The Home Straight

The penultimate home match of the 2000 season saw us clear at the top of the table after the excellent victory we had gained at Wivenhoe the previous week. We had just 4 games remaining and we knew that 3 wins and some good bonus points would see us champions for the first time. These fixtures were against teams we had beaten, reasonably comfortably, earlier in the season. We were feeling confident and that was definitely true about this game with Exning. In the away fixture we had beaten them with 10 men (and a wounded Spaggs) despite it being a day where none of our batters had made a half century. This ended up being a strange game where only 9 wickets fell in 100 overs, yet it wasn’t a high scoring match or one where the batters were able to dominate bowlers totally! We had made just 2 changes this week with Rare and Katan Patel being replaced by Jap and Goz. Spaggs won the toss and of course he elected to bat first. His own season (leaving aside his record breaking 40 off an over at Braintree) had been unspectacular this far and he didn’t improve his total for the season much when he departed for just 6 when he hit his own wicket with the score at 12 in the 7th over. It was slow going and 21-1 after 10 overs became just 46-1 after 20 overs as the Exning attack kept Rubber and Dubbers in check. The next 10 overs saw us accelerate and the score became 88-1 after 30 overs. The good news was that we had wickets in hand and hopefully we could make them count. When the score reached 94 and after a partnership of 82 the pair were separated when Dubbers was caught off the bowling of Tim Catley for 48 narrowly failing to reach his 7th half century of the season. By the 40th over we had reached 128-2 and were in need of a push in the final ten. A couple of overs later Rubber was out for 54 off 130 balls when he was caught off the bowling of Russell Catley. Russ was a very good batter but we felt his leg spinners could be targeted and he wasn’t the type of bowler who could get you out, more that he wanted you to get yourself out! Rubbers innings was his second fifty of the season and definitely made in the style of his father, Sid. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree and he’d nudged and nurdled his way to 54 with 34 scoring shots and a total of 96 dot balls, quite a lot for a 50 over game! That left Arkle and myself at the crease with some freedom to play our shots. We managed to get 62 off 8 overs without hitting many boundaries on what was proving to be a slow outfield. Arkle ended with 59 not out whilst I managed 21 not out. It was his 3rd half century in 5 innings and after a slow start to the season he was becoming a star of our chase for the title challenge. We ended with 204-3 off 50 overs. It was probably a par total although I hadn’t played a game at Drapers where a team losing only 3 wickets had only just got past 200. Once again we knew that the wickets of the 3 Catley brothers would be vital if we were to win. Just like us Exning made a slow start and were 22-0 off 10 overs after a period only notable for the withdrawal of Jap from the attack after just 1 over. This time his season was over after his back gave up. The next 10 overs turned the game in our favour as Exning subsided to 46-3 as Trevaskis ran amok. First he removed Russell Catley after winning an lbw decision. Then he bowled Dave Monk and had Matt Catley caught by Legend. Spaggs turned the screw by bowling 40 dot balls in his first 7 overs and the required rate began to climb. In just his second over Toby Pugh reduced Exning to 78-4 when he clean bowled Allen. Tim Catley was the wicket that we wanted and we all felt that if we got it, victory would be ours. We were wrong. It turned out that we just needed to keep him in. In the next 10 overs, at a point where Exning needed 5 an over, they managed just 17 runs despite not losing any wickets!! It was good bowling but particularly cautious batting and effectively ended the contest as the run rate went up above 7.5 an over! Exning finished at 187-6 with Spaggs and Trevaskis picking up then other wickets. Tim Catley ended up with 92 not out. It’s hard to put a label on his innings. It would be easy to call it selfish if his aim was to get to 100 himself at the expense of the teams success, but this wasn’t the case. In the end I think it was simply a case of being too cautious and not accelerating early enough. I know I would have been frustrated if I’d have been one of the middle order guys. Our bowling figures were Trevaskis 4/64 off 19, Spaggs 1/37 off 13, Toby Pugh 1/46 off 11 whilst Legend went wicketless. It was a 17 run win for us (closer on paper than the reality) and now just 2 more wins as well as some good bonus points would do it for us. Next up was a trip to a Frinton who we had beaten by nearly 100 runs in our game at Drapers earlier in the year. The team news saw just one change as Jap’s season had been ended by injury (this probably meant less tension spilling over from the incident at Drapers), he was replaced by Rare. With just 3 games to go, our destiny was in our own hands but the pressure was on.