Ah, summer thyme – sunshine, green fields, batting collapses, bowling heroics, dropped catches, teas, drinking straw-coloured bitters as the shadows extend, discussing US politics with a pig into the early hours. Our early May match against the Gardeners CC would deliver most, but not all of these quintessential hallmarks of an English summer.

A new and especially green-fingered opposition, the Gardeners hosted us at the Dulwich Picture Gallery Sports Fields, a sublime setting separated just by a fence from the well frequented Turney Road, of previous stories.

As part of Captain Keats’ ongoing quest to deceive his team into arriving on time, we were left to arrive at one of several locked gates, whilst he enjoyed a fresh breakfast in Dulwich Village followed by a relaxing podcast in his Challenger 2 outside the ground. Once let in, The Road performed the obligatory King of the Hill warmup before Captain Keats won the toss and put us in to bat, confident after a win against Southbank the previous day.

The Gardeners were handy bowlers and tried to lure the upper Road order down the garden path with some aggressive early swing. However, the Road initially held out well to see the first couple of overs off. But then The Road experienced the beginning of a collapse: oh yes, that old chestnut.

Opener Dan Sherman was caught off a very hard and low strike that the bowler did extremely well to get down to (let alone hold on to). In the author’s position as umpire at the time rather than just as a poor catcher, I can attest to this being a difficult take. Fellow opener James Pinkney volleyed a full toss to a cherry-picked cover fielder for a less difficult catch to depart the field.

We had non-striker Chris MacNicol run out on a suicide single after Shaminda De Silva played the ball just behind gully – with umpire Mahoney raising his finger. When MacNicol queried the decision, umpire Mahoney first used up his ‘Ask the Audience’, turning to the batsman and opposition fielders themselves who together weren’t quite able to provide a consensus opinion. In the absence of video review, he then ‘Phoned a Friend’, turning to the Second Umpire at the far end for his opinion (which was uncertain at best given his 90 degree viewing angle). After his use of the ‘50:50’ card still left him with two equally tempting options, MacNicol was ultimately judged out when Mahoney decided to trust in his initial soft signal.

Sham then edged one to slip for 13, before Andy Craigie (who unfortunately was too busy padding up to operate his Third Umpire referral system in the earlier controversy) was caught after looking solid whilst he played himself in. We were certainly looking a little rough around the hedges.

Resident Ent Peter Jackson Eastwood was joined at the crease by Captain Keats with the score at 25-5. Never a dill moment in the middle order for The Road, they thought. The pair bravely stepped up to grasp the nettle, stabilise our innings and start getting some runs on the board. Meanwhile on the sideline, Oscar (who is slowly emerging from his salad years) had enough of Moany’s left-arm throw downs, and so swiped his ball over the fence to get some peace and quiet, leaving Moany scouring a nettley wasteland for his precious. PEJ scored a very useful and positive 24 before sadly finding his demise to a catch.

Building on PEJ’s good work, Keats (41, adding to a 46* the day before) and Oscar (40) ploughed a few more runs with a 77 run partnership taking The Road to 135. Whilst a score of 150+ looking increasingly likely, the pair sadly let the grass grow under their feet and found themselves getting out having seen off much of the returning opening bowlers.

The Road played some nice shots for the last few wickets (Nikhil hitting a couple of classy trademark shots), but the tail ultimately found themselves stuck up a gum tree, with the red ball continuing to be a thorn in the side of our otherwise beautiful shots. The Road ended up all out for 143 off 36.1 overs.

After a shaky start, the score was low but still defendable if we were able to take quick early wickets. It was going to be a tough row to hoe, so The Road bowlers really needed to give it some welly to avoid a quick kicking of the bucket.

Whilst the first over did give away early signs of a coming no-ball epidemic, the opposition looked keen to go after the new ball, with opener Cunningham testing out a big new drive on his first ball to find his stumps disturbed. Could this be a much needed chance to nip their batting strength in the bud early?

It was not to be – the Gardeners were solid in defence and kept up a solid run rate, with The Road unable to deliver enough of a breakthrough to either restrict scoring or expose a potentially shakier lower order. Especially enjoyable was our 3 strong Left Arm bowling contingent (Nikhil, Moany and Mitch) who brought fresh approaches. Moany took a good catch in the deep off Mitch, showing lefties perhaps can work with each other.

We did get them 5 down, with basically a wicket to each bowler, but they got the runs with just over 10 overs spare and never quite looked in trouble. Though there was no major Gardeners score, there were some 20s and a 30, with all batsmen seeming fairly solid. It wasn’t that we were just small dogs in tall weeds, but we were just a little common-or-garden, perhaps a result of this being the second game of a double-header weekend at the start of the season. Simply, The Road were not quite as fresh as a daisy.

Despite the stunning ground, given the previous day’s win against SBCC, The Road were left convinced the grass was greener on the other side of the Dulwich fence. The Gardeners were very nice hosts and hopefully The Road can come back stronger next year to put on a suitably close game for a very deserving ground.

However, on a nice evening in May, after a long day in the field, every good gardener deserves a tipple. So The Road headed off to the London Beer Factory. Evidence of a more gentle start to the evening is below, but only a few drinks later and some of The Road were drinking with a pig (no, that isn’t an insult to our perfectly sized team or a fellow pub goer) till 3pm.

On arriving home, after 8 hours drinking with Moany, Sham boldly decided that a special recipe of two slices from each of two carefully selected different pizzas from his freezer would prevent any chance of a hangover. This seemed to have been a mistake, although we were fortunately lucky enough to see Sham just about fit and well enough to return to our fixture 3 weeks later at Old Woking CC.

I know you just want to enjoy your ale in peace, but have you heard about the gerrymandering in South Carolina, Sir Francis?

AWARDS

Mandy of the Match: Keats for continuing his batting form onto his second game of the weekend, really putting down his roots at the crease to preserve some respectability and give our bowlers a chance.
Champagne Moment: Tom Birch coming to provide the best form of support: umpiring and triggering two of their batsmen LBW to support our fight back efforts.
Embarrassing Moment: Shamfranco Zola booting the ball over the boundary.
Tantrum: Browny refusing to play because he was prioritising other life things (*not forms) – since when have you been allowed other fwends?
Teas: Still regrettably MIA. Tempting though it is, sadly we cannot award these to Sham’s late but truly enticing 4am entry.

FULL SCORECARD: https://kingsroadcsc.play-cricket.com/website/results/4852746

Author: Oscar Newlove