A new decade...back in Division 1
Maldon 1st XI began their 2000 campaign after being promoted as runners up of Division Two having spent just one season at that level following an unexpected relegation in 1998.
Our promotion season had been fairly comfortable and when I look back at the ‘98 campaign that ended in relegation following some poorly motivated Cricket on our part as well as some unfortunate rain offs it was probably a blessing in disguise. A season where we won nearly every week was good for all of us and certainly an enjoyable time contrasting dramatically with the one that preceded it.
The season started one week later than scheduled after the opening day fixture with Browns was rained off without a ball being bowled...another two fixtures would fall the same way later in the “summer”.
So it was May 6th when we made the trip to Mistley, bizarrely it was my first and only trip to play there. A few of us hadn’t yet met our overseas player, Jay Trevaskis, and we certainly weren’t sure how to spell his surname!
Our expectations of the season where pretty modest. The creation of the EAPL has taken the powerhouses of Bury, Clacton, Colchester, Halstead and Mildenhall out of the Two Counties competition but we had no real aspirations of success.
That changed over the next few weeks and the belated first day of the season set the tone for what was a extraordinary journey to be part of. We never had a settled side, injuries a plenty and unavailability meant that more than 20 players took the field for the 1st XI. Not really the basis of success but somehow we made it work.
Spaggs had led us to promotion in his first season as captain but was to lose the toss and as was expected we ended up fielding first. This was pretty standard and in the 15 games we played in 2000 the captain who won the toss elected to bat on 13 occasions.
Jay, who at roughly 5 feet 7 inches was not the tallest opening bowler, had a skiddy action and in his first 7 over spell he sent down 5 maidens. A young Neal Harrington shared the new ball and his slinging action was a sharp contrast to Jay but he was also economical first up.
Elmo and Legend backed up the openers as we held Mistley to 46 in the first 20 overs. A slight disappointment was that we only took one wicket, Jay striking first.
The squeeze continued with some sharp fielding allowing us to hold Mistley to 104-5 from 41 overs. Spaggs and Rubber also bowled tight spells to enable us to exert this stranglehold.
From that point the wheels came off somewhat as despite being 5 down Mistley managed to blast 103 from the final 9 overs to get back to what was in our view a par score of just over 200.
All our bowlers suffered in those final overs and it meant that the momentum of the match had shifted.
What happened next was truly remarkable.
Spaggs and Elmo, who scored runs freely in Div 2 all year, were both back in the pavilion and we were vulnerable at 32-2 in the 12th over.
In strolled Damian Westwood, or “man” as we called him since he ended every sentence by adding that word. He had joined us from Chelmsford with a reputation for being talented but troubled. He was a tall and strong keeper batsman who had spent winter nets blitzing all our bowlers. As such it wasn’t a surprise that he quickly went after the Mistley attack.
He smashed 74 including 7 fours and 5 massive sixes, mostly into a churchyard, out of a partnership of 86 where he faced just 39 balls. I hadn’t seen such brutal hitting from ball one in a league game at this level since David Boden pummeled 82 off 28 balls at Drapers against Colchester back in the early 90’s.
I sat watching with admiration and listened to two Mistley “old boys” complain about slogging...I didn’t care what label you put on it. A hugely impressive innings but in typical Damien style he quickly asked to leave the ground due to a “headache”. He was beyond care-free in his mindset and that’s what made him really hard to bowl at.
From there we needed another 90 runs off 30 overs with 7 wickets in hand. But the rest of us didn’t have the same approach as “man”.
It was a struggle and we lost wickets regularly as no partnership exceeded 25. A succession of singles on a pitch that was becoming increasingly slow and low was finally supplemented by a couple of boundaries and after Rubber had nudged the scores level I had the pleasure of hitting the winning runs with 7 balls to spare and 3 wickets in hand.
It was a win that felt good and I think we knew that it was significant to have an away win under our belt that showed we were in a Division where we could compete....by the end of May we not only knew we could compete we felt we could go all the way.
