Report by Daniel Mortlock:
On a day such as this - the longest of the year, and one of the nicest of this dismally wet summer - a single cricket match was never going to be enough. So while Romsey vs. Milton battling each other to get off the bottom of the CCA Junior 3 West league table was an undeniable source of interest, at least for us, it was great to also have two World Cup games to keep track of: India vs. Afganistan and New Zealand vs. West Indies. The latter two teams were both clear underdogs and both played brilliantly, but in the end fell short by 11 and 6 runs, respectively. We also, having lost the toss, found ourselves batting second, and so had to hope from a different result.
Milton II's decision to bat first seemed reasonable given the conditions, but perhaps less so given their line-up. Wickets fell steadily during their brief innings and they didn't manage a single partnership over 30. Their batsmen played some nice shots, but there was always a sense they were there for a good time, more than a long time, with plenty of our wickets coming from risky shots. That said, Saad Shoukat (3/21) and Stephan van Eeden (3/13) succeeded mainly by beating the bat - or taking the edge of it, with edges being held by 'keeper Ev Fox and new specialist slip Daniel Mortlock (who now has the second most catches for the club, this being number 80; no prizes for guessing who has the most, with 205). The other wickets were taken by Owens Andy (1/33) and Catherine (1/12), who provided Richard Rex and Huw Davies with the opportunity to take nice outfield catches.
Our batting efforts were a bit more mixed, and we were never quite able to break free, with our players' innings falling into two distinct modes: dogged defense that yielded few runs but denied the bowlers wickets; and carefree madness that saw a few dramatic boundaries come at the expense of some frankly absurd dismissals. The former approach was personified by Andrew Granville (12 off 36 balls), Richard Rex (32 off 59 balls) and Daniel Mortlock (24* off 45 balls), who between them batted for more than half the 40 overs and offered up just three chances between them (two of which were taken). The latter approach was personified by, well, pretty much everyone else, none of whom made it into double figures and most of whom were caught off big swipes at nothing balls that represented pure gifts to the appreciative Milton bowlers (in particular, one suspects, by one regular who thus took his first ever four-for after 57 league games). The only person who didn't fit into either cateogry was Andy Owen, who hit 16* off 19 balls from number 11 - which rather suggests that he should be batting a little higher, even if his knee limits his ability to take quick singles (not that it limits his ability to call his partners through for them).
The more mathematically inclined reader - which seems to include pretty much the entire team these days - will have noticed that not everything adds up, a fact which can be traced back to the fact that Milton conceded 43 runs in extras, with an incredible 33 wides (i.e., almost one an over). Were the Milton bowlers especially erratic? Or were our umpires unusually harsh? In short: yes. The former doesn't really warrant a discussion - it's Junior 3 cricket and not everyone's going to get the ball on line - but the latter might seem a strange admission, especially given that the captains had made the now standard agreement on the "foot inside the return crease on the off side, half-way on the leg side" convention. However, such agreements aren't worth the paper they're not written on unless they're communicated to the umpires and then implemented, and this admittedly fraught system had broken down by the fourth ball of the match, when a seemingly innocuous ball about half way between the stumps and the return crease was given as a wide by Milton's umpire. We didn't complain, but we did try and establish what cut-off point the umpire would be using, but his roundabout answer made Boris Johnson seem direct and to the point. Worse, we ended up bowling something like 20 straight overs under these possibly unilaterally-imposed rules, as the umpire was standing at both ends (never a good sign, and an even worse indicator when the reason turns out to be that the other umpire was only prepared to do square leg because he was, he said, "scared" of one of his own team's opening batsmen). At any rate, these early wide calls set the standard for the match and left us with no choice but to follow suit. And even though our umpires couldn't quite bring ourselves to be quite that tight, they were subject to sustained kvetching from the Milton fielders - their unhappiness at such harsh calls was perhaps understandable, since they were probably were unaware of the approach that had been taken by their umpire, but this continued even after repeated explanations that we were simply following their precedent. It was pretty unpleasant and certainly unnecessary.
Anyway, in terms of the match result the harsh wide calling pretty evened itself out, and didn't have an obvious effect on the result, which was "job done" against Milton II - although sadly not against Milton I . . .
The Milton players were unusually pleased when their captain returned from the toss with the news that they'd be batting and we soon found out why, as their opening pair of Will Conlon and James Drummond are more used to facing up to Senior 3 bowlers, and were correctly optimistic about their likelihood of plundering some quick runs from our inevitably inferior attack. That said, we dropped both of them in the second over, Stephan van Eeden hence unlucky to end up with 0/33 off his 4 overs rather than a cheap two-fer. From then on the batsmen were largely assured, combining solid defense and big (if often aerial) hits to put on 112 runs in 17 overs.
We were in big trouble and the pressure was beginning to show. Andy, not being one to ask the impossible of his players, instead demanded it, the most extreme moment coming when he was frustrated to see a leading edge lob over his head and then berated Huw for not diving ten metres to take what would not only have been an astonishing catch, but would also have overturned most of evolutionary biology and classical mechanics. That said, we also failed to do the clearly possible on several occasions, mainly by adopting a new technique (pioneered by Jason Holder in the first over of the West Indies vs. New Zealand game) of diving for the ball while it's still out of reach, leaving the fielder prostrate with the ball trundling on to the boundary.
It looked like we were doomed to be chasing leather for hours to come, until Andy decided to try our slower bowlers, although even this act was done with a certain sense of panic. At the start of the 11th over Daniel (0/22 off 5 overs) didn't head back to his mark; but neither did anyone else take his place. Eventually Catherine Owen agreed to come on, despite not having turned her arm over all year. She started off as you might expect for someone so rusty, variable in both line and length; but once she got her rhythm she quickly disposed of Milton's opening pair, both bowled going trying to put pace on the ball.
Our chase didn't really get anywhere, with Drummond (7 overs, 2 maidens, 0/11) simply too good for our batsmen, and we - or really Catherine - got just 1 bowling point from this contest. Which, as you've no doubt worked out by now, was the actually part of a single match . . .
Putting everything together we came up short: after Milton's opening partnership they were too far ahead in the game for us to be able to claw our way back. 183 was gettable - we'd have maybe given ourselves a 30% chance at the start of our chase - but their tight opening bowling combined with our suicidal shot selection meant the target was soon out of reach. Russ's running Duckworth-Lewis tally showed that we were in touch up to the half-way mark (69/2 after 20 overs as compared to a par score of 73), after which our slow scoring and regular wickets saw the margin increase at more than 2 an over.
The league table now of course records Milton II as having two wins vs. our one. That feels like a simple and clear-cut fact which even Donald Trump would struggle to cast as "fake news"; but in fact a little digging (i.e., looking at the PlayCricket web-site) reveals that things aren't quite so simple. As alluded to above, the Milton opening partnership that won the match today was between two cricketers who can in no way be described as Milton II players: Drummond has played 6 games for the firsts this year, sometimes opening both the batting and the bowling, and his only previous game for the seconds (in which he scored a match-winning century) came on another day when Milton I didn't have a game; Conlon has previously played exclusively for the firsts this year - u, lest their be any doubt about his quality as a batsman, his scores for them have been 135, 16 and 71. Finally, just in case your suspicious of small number statistics - as well you should be - this pattern has been consistent over recent seasons. In the last five years Drummond has played 75 times for Milton I and 5 times for Milton II; Conlon's equivalent figures are 61 and 1. So what today revealed, if anything, is that Romsey are probably comfortably better than Milton II but even more comfortably less better than Milton I - who'd have thought?
As annoying for us as this was, it's not as if Milton (or any other club who do this) is cheating, or even really doing anything unethetical: the league has its rules, and it makes sense to do everything within those rules to win. (In sport if something is unethical there should be a rule to prevent it; and if something isn't against the rules then by definition it's essentially okay.) So, as has been previously mentioned in our match reports not once, not twice, not three times, but (at least) four times, it's the league rules that are the problem. Most other amateur sports in which there are several leagues and clubs have multiple teams have rules which prevent someone who has played a certain number (three or four) of times for a team from playing for a lower-level team in that season. But the CCA has a much softer approach which effectively allows multi-club teams to bring in a couple of match-winners every week if desired. Of course, most clubs only do this when a higher team isn't playing (as was the case for Milton today), in which case it's just bad luck for their opposition (as it was for us). The glorious weather notwithstanding, playing just one game would have been quite enough today.