Bore Draw - NOT!!
Agony
By Daisy feat. Ged
May 10 2009
Many thanks to Daisy for this evocative colour piece on the final day of a classic Surrey v Middlesex fixture at the Oval. Those of you who weren't there, poor souls, will get some of the spirit of the day. And those of you who were there will be able to reclaim those memories. Magic.
I was disappointed on Thursday, when I realised that our test match tickets for Saturday were probably going to be about as useful as a bike is useful to a fish. Ged was pretty confident that the test would end Friday and that we'd at least get our money back. He called that one right, although there was a point on Friday when I thought we might be turning up to see a couple of overs Saturday for our £110.
When Ged suggested "we can simply relocate our Saturday picnic to the Oval" I thought that was a super idea. Especially as Ged, for once, was doing the whole picnic and I do like being waited on.
We normally aim to get to Lord's early for a test match, as we hate the crush at the gates between 10:30 and 11:00, so we simply followed our normal routine and the extra journey time took up the slack - we arrived at the Oval and sat down just as the umpires emerged.
We sat in the Laker for the first few overs, but were keen to take the sun, so we trekked over to the one bit of the OCS stand that was open (Blocks 1-4), where the view was excellent but there wasn't much room to spread out the full picnic up front.
Gareth Berg was fielding as sub in front of us there and he politely answered all of my questions. He also paitently signed autographs for several youngsters. Lovely chap.
Wickets Start To Fall
Afzal fell quickly when Shaggy came on to bowl, but soon misfortune struck as Tim Murtagh went down awkwardly trying to stop a four off Shaggy's bowling. It looked really bad and several people (two of ours plus the Surrey physio I think) helped Tim off the ground. A horrible thing to witness.
The announcer at the Oval was the mumbliest, least audible announcer since I heard Amy Winehouse introduce her own songs on that live concert they televised recently and/or the compere at Ronnie Scotts by the end of the evening. Not that I am suggesting that the Oval fella was as well-oiled as those other examples.
Batty and Brown were hunkering down and it was starting to look as though Ged's bore draw prediction was right, but about 15 minutes before lunch, Shaggy did it again, again partnering with Dexter fielding close to remove Batty. Ged reckoned that one more before lunch would have Middlesex in a strong position, but that wasn't to be.
Just before lunch, a father and his young son sat behind us. The little boy asked his dad "why aren't the players wearing their genuine Twenty20 kits for this match?" and the father sounded rather embarassed explaining the facts of cricketing life to his son. A sign of the times, that question.
Ged had done us proud with cashew nuts, wild smoked salmon bagels, juicy tomatoes, ham and cheese bagels, apples, grapes, ginger biscuits, toffees and a choice of white and red wine.
Soon after lunch, Hughes takes a sharp catch off Shaggy's bowling to remove the stubborn Brown. "Game on" says Ged. But it takes a while for the next wicket to fall. We noticed that "Mr Winehouse the Announcer" sounded even less audible on this side of the ground than he did on the other side. Perhaps the Oval's sound system is knackered!
Ged had been texting Barmy Kev at the fall of each wicket, but Kev then texts Ged "tactically". Ged says that he has made a strategic decision to go to the loo, "in the name of Barmy Kev, his county and his duty". While Ged is gone, Ughes and Hudal combine again, this time to remove Schofield. Ged seems to think he has caused the wicket, which makes no sense to me.
More importantly, soon after Ged returns Eoin Morgan runs forward and takes a stunning catch off Finn's bowling to remove Elliott. Ged says that the catch was "worth the price of admission alone". I thought that we'd well and truly opened them up at this point, but Ged was far more circumspect. "With only two real bowlers still standing, this innings isn't over until we have taken all 10" he said. And with the benefit of hindsight I must say he had a point.
There were some rather drunk and noisy Surrey fans sitting some distance from us in the Peter May, but I was surprised when a woman came over to the steward near us to complain about them. She said that they had been rude to her when she asked them to keep quiet and then they called her a stupid cow and were now going "shhhhhhh" when she walked past them. The steward suggested that she might want to move, but she said that she and her husband had no intention of moving. This complaint went on for quite some time and she was obviously upset. When she went back to her seat, we saw that she was probably as far away from those fellas as we were. I don't condone the fact that the lads were rude to her, but it does seem to me unreasonable to expect everyone to keep quiet for you in an entire ground. Just because county cricket days are sometimes soporific......
And while talking about nuts, it seems only right to talk about Andre Nel, who looked very solid as a batsman for a short while until Shaggy bowled him. Ged very visably did Ravi Bopara's "sign me up to the honours board" gesture to recognise the five wicket haul. Dexter and Finn combined to remove Dernbach quite soon after Nel fell but then things started to get harder for Middlesex.
Barmy Kev had texted Ged to say that we'd need them all out by tea. Ged tried to explain the complicated "tea" rule to me. The gist of it, as I understood it, was that tea would be taken at the same time as the change of innings as long as the last wicket fell with more than 24 overs remaining in the day. Ged felt that the game would be gone if the last pair survived until then.
And if that complicated business with rules wasn't enough, Ged pointed out the sign in front of us which read "NO PERSON IS PERMITTED TO ENTER UPON THE PLAYING AREA AT ANY TIME UNLESS SPECIALLY AUTHORISED BY A CLUB OFFICIAL, OR TO INTERFERE WITH THE NORMAL COURSE OF PLAY IN ANY MANNER". Ged assures me that the drafting of that notice is so bad that it means that you ARE permitted to enter the field of play if you wish to interfere with the normal course of play. We decided not to test this idea; merely to let you dear readers know about it.
There was a chance which looked difficult but perhaps gettable off Finn's bowling while the last wicket partnership was still young, which would have left a target of something like 160 off 34 overs. I said "never mind", Ged said "that might have been the match dropped".
Just before Ged's "tea deadline", Meaker nicks one to Billy Godleman so Surrey are all out and Middlesex need 186 off 25 overs after tea.
7-and-a-bit per over seems normal in 25 or so overs judging by T20 stuff, but as Ged pointed out there are no fielding restrictions and no bowling restrictions either. Murtazah Hussain bowled all 13 overs from the Vauxhall end, for example, and he bowled those very well.
Of course it all comes down to small things. When we only needed 17 runs off 18 balls and still had wickets in hand, for example, we were confident we'd win. Even when it came down to 3 runs off 4 balls after Shaggy hit that 6 off Murtazah, we thought we'd win.
But in the end, it was a fantastic day of entertainment and we have to thank both teams for that. This is how county cricket should be. A small crowd got some of the best entertainment fans of cricket could ever hope for.
I still think that Middlesex look like the makings of a great team; we've just forgotten how to win, for now. But here's hoping for similar levels of entertainment and better results as the season goes on.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009:05:14:06:11:40 by Ged.
Barmy Kev
I'm only here for the tele