History is littered with the cautionary tales of creatives who have failed to solve the riddle that besets nearly all of us: just how does one follow brilliance? The sophomore slump is ubiquitous: for every Charles Dickens rattling out ‘Oliver Twist’ as an encore, there are a multitude of Joel Schumachers insisting on slapping nipples on the Bat-suit. The question, then, is what would the Woodpeckers do to follow up a near perfect performance in the Barnes branch of the Gobi Desert the previous weekend?
Teddington is one of those places where history crackles in the air. Red and Fallow Deer still roam Bushy Park as they did when Henry VIII (not to be confused with Henry Walpole) used to mount his charge and hunt his dinner there. Teddington Cricket Club itself finds itself nestled in the corner of this now-suburban idyll, with their ground located on Dora Jordan Road. Dora Jordan – or Dorothea to her clientele – was an 18th Century courtesan frequented by the Duke of Clarence (who would become King William IV). This delightfully scandalous factoid was related with boyish glee by the Life President.
The Peckers, beer in hand stood back to admire Teddington’s astonishing (and astonishingly expensive) new pavilion. It was best summed up by the eminently quotable Botty, who remarked on its resemblance to a Nordic Health Spa, all dark-stained wood and crisp Scandinavian corners.
Sun Tzu insisted that if an enemy is of superior strength, then you should evade that strength. POB, having clearly read the Art of War like any good Captain should, and having seen the Peckers’ top order grimacing at the opposition bowlers warming up on the outfield, won the toss and swiftly elected to field.
Out strode two of the aforementioned youths to open the batting, serious in both temperament and ability. A well-manicured track awaited them, with the occasional cluster of deer droppings in the outfield . Spinach took the new nut with a fierce wind at his back, with Motty tasked with laboring into the gale. With Spinach a touch looser of leaf than usual, and Motty struggling to find rhythm and manage his windswept locks, Teddington got off to a good start, coasting along at a run-a-ball. After 7 overs there was a light spattering of drizzle, and Teddington’s imperious league umpire called the players off and the covers on:
The “rain” soon abated, and back out the Peckers strode. The break had clearly done wonders for Spinach who, having found an extra yard of pace, got one to skid through into Elway’s pads. Spinach, whose genuflection and feverish appeal rivalled Olivier’s Hamlet, was rewarded by the Umpire’s finger, Elway departing for 27.
The other opener, Lord, was starting to go up through the gears, although he was perhaps lucky to make it past 50: Botty, inspired by Mohammed Rizwan and standing up to his brother’s seamers, took a sharp take down the leg side, paused, and with the batsman’s back foot still appearing to be hovering above the crease, whipped off the bails. “Not out”, said the square leg umpire, much to Botty’s chagrin.
Spinach (1/40) and Motty (0/30) were relieved in a double change by POB, who introduced Henners’ off-breaks and Felix the Cat’s angry mediums into the attack. Henners, who had earlier tweaked his groin attempting some sort of nightmarish Cirque du Soleil mid-air pivot while fielding, settled into his rhythm. The Cat, despite reminding Youngy of a “Tim Bresnan heavy ball” bowler, couldn’t quite find a similar level of comfort, and was removed from the attack after a short spell. Drinks came at 20 overs, with the hosts on a worrying 150-odd for 1.
After drinks, however, the Woodpecker spirit came to the fore. With Henners and Youngy (former county youth teammates who both ended up with 0/56) bowling in tandem, the runs dried up. Youngy wound back the years to remove obdurate number three Greenall with a yorker for 44, and with Lord getting bogged down in the nervous 90s, things were swinging back towards parity. Unfortunately, once Lord eventually conquered his personal milestone, the runs began to flow again – singles, twos, and boundaries all coming in bursts – until Lord eventually slashed a looping catch to Felix at point off a rank ball from Shit Heap, bringing his excellent innings of 112 to a close.
Their scoring rate had dropped, and something had to give. Henners, who by this point was claiming a paltry “one metre catch radius” at long on due to groin trouble, was about to do something special. So special, in fact, that it deserves its own Shakespearian Sonnet (fourteen iambic pentameters divided into three quatrains and a couplet, you unlettered swine):
An Ode To Henners’ Catch
Harmer was closing in on his fifty
When he went to smash Shit Heap to long on.
Henners saw the ball early and limped in
Then saw the flight and knew he’d got it wrong.
He hustled backwards twisting then he launched
A last ditch try; a prayer to summon flight.
The ball flew hard, it arced and then it dipped
And Henners flew, then crumpled out of sight.
A silence fell, a hush across the ground:
An agonising pause that ran and ran.
And then one meaty paw thrust high in joy,
The ball so tightly nestled in his hand.
The Peckers rushed to cheer, their voices joined
In praise: not bad for only half a groin.
After that, runs seemed to dry up, and the Teddington innings closed on 286/5 (Shit Heap stealing a brace of wickets for 43 and Butternut bowled a tidy four overs), which, in the eyes of the Woodpeckers, was a small victory as they seemed destined for a score well north of 300.
Botty coaches his brother on the art of batting
After a leisurely change-over (pints for the Peckers, calisthenics and fielding drills for the Teddington youths), Shit Heap and an increasingly reluctant Cannon wandered out to begin the Woodpecker innings. Cannon, as he so often does, promptly played round a straight one and strolled back to the changing room without troubling the scorers, bringing Botty to the crease.
Shit Heap and Botty began in circumspect manner, but swiftly began to accelerate, with Botty launching a sumptuous straight six over the sightscreen. Shit Heap (21) looked dangerous before offering a half-hearted chip to mid-off, and Botty (17) soon joined him in the pavilion, edging to a fine snaffle in the cordon. The Peckers were perilously poised (try saying that ten times quickly) at 41/3, but with Henners and Youngy rehashing their teenage glory at the crease, the game was still in the balance. Henners immediately looked in fine fettle, perhaps after a liberal ralgexing of his groin, and clipped boundaries on both sides of the wicket. With his eyes ablaze at the introduction of spin, he almost holed out to the midwicket boundary, before toeing a catch to the wicketkeeper and departing for 12.
Coatesy, whose retina-searing new white spikes had cause him trouble in the field (“They have too much grip!”) joined Youngy in the middle. There was a sense of calm as they nurdled singles and picked up the odd boundary – what dear old Geoffrey would call “proper cricket” – but all the while the required rate was rising. Coatesy fell, trapped on his crease by their short, fizzy off-spinner, and victim to a most theatrical raising of the finger by the home umpire. The Teddington ground happens to neighbour a Hyrdrogen plant, and at 72/5 the Woodpecker innings had the makings of a Hindenburg-esque explosion.
Skipper POB was next in, caressing his first ball for 4 through backward point and then scraping through to drinks. 88/5 was the Woodpecker score after 20, and hope was fading fast. After drinks, an increasingly lubricated Pecker contingent were cheering every single, boundary and overthrow (especially the overthrows), and POB and Youngy set about their Sisyphean task. Youngy, slowly resembling a stubborn barnacle on the hull of the Woodpecker batting Titanic, was unfortunate: given out LBW despite being several yards down the track. “I think that was a make-up decision for not giving POB out when he was plumb” mused Youngy (21).
Motty (24) and POB (33), the two old stalwarts of the club, began to give the score some respectability, despite POB doing his best to walk on a stumping where the keeper had clearly dropped the ball, and ending up on his arse (a la Outwood) on another stumping chance. They would both perish, however, with the score still below 160.
Then the rarest of rarities occurred: a genuine tail wag from the Woodpeckers. And by tail wag I’m talking Billy-sized rather than Pepper. Spinach (17), wearing a West Indies bucket hat and playing shots like an albino Richie Richardson, and Butternut Squash (31) piled on 45 for the ninth wicket in double time, before they both died by their swords, closing the inning on 212 and leaving the Cat stranded on 8 not out. “I feel there was a century out there for me” said Cat to his captain; “Yes, I should have given you one more over” replied POB. Cat’s bowling figures are, unfortunately, unavailable for public consumption.
Emily Dickinson wrote (in one of her less feminine angsty poems):
“My portion is Defeat – today – A paler luck than Victory”
A few lines later she went on to describe “Men too straight to scoop again”; perhaps foretelling the Woodpeckers’ inability to get down to the ball in the dusty Teddington grass, and all those ones and twos that broke their spirits in the field.
On to Dunsfold.
https://woodpeckers.play-cricket.com/website/results/4351840
Scorecard
