THE CLIMAX (BB15)

Twenty years from now, historians will look at the NSSCL Div 1A league table – historians whose lives have become badly sidetracked somewhere, I would guess – and see the 20-point gap separating Moddershall, promoted in second place to the Premier League, from Audley, club of certified toe-rag Imran Arif, and may reach the erroneous conclusion that it was all plain sailing. It wasn’t. Far from it. 

Had you conducted a straw-poll of Moddershall 1st XI’s hardcore following – a number considerably swollen by several injured cricketers – at around 5pm on the season’s final afternoon, when we were 60-odd for 6 at Blythe needing 100 for the second batting bonus point, and with it, promotion, I doubt you’d have found a great deal of confidence knocking around. Two seasons’ worth of struggle was now weighing down heavily upon the next hour’s cricket. I felt like puking (it would not be the only time that day). Andy Housley looked like a pint of milk. Luckily, Dave Housley was bossing things, although he, too, might have been reluctant to lay money on promotion. 

On a personal note, it was a wee bit strange to be there in the first place. It’s fair to say that when I ended my three-year sabbatical from the game – when I’d retired from being retired – I hadn’t envisaged skippering any team at Modd this year, let alone two. However, the loss of three key men to fractured bones or pregnant wives in Asia meant that I was needed to try and help bring the ship into port. “Experience”, they said. “A no-brainer”. I had suffered a dip in batting form, lacked confidence, and wasn’t 100% sure it was the right move. Even so, that was the consensus, and you try and do what the club needs. 

When Andy Hawkins walked into the covers 40 minutes before the start – and you’ll begin to appreciate why we used to be reluctant passengers in Hawk’s car in his younger days – and gashed right through to the bone, it was up to that no-brainer to captain a team containing four players with whom I’d played one game or fewer (Ball, Hope, Goodwin, Slinn) and only one with whom I’d played more than 10 games (Housley). I was an outsider, really. Still, it’s not so difficult when the openers put on 250.

Hopey and Anis shared eight wickets between them, and with Fraser garnishing his 161 with a wicket with his first delivery of the season, four teenagers (Irfan's 80-odd the other main contribution) had starred in the victory. Having been happily spoonfed the “bowl first, knock off” gameplan – after all, I didn’t know the league that well (mind you, I draw the line at spectators deciding when I should declare) – it turned out to be a very good toss to lose, the 25 points meaning we’d go into the final match at Blythe needing a straightforward five rather than a ticklish 10 points. No problemo. 

Just five points – the exact same amount we needed in 2008 to wrap up the Premier League title (when we were, I felt, being prematurely congratulated). Then, as now, it didn’t seem difficult to imagine the set of circumstances that would make five points very tricky to secure: get shoved in on a poor wicket, get rolled out cheaply, and need to win a low-scoring game against a team with the psychological freedom of having nothing, really, to play for. In 2008 it rained all week – truth be told, the ground wasn’t really fit for play – and, sure enough, I lost the toss (despite offering Little Stoke’s skipper, Gareth Morris, both tosses the following season if he gave us this one). We went from 21 for 1 to 22 for 5, then 45 for 7, at which point five points looked a long, long way off. So, to me the gameplan at Blythe seemed very clear: ideally, bowl first, and pick up enough bonus points to make the second innings a formality, or even better, irrelevant. 

After trying to impress this gameplan upon the team, I went out to toss. “What do you want to do?” asked their skipper, having earlier tried to scarify the wicket in plain sight (I told him he couldn’t do that, “it’s against league rules”, without really knowing if that was true). “Win the toss”, I said. I lost the toss. But they batted. So far, so good. 

We made a great start, too, with two wickets in the opening over from an ever-so-slightly pumped-up Gooders, back on old turf. Hamaiz nipped out three and normally, at 100 for 5, I’d have been thinking about the end result and looking to close the game out, to strangle the opposition slowly, rather then being quite so aggressive as I was, keeping three close catchers for young spinners, allowing Blythe to keep the board ticking over. See, them digging in and getting, say, 170 for 6 against defensive fields would not have changed our situation one iota (although, in a less pressurised game, in mid-season for instance, we’d have felt very confident chasing 170 at Blythe, and thus would no doubt have bagged 20 points). So, I went for wickets. Context is everything, and I felt that eight wickets would be enough. We’d then only need 75 runs. Still, we should get 100, right? 

Cricket is littered with teams making a botch of short chases. You don’t know whether to stick or twist. Nervous shots were played, a couple of controversial dismissals happened, Bally got a good cherry. Thankfully, Dave Housley played the innings of a lifetime, the first 30 or so runs of which were chiselled out under extreme pressure (he’ll be delighted he finished with 69, too, I imagine). There was, it’s safe to say, a lot of relief, and no little ecstasy in the aftermath. It had been the culmination of two years’ hard work – longer, in fact, when you think about the rebuilding process that went into arresting the club’s slide in 2009 and 2010. Hearty congratulations go out to the players, but even more so to the likes of Andy Housley and Andy Hawkins (and many others) whose transformative vision of a club based on developing and backing its own talent is starting to bear fruit. It has certainly pulled us from the doldrums. 

Moddershall is lucky to have such a talented crop of young players. Equally, those young players are lucky to play at such a wonderful facility, and to be part of a generation that could achieve pretty much anything they want in club cricket – all of which will be so much easier (and more enjoyable, I dare say) by sticking together, playing with (and for) their mates, building a legacy for themselves as a group and for the club. And in that, they could have no finer role model than Sam Kelsall, a lad who could have played at any club of his choosing for a good deal more money than he has been getting at Moddershall, but whose obvious loyalty and palpable love of the club has kept him here, doing teas, rolling wickets, pulling pints – an exemplary clubman and model team player. I hope that when the cash offers start rolling in for these young lads, they can remember Sam’s shining example. And remember, too, that cricket is about glory – or rather, striving after glory (for sometimes it’s out of your hands) – and about creating those indelible lifelong memories forged in the sweat- and laughter-filled aftermath of success. Always has been, always will be. 

It was a genuine privilege to lead that team over the line, to share in their glory, and I’m excited to see what they can achieve next year. But that wasn’t the main story, or pleasure, I got from my out-of-retirement season. No, that was being part of – and eventually skippering – a promising and eager group of lads in the A team, watching the side develop over the course of the summer, learning ‘game-sense’: how to carry yourself on the field; showing the opposition you weren’t going to take a backwards step and they were in a fight; showing your team-mates that your were switched on and prepared to do the hard yards for your team. 

It is, at bottom, about emotional management: of yourself, for the group. It’s about being prepared not to let the inevitable disappointments given by the game of cricket – those days when the bowling doesn’t go your way, or when you get a rough decision – turn into thin-skinned, sulky, disruptive, and ultimately selfish behaviour, as though the game revolves around you, and you alone. In less extreme cases than that, it’s about putting yourself at the service of the team, working out what it needs, and trying to do it. You can tell an awful lot about a person from the way they respond to the success of their teammates. And the ‘failures’ of those same teammates, too. Support, innit? Concern, encouragement, generosity of spirit.  

Anyway, the progress I saw in this direction was very good, not only from the young regulars, but also from the lads who came up from the 2nd XI: Robbo, Frankie, Mitch, Keiran and others. I think they – and the regular players who’d never before played under my captaincy – perhaps got a wee bit of a culture shock regarding how precise I was with the field placings, how I wouldn’t allow them to drift into their own thoughts and go quiet. But, again, almost everyone saw this for what it was – a way of making us a better team – and bought into it.  

A word here for Andy Lightbown, the original A team skipper. I’m not sure I could have come straight in from the outside and started the season as captain. I barely knew several of the team. Relationships needed to be formed. They needed to respect me for how I was in the present (as a cricketer, yes, but as a human being) and not because of some (beer-improved) stories from the past. And I needed to work out what made them tick. Even so, me lurking in the field with my tactician’s cap on cannot have been easy for Andy and, while our relationship remained fine, he was gracious and magnanimous about handing the captaincy over.  

We were bottom of the league at the time. Although, again, I must go on record as saying that that was largely because we were not a team set up for ‘sticky dogs’. Our young spinners’ natural pace is (at the moment) too slow; our medium-pacers were swing bowlers rather than seamers, Ali Shah excepted; and our batters were touch players. On top of that, we had three of our first four home games totally washed out.  

Still, the run we had in the first five games that I skippered was my most enjoyable period of the season. We bossed Wedgwood away, Elliot Colclough falling just short of a deserved hundred and Irfan pulling off an astonishing one-handed slip catch for the final wicket as the light and rain closed in. We beat then-leaders Crewe at home, dropping eight catches behind the wicket yet still skittling them for 112 and surviving an early wobble against a couple of useful spinners on a helpful pitch.  

Next, we beat Oakamoor, winning despite having been 56 for 9 in our innings. Robbo and Bash gave us 90 to bowl at and we squeezed them dead: 48 all out. Those are the most thrilling games to win – out there together, defending a small score – and I really felt this was a huge moment in the progression of the team. Anis’s 4 for 5 was part of a three-match run that saw him take 13 for 59 before moving up to the 1st XI, but other bowlers were playing their part in an unassuming way, quietly doing their job for the team: Bash and Shaun were never bad together, and often both bowled well. Ali Shah brought something different and bowled excellently during this period, when Stone SP and Church Eaton were also comprehensively beaten to briefly give us a shout at promotion – not bad considering we only had 46 points from the first 8 games. It wasn’t to be, though, for one reason or another, yet the season was, I felt, rewarding for us all.  

Batting-wise, Sarge and Elliott led the way, and a few others chipped in around that at various times, but more consistency is required. I can only see this team getting better and better, though, and it should be a realistic aim to get into Div 2A at some stage. Whether I’m still good enough to get in the team by then remains to be seen. But the future certainly looks bright at Modd, across all the teams.  

Carpe Diem.