quickly. It took the introduction of Giordy to turn it around for us (good job he had gone back to get his spikes). The change of pace seemed to unsettle the batters, and the tight lines Giordy was bowling didn’t give them much to play with. The danger man was caught by Iqbal in the covers for 33 off 18, and that was the breakthrough.
Then the real Azharul turned up, possibly due to Rohan managing to persuade the umpire to change the ball, test match style. As England have found out, if nothing is going your way, betting the ball changed can make things happen.

Azha was getting the ball to hoop, and sent one guy’s middle stump cartwheeling, as if to show the umpire where an earlier ball would have ended up had the batter not stuck his pad in the way.

At this stage the match was in danger of boiling over, as a couple of close LBW shouts had been turned down, and then a batter stood there as the ball flicked his pad and shot off to the boundary. The umpire signalled four leg byes, the fielders expressed scepticism that the batter had played a shot, the rest of the batting team on the boundary added their opinions. Britto managed to calm everything down, and we went back to Azhar removing poles and sending bails almost out to the boundary. At least one batter stood there looking at his stumps, shaking his head, baffled as to how the ball ended up there when he was sure he had it covered outside off stump.

Giordy picked up two more wickets ,amazingly both LBW (although for the second one, the batter shuffled across his stumps on the crease and was hit halfway up his shin – even Vikki would have looked embarrassed saying no to that one). And then we were down to the last ‘man’ – the eleven year old who had been helping the team out in the field. Despite Azhar being told just to hang the ball outside off stump, you can’t keep a wicket machine quiet. The first ball was played out to mid on and the batter declined an easy single. The next ball, Azhar lolloped in off two paces and sent a loopy delivery crashing into middle stump, to pick up his fifth of the day and seventieth for the season. Addington (1743) had gone from 61/2 to 84 all out in 7 overs. Azhar had gone 1-0-19-0 and his next four overs were 4-2-10-5.

We rounded the day off – where else – in the Cricketers, the Harvester in the village.

And that’s it for the summer. See you all at the club dinner.

Match report from Andrew Cosgrove