What’s the story, Play-off glory

We were Champions! It was a great feeling but what we now learned was that it opened the door to the East Anglian Premier League. That would mean testing ourselves against some of the best club cricketers in the region every week. It would mean the chance to play at some great grounds including Fenners, some odd shaped ones like Swardeston and some that we had enjoyed before the EAPL was formed like Halstead and Mildenhall....as well as presenting a chance to go to windy Clacton again! It would also mean that we could attract better players to join us as well as offer our existing players a chance to develop their games further under the stewardship of a coach. In order to walk through the door we had to win a one-off play off game against the champions of the Cambridgeshire league, Longstanton Grasshoppers. It was a 50 over aside game and the good news was that we’d been drawn at home so they would have to travel to Drapers Farm. They probably knew nothing about us and we certainly didn’t have any knowledge about them. I’m fairly well travelled but had never been to Longstanton and definitely didn’t know that it was famous for its Grasshoppers! Our first challenge was to put 11 names on paper as we had a long list of unavailability amongst the 21 names that had represented us during the regular season. - Elmo and Jap were both ruled out with Injuries - Damian had voted with his feet to become a Buffalo Soldier - Toby was either trapped in a snooker at Butlins that he couldn’t escape from or studying the form in Cheltenham when he should have been learning how to be a teacher - Rubber had a prior engagement which required him to show some ticker and fill some sausage skins! - Trevaskis was pointing at the small print in his contract and highlighting that he’d fulfilled his obligations already...it was hard to argue with this but I’d have loved to see him bowl that hat-trick ball and for me it took some of the sparkle off an amazing legacy that he choose not to play...his decision left a few us wondering WWJD? - Alistair Cook was on the Hogwarts Express on his way back to Boarding school Any or all of these 7 guys would have made our side if they were available for selection. Instead we went into the game with quite a few changes to the side that secured the title during the win at Braintree. Out - A Cook, J Trevaskis, Rubber, Toby In - Arkle, James Ellis, Legend, Kevin “Blocker” Roche Being able to add Blocker to the side was a huge bonus. He’d been our overseas player in 1994 and been part of a formidable opening attack with David Boden. An elbow injury early in that season deprived us of Blocker’s bowling for a large chunk of that year though. In the meantime he’d relocated from Sydney to London and didn’t need to be asked twice if he could represent the Dons in such an important game. As the game approached we learned that the format would be different from the 50 over games in the Two Counties League. For this game bowlers would be limited to a maximum of 10 overs each meaning we would need to find 5 or 6 bowlers from within our XI. It was obvious that Blocker, Spaggs and Legend would be our main 3 guys but the rest of the overs would have to come from Dubbers, Me, James Ellis and possibly Paul Davis with his 3 fingered knuckle ball which he’d learned from Mickel Newman (although Mikel seemed to exert a tighter grip from applying a few more fingers). Others who didn’t get considered for a bowl were Rare whose bowling Mojo had dropped out of his pocket along with the infamous £2 in Cricket week. Arkle who never had a bowling mojo, Goz whose stock ball was a beamer but would keep wicket and Ruddy who learned his bowling technique from Goz and been taught how to perfect his beamer. The boys from Longstanton turned up for the 11am start all suited and booted whilst were in our tracksuits. Legend had definitely missed an opportunity to kit us out with some of the gear that might have disappeared from his warehouse. It did tell us that they were taking this game very seriously and we saw further evidence of that in a vigorous warm up routine they engaged in. Ours consisted of Spaggs belting a few skyers for us to warm our hands with. We lost the toss, possibly negating our home advantage, and Longstanton chose to bat first. We would have done the same in a 1pm start but the 11am kick off was new to us and I recall that we were fine to chase knowing that batting was our stronger suit. We also reflected that batting first in a cup final bought its own pressures and we’d seen that in the Clacton cup win a few years earlier. In the first few overs of the Longstanton innings we learned that the no ball and in particular the wide rules / laws would be applied much more strictly than in the Two Counties league. After 10 overs we had sent down 2 no balls and 4 wides, effectively turning 10 overs into 11. These overs (and extras) had been shared between Spaggs and Blocker. The two then combined to take our first wicket as Blocker found the edge and our skipper took the catch at slip. It was 35-1 and honours were even at that point. Dubbers was our first change bowler and entered the attack in the 14th over replacing Blocker. His first over was an expensive one and went for 9 but he dragged it back from there with a great 3rd over which contained 2 wickets to reduce the visitors to 62-3. A caught behind (Goz) and an lbw verdict put us in a strong position with all of the top 3 back in the shed. Longstanton’s rebuilding efforts against Legend and Dubbers added 27 before the next wicket fell. It was Dubbers who struck again, this time it was a sucker punch as he lured his victim into repeating a lofted extra cover drive. This time there was a boundary fielder positioned exactly for the shot, me. As the ball sailed towards me I recall thinking, I can’t believe he’s done that. I didn’t have to move one inch and the ball came to me at shoulder height for a comfortable catch, 89-4 off 26 overs. At this point our belief levels were increasing and the prospect of having to chase less than 200 was looking likely. However, we still had to find a few overs from our 5th and 6th bowlers. With the score at 97-4 off 28 overs Spaggs put his chips down on the roulette wheel and gave the ball to me. Just like Dubbers and Blocker I started with 3 overs containing 7 balls, this wasn’t a worry as I’d had more practice than most at delivering the extra ball! At the other end Legend had been tying things up fairly well and then in his final over he made a breakthrough to make it 114-5 after 33 overs. It was another caught behind for Goz who was having one of his better days as keeper. In the very next over I also grabbed a wicket when an edge flew to Spaggs at slip. It was to his credit that he was prepared to continue to attack and he was well rewarded. It was now 116-6 after 34 overs and we looked like we might even end up chasing only 160.... Next Spaggs called on James Ellis to join the attack. Again this was a brave decision and Spaggs was rewarded by an economical 5 over where James only conceded 9 runs. At 132-6 off 41 overs we looked to bring back the big guns to close out the innings. Our first move didn’t quite work as the slow-starting Dubbers went for 8 including the first boundary for 10 overs and was swiftly withdrawn. After another tight James Ellis over we looked to our opening bowlers, Spaggs and Blocker to bowl the last 7 overs. Finally Longstanton went on the offensive and managed to garner another 44 runs off these last few overs whilst Blocker grabbed another 3 wickets to finish with 4-47 off his quota of 10 overs. One of these was a catch for Paul Davis, it was great that he could find a way to get onto the scorecard although I did have to listen to a re-run of that catch several times during the evening that followed! The final total of 188-9 off 50 overs contained 32 extras of which 18 were wides and 6 were no balls! In reality we’d bowled 54 overs, hopefully our opponents would be equally generous and the umpires just as consistent. Our bowling figures make good reading with Dubbers taking 3-37 off 8, Legend 1-31 off the full 10, my figures were 1-22 off 7 whilst Spaggs had 0-34 off 10. We’d managed to squeeze 20 overs out of Dubbers, me and James Ellis for only 68 and taken 4 wickets in the process (17 of those 68 came from 2 expensive overs from Dubbers). Given that we’d only bowled 6 overs (2 from Dubbers at Wivenhoe, 2 from me where I bought at wicket at Copdock and 2 from James Ellis in the Copdock home game when it was over as a contest) between us in the league it felt like we’d gotten away cheaply. In total Longstanton had only found the boundary 11 times during their innings and not hit a maximum at all. Between innings we filled out stomachs with the Drapers lunch whilst optimistically planning how we could overcome their total. We certainly expected that we would exceed their boundary total and 3.8 an over on our home patch was also gettable. We had 3 guys in form with Spaggs (3 fifties in a row) Dubbers (averaging 77 in home games) and Arkle (averaging 62 in the second half of the season) all capable of playing the big innings we needed. With these guys occupying 3 of the top 4 we also felt well positioned to put together the kind of partnerships that Longstanton hadn’t been able to (61 for the 7th wicket was their only partnership to exceed 35). With no Rubber (or Elmo) in the side Spaggs had to choose his opening partner. He kept Dubbers at number 3 and plumped for Ruddy who had opened a few times for the 2nd XI but on his last 2 games for us had been in at 10 and 11! Quite a promotion for the young man. It was an experiment that didn’t work and Dubbers was facing the 9th ball of our reply after Ruddy, who must have forgotten to glance at the mirror of dreams, lost his off stump for a duck to a full ball that was angled back in at him. We were 5-1 and needed a partnership to steady our reply. Spaggs and Dubbers did exactly that by taking us to 45-1 after 10 overs by which time the change bowlers were on. Spaggs in particular looked in ominously good form (and he was). The fifty partnership came up in the 14th over, which went for 11 as we began to look dominant. Not long after Spaggs reached the first half century of the match, which included 7 boundaries (more than half of what the opposition had managed). It was his fourth fifty in a row and he’d definitely found the accelerator pedal in the closing part of the season. He moved into cruise control mode for the next few overs as he applied his power steering to some excellent placement and seemed to be benefitting from the smoothness that automatic transmission or even a 6 CD multi-changer creates. The century partnership, a hugely significant milestone when chasing 189, came up in the 27th over and at this stage we were nicely ahead in the comparison chart (93-4 v 105-1). This was despite the pair playing out the 10 over spell from J Newman for just 14 runs. We’d advanced to 121 in the 31st over and now needed only another 68 off 19 overs at 3.7 an over. Then we had a wobble which saw 3 wickets fall in just 3 overs. First Dubbers was run out for a very patient 27 ending a partnership of 116 which had been disturbed by a couple of very short rain breaks just before it ended. Then after we added just 3 more runs Spaggs holed out for a quite brilliant 78 including 12 boundaries, more than Longstanton had managed in their entire innings. It was a surprise when he was out as he’d looked set for a century. In the next over and with the score at 128 Rare was caught behind off the tricky N. Cook for just 3. This put Arkle and myself at the crease both as new batsman and in need of steadying the ship to prevent this mini-collapse becoming worse. We took just 14 off the next 5 overs as the opening bowler came back to try to blast through our middle order. Now we needed 47 off 12 as the rate approached 4 an over. I’d batted quite a few times with Arkle that season, his first in the 1st XI, and he always struck me as very calm. That was particularly true in the partnership we’d had a few weeks before at Frinton. The next 5 overs proved critical as we took 5, 10, 3, 2 and 12 off them without losing a wicket and the total moved to 174-4 off 43 overs. Now we only needed 15 off 7 overs with wickets in hand. We took 5 more off the next over as our partnership passed 50. Now we had a 100 and a 50 stand in our reply to 188, that surely was a winning hand. In the 45th over we took 5 off the first 3 balls leaving only 5 to win. The opportunity to try to blast one over the ropes to the seal the victory off the next ball was too good to resist but my attempt when straight up in the air and I was caught for 27. We’d put on 56 and now needed just 5 to win off 32 balls. I was waved on my way by the enthusiastic catcher and couldn’t resist the chance to chirp back at him along the lines of “game over, insert coin”. Just 7 balls later it really was all over as Arkle hit the winning boundary. He ended with 36 not out and in his final 5 innings of that year at Drapers he scored 305 runs for twice out, you can do the math! Drapers is a huge field and often being in the middle felt a long way from the boundary but I’ve a very vivid memory of how atmospheric it felt during those final few overs...partly as the bar had been open all day! I recall Elmo and another club stalwart, Martin White forming a partnership to supply meat and wine for a BBQ that helped keep spirits high! We’d won pretty comfortably in the end due to an inspired performance from all our bowlers and then two big partnerships getting us to the winning line with plenty of time and wickets in hand...all this with a depleted side. I don’t think we really understood the significance of the achievement on the day and only when we took the field at Mildenhall 8 months later for our opening EAPL fixture did the enormity of the change to 120 over Cricket become clearer....thankfully we were able to make 5 changes to the play off heroes team (Elmo, Tom DeGrooth, Colin Barry, Rubber and Jap). The celebrations that evening were prolonged and pretty wild but we weren’t able to enjoy them at Drapers as the Rugby Club were taking priority. To his great credit the then Chairman, Colin Philpott, seized the moment and opened his doors to our drunkenness as well as the re-runs of O’Phile’s catch. He probably regretted it the next day when he had to get his pressure hose to wash down his driveway where part of Dubbers evening was festering! One who deserved the celebratory drink just as much as the rest of us was Andy Elliott. He’d followed us all season and diligently maintained a scorebook that’s enabled me to tell the story of the campaign so clearly. I’ve a suspicion that his post match drink wasn’t his first of the day but he deserved them all in my book. It was a really great year with a really great bunch of blokes and what we achieved was totally beyond our expectations. It also made some already strong friendships even stronger and was a season that we all now look fondly back at. I think it was the year where I had the most fun on the field of all the seasons I played. I think I was the last one to leave the dressing room to head to the Philpott’s and therefore was able to fulfil the duties....“last one out have a look around”....drops the mic 🎙