CROSSING THE SAHARA

We rolled up for the second week in a row to play Emmanuel at their Sahara desert like home ground at Scammel Reserve. Having been pipped at the post last week, we could be forgiven for asking the question “what are we going to do differently this week”. The short answer to that is that cricket is a funny game and no two games play out the exact same way.

I was sent out to open again with Ragu Prabhakaran as my opening partner. Ragu played very well the week before and is a steadying influence out in the middle. We took one look at the pitch and immediately had concerns as it looked very green from all the rainfall during the week.

From the first over the ball was seaming about all over the place and bouncing at variable heights. Usually a nice trampoline bounce, but every now and again, one would keep low or bounce wildly after hitting a divot in the pitch.

I got off the mark with a controlled cut for a single. Then repeated the stroke soon after. I played a push to leg for a single and another push to cover for another single. However, most of the times it was hard to get a handle on the pitch as the ball was moving, bouncing and generally misbehaving. Ragu who is a free scoring batsman was also stymied by the vagaries of the green pitch.

After the tenth over, the Emmanuel captain started instructing his change bowlers to warm up and I started to breathe a sigh of relief knowing that soon enough I would be facing less suffecatingly accurate bowling than what I Ragu and I had to contend with thus far.

During the eleventh over, I already started to think “if I have survived unscathed so far for ten overs – I will bat at least twenty. If I can bat twenty, I can bat longer still and get a good score and get back on track”.

I negotiated the first few balls of Tait’s last over of his opening spell, content to just block him out when a ball pitched just short of a length suddenly exploded off the pitch as I was playing forwarded and was in a mille-second heading for my face. I instinctively raised my bat in front of my face and I felt I had done well to keep the bat remotely arched to send the ball downwards. The ball flew down to the right of second slip. The slip fieldsman dived and scooped up a remarkable catch less than a centimeter off the turf in his right hand.

A simply amazing catch.

The umpire conferred with square leg to ensure that the catch had carried, but I had already tucked my bat under my arm and I was making my way off by this stage as I had a good view of the catch and it certainly seemed to me that it had carried – just – to the second slip fieldsman who was sprawled out on the turf clasping the ball. Ragu was out caught behind almost straight away and we were suddenly 2 for 16 after twelve overs and in real bother.

Richie The Dragon Halpagoda was joined by new lad Danny Rowe a Welshman who has come to Australia on a working holiday with his wife. The pitch was such that the usually belligerent Dragon was subdued and was eventually dismissed for eight, but Danny Rowe was getting into full swing playing some lusty strokes.

Strachany joined Danny “Boy” Rowe and they put on a superb partnership worth seventy two with Dan playing some stupendous strokes to all points of Scammel Reserve. Strachany started off slowly and looked rather subdued, but as he got his eye in, he started to play some big strokes too and it was exciting cricket to watch.

The score steadily mounted when disaster struck as Danny Rowe was run out from a direct hit for a swash buckling sixty seven. It was a huge innings in terms of getting us back into this match. More importantly, he had weathered the early phase where the pitch was still seaming and then made Emmanuel pay. Barring the unfortunate run out, Danny Rowe would have marked his Yarras debut with a richly deserved century.

The score was now 4 for 120 and we still needed more runs to give our bowlers something to bowl at. Wickets continued to fall at regular intervals, but Strachany heroically saw us through to 8 for 157 with his own score being thirty seven not out.

On that outfield, 157 was a reasonably good score. Opening our bowling were the two high schoolies Alex Harris – the hero of the game against Nationals before Christmas and James Allen a diminutive lad who would not put the fear of God into batsman with his school boy looks and lack of height.

However, both lads acquitted themselves superbly and were miserly in their opening salvos. In fact, James “Jock” Allen took four of the first wickets to fall (Alex Harris took the other) and James Allen subsequently finished the day with the superb figures of 5 for 23 while Alex “Bomber” Harris who bowled probably better finished with the tidy return of 1 for 14.

Emmanuel collapsed to be all out for 59 two overs before drinks handing us an unexpectedly easier than imagined win by ninety eight runs. Ian Chips Pringle and Johnny Scurry both picked up 2 for 10 and we had triumphed on a wicket that was playing at different heights.

A sweet victory!

I was only disappointed that having survived eleven difficult, eventful overs, I was dismissed by a freak ball and an even freakier catch. Some days luck does not smile on you in cricket.

See you all next week!
Vic Nicholas
MELBOURNE

EMMANUEL OAKLIEGH - LOST IN THE SAHARA

“If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.”
~ Elbert Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher.

The day dawned brightly last Sunday as I drove out to Oakleigh to take on Emmanuel Oakleigh who sit third on the ladder and had just toppled top of the table Nationals. These were going to be tough hombres to crack on their home turf. Speaking of turf, I nearly died of shock when I took one look out at the playing arena.

How can I best describe it?

It looked like desert sand with the odd tuft of weeds here and there. It was pretty much devoid of any grass anywhere. While the wicket itself was a nice green colour and looked like it would play truly, the outfield was horrible. It was with some irony that on a sign hanging off the fence, it proudly read that “Drought Resistant Grass has been planted on this oval”. The only problem was, this drought resistant grass had died off long ago.

Anyways, we lost the toss and had been put in to bat. I was slated to open this week and I made my way out to the middle with the unflappable Nat “Mr Natural” Williams. The plan was to get to the ten over mark and then start pushing it on from there. Nat offered to take first strike which I was appreciative of, as I am always an extremely nervous opener. From the first balls Nat faced, I could see that the pitch was offering swing to the young Emmanuel bowler Michael Tate. At the end of the over Nat informed me that Tate was not only getting the ball to move away from the batsman off the deck, but also through the air.

I faced up to Emanuel captain Ralph who off a short run up generated a bit more pace and bounce than Tate and also swung the ball away. This was seriously tough going and the bowling was very tight.

I was lucky enough to get off the mark fairly early on in unorthodox fashion when I got a single down to fine leg when I French Cut a delivery from Ralph who glared at me in disgust at my apparent luck.

Nat was handling the bowling intelligently by leaving well alone anything outside his off stump and only playing at anything that simply had to be played. I figured that this was a good strategy that I also was going to adopt so we could get to our first objective, which was to survive until the tenth over.

The Emmanuel boys are pretty vocal out on the field which is all good and perfectly acceptable to me in how cricket should be played. However, Emmanuel Captain Ralph was a bit more personal in his biting remarks. Perhaps because he was fielding at silly mid off and was the closest of all their fielders. All the same, he fired off some sly sledges at me and I made a mental note that when Ralph came out to bat, I was going to give him a warm welcome and remind him that two can play the sledging game.

I soon played a very sweet cut shot off an infuriated Ralph which flew off the middle of my bat and promptly brought up puffs of sand when it bounced past the diving Point fieldsmen and raced away to the long, long square boundary. It tantalizingly stopped up less than a foot short of the boundary and would easily have been a four on any other ground in the MCA, but not on this huge ground. As Nat and I scampered through for three runs, I didn’t notice that the fieldsman had grabbed the fence with one hand when he picked up the ball with his other hand. It was my teammates that informed me about this later – so it should have been a four!

In any case, after some considerable struggle, we had reached the half way mark of our first objective by having safely navigated the fifth over of the innings. I told Nat at the mid pitch conference “another five overs mate and then we will see where we go next”.

During the seventh over, I played and missed a delivery by Tate that beat the keeper who was standing up to the stumps to keep me in my crease. Taking up my usual stance nearly a meter outside my crease to nullify any LBWs, I was no forced to sit back in the crease, but I was not undually worried, though Tate was causing me some problems with his swing through the air rather than off the pitch.

Then a full delivery from Tate drew me forward with my left foot planted down the pitch almost as far as I could stretch when in my anxiety, I missed the full swinging delivery which hit my toe on the full and a loud appeal went up. I was not duly concerned as I felt that I had taken a very long stride down the pitch and moreover, I also thought that it hit me marginally outside offstump and was swinging towards slip anyway.

Surely, the umpire would have to give me the benefit of the doubt? Not on your life. He fired me out pretty quickly and I was forced to troop off in great disappointment at having failed to see through to the first goal of surviving at least until the tenth over.

Dave “Doc” Neal strode in at number three and also had trouble adjusting to the swinging ball and capitulated soon enough, LBW for five. Now we were in some bother and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Nat who had survived at the other end and was starting to look comfortable, was also out for four. Three top order wickets down and we didn’t even total fifteen between us. That was not the start we needed.

Ragu and Richie The Dragon then settled things down with a very sensible partnership that was to advance the total to forty seven before Richie fell for a well made twenty to continue his recent run of good form. Ragu was next to go for nineteen with the score on sixty two before Strachany was also dismissed by the now rampant Ranatunga for three. This was Ranatunga’s third wicket and he had bowled beautifully for Emmanuel.

Johnny Spooner – a newspaper cartoonist by trade then stood tall with Disco McDonald putting on a hard hitting and valuable partnership that gave us renewed hope. Johnny Spooner was eventually dismissed for eighteen priceless runs and Disco contributed an innings top score of twenty seven to eventually get our score to 131 all out. Not a great score by any stretch, but at least we now had something to bowl to which for a long time did not look like being the case.

Emmanuel set off on their chase particularly well losing one of their openers very early on to Disco. It was an innocuous dismissal – but they all count. As the runs mounted, the wickets continued to fall and then Emmanuel started to stumble as they came within sight of victory.

Enter Emmanuel captain James Ralph.

I gave him a bit of needle to remind him that I had not forgotten his earlier sledging of me. In fact, I heaped a plethora of sledges on him and he stared at me like I was insane. Maybe he couldn’t remember that he had started this little tête-à-tête.

In any case, he steadied the ship and batted sensibly – if a little shakily – to get his team home by three wickets. While the game was still alive, Ralph was dropped twice as we failed to land the knock out blow. Ralph was the big wicket. If we had have dismissed him, the last couple of wickets (basically, young kids) would have in all likelihood crumbled under the pressure. As it was, Ralph shepherded his young team mates to the finishing line.

So we lost yet again in a close one and it was hard to take. I kept thinking to myself that if only I had performed my role and batted to at least the fifteen to twenty over mark, I could have contributed some valuable runs, protected the middle order from the swinging ball and helped make a bigger, more defendable total.

It was not to be and we came up short yet again.

My form and confidence have not been so good after Christmas and I need a long stay at the crease to get some confidence back.

See you all next week!

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne