To be honest it was a minor miracle that this game was played at all. Heavy drizzle for the previous 24 hours had left the pitch a quagmire, but with the fixture completing Ditchling's cricket week, they were keen to play and we agreed to play a declaration game on their matting wicket. The decision to play was greeted with much incredulity, no more so from the returning Dark Destroyer, Darrell Abbott who had resigned himself to a shopping trip to Crawley with the family. Salvation!
The Mogs lots the toss and found ourselves batting first on a wicket that was slippery in both senses of the word. Peter Furner was LBW for 9, resulting in another afternoon's worth of chuntering, with his best defence against his dismissal being that the matting wicket did not allow him to mark his guard properly!
At the other end Benjamin "Bovine" Fairclough was batting beautifully although his new MCC cricket sweater was wrinkling a few noses and a couple of inspectors from DEFRA arrived at the ground just in time to see him execute the shot of the season, a quite scintillating cover drive for 4. Tharpey was going well until he was well caught for 19 and Jimmy Honeyfield entered the fray with the score at 71-2. If after Jimmy's first over you had taken a straw poll of the watching audience & players as to whether Jimmy had ever played cricket before, the result would have been a total conviction that this was indeed his first ever go, such was the lack of footwork and inability to lay bat on ball. Slowly however he started to read this alien surface a bit better and a couple of slow full tosses from their spinner saw our umpire (John Buchanan) raise his hands, before the ball had sailed into the stream, just over Cow Corner. Fairclough departed for 47, Hewitt for 0 and it was Richard Moss (26) who matched Jimmy shot for shot in an enterprising stand that helped the Mogs declare on 201 for 5, with Jimmy unbeaten on an excellent and 6-filled 82* and Darrell on 4*.
Ditchling produced a quite excellent tea ("on par with Follies Old Spots") with brie & cranberry sandwiches, scones loaded with cream and jam and 2 separate home made cakes all clamouring for attention.
The weather outside had deteriorated from grey to pretty, bloody miserable but fortunately it was not raining when we went out and Pilau & Joseph quicky set about a Ditchling top order that were possibly feeling the effects of a long cricket week. Pilau bowled the fastest spell of the season and the office (Tharp, Hewitt, Abbot and Honeyfield) were remarkably quiet as a mixture of edges and bat-beating balls smashed into them. Fortunately Pilau remembered that bowling straight was the best way of getting wickets and his 2 dismissals resulted in 1 off stump and 1 leg stump cartwheeling a good 4 times backwards in Shoaib Akthar style. At the other end Joseph was bowling his best spell of the season by a mile with 9 overs of well-directed medium pace bowling and his efforts were rewarded as he picked up a really good "5-fer" in an un changed spell of 9 - 6- 12 - 5. Briggsy & Abbott also bowled good spells that kept the pressure on Ditchling as they never mounted a challenge and rain looking like the biggest obstacle to a Mog victory.
We were now playing in steady drizzle and the afore-mentioned DEFRA inspectors had now called the government with a Code Maroon warning of suspected Foot & Mouth at Ditchling. Ben's new all-wool cricket jumper was absolutely honking and Matthew's 3 quick wickets, which finished the match resulted in Fairclough being sent to the abattoir for a quick and painless death - the jumper will not be playing again this season.
All in all it was another good Mog win with Honeyfield & Fairclough excelling with the bat and the Lewis boys doing the business with the ball. Jugs of Harvey's bitter and Oranjeboom were drunk in equal quality and one day, just one day we might even play this excellent fixture when the sun is out.
report by Alex Hewitt
MWCC Stats