Ockley Cricket Club sits at the foot of Leith Hill, in a particularly picturesque corner of Surrey. Think winding lanes and babbling brooks; think brick cottages with white eaves and timber beams; think larks ascending; think hedgerows and churches and farmhouses. At one side of the ground is a well (which might explain how the square features the only bit of green grass in the south-east of England this summer).
One can imagine an ageing sergeant-major looking out from the Ockley CC pavilion circa 1914 and explaining through his bushy moustache: “You see, my son: this is the England we are fighting for.” (Sham turning up to spectate in his cycling lycra was equally picturesque, if not totally in-keeping with the Olde England aesthetic.)
A blackboard on the main road through Ockley announced our arrival, which we can only assume had been the talk of the village for weeks. The Road were coming off an LPL win on Saturday, and though this was a slightly makeshift team, including two Albamorphics and two Ockley-based mums, expectations were high.
Our top order, though, failed to live up to the hype, losing three wickets in the second over of the match. Perhaps they wanted to enjoy the view from the pavilion, or perhaps they had something more charitable in mind. For the bowler of that over was a youngster named Luka (and the recipient of two of the three catches an even younger Lucas). King’s Road doesn’t have a junior team or provide any coaching, but we can offer rising stars something equally vital: confidence. Someday, a quick bowler named Luka will be opening for Surrey and England and telling the press that he could never have made it without the self-belief he gained from a spell of 3 overs, 2 maidens, 4 wickets for 5 runs (as it ended up) against people approximately twice his size.
The ship was steadied by a gritty 7 from 44 balls from club legend Laxman Pillai, who ensured that the game would last for at least an hour and also scored the first boundary of the match.
Our batters, though, all found scoring difficult on a slow pitch, and wickets continued to fall, though at less frenetic pace. It was Oscar Newlove who managed to transfer some pressure back onto the bowlers, assisted by Lax and then Sarah, one of the Ockley players who volunteered to help us out and withstood a hostile barrage of fast bowling from her own son. Oscar was hitting boundaries with such ease that it made the rest of us look bad, so eventually we simply got ourselves out, leaving him stranded on 69 not out (nice) from 52 balls, more than half of our total of 121 all out.
After a classic clubhouse tea, we went out to field knowing that early wickets were our only hope. The trouble was that Ockley’s batters also knew that, and showed a kind of restraint that ours could not. For the first 15 overs a combination of miserly bowling (Venkatesh, Keating and skipper Jackson Eastwood), careful batting and tight fielding – including some excellent stops from Dave Hughes and Connor McGilligan, and tidy wicket-keeping from Albamorphic Hugh McDonagh – kept Ockley behind the required run rate. But we could not find those breakthroughs.
There were, it has to be said, dropped catches – though Oscar, the culprit for two of them, redeemed himself by effecting a run out for our first wicket. Ockley began to accelerate but we struck back: Captain Pete hit the top of off stump with a beauty, and after Ockley opener Neil retired for a well-made half-century Oscar (bowling leg-spin) cleaned up the new bat.
This brought two stylish batters to the crease – Ockley skipper Ketan and young Lucas. If we could remove them, we could put Ockley under real pressure. And we had a secret weapon: Sarah, Lucas’s mum. Bragging rights (and dinner) were on the line. The game was up in the air. Pete positioned his fielders carefully, moving your author a few yards behind square on the leg-side ‘for the one that’s clipped around the corner’. And immediately it came, as Lucas clipped straight to me – a sitter. But reader, I am ashamed to say that the world-historic significance of the moment was too much for me and the catch went down, as did I, in a heap of ignominy. I am even more ashamed to say that the exact same thing happened next over, with the other batter on strike. Sarah could have removed her son and her captain, and the Road could have retained a puncher’s chance of victory – but some days the catches just don’t stick.
Once Ketan and Lucas got their eyes in, there was no coming back. Despite some tidy bowling from Lax and our other Ockley loanee, Kim, the captain and his young charge saw the home team home – just in time for the second half of the football, in which the Lionesses showed us all how to rise to a sporting occasion.
Mandy of the match: Oscar for scoring all our runs
Embarrassing: Whole team catching performance
Tantrum: PEJ’s reaction to the whole team’s catching performance
Champagne: Lax’s boundary