LarvalStageUmpire Beddington, Beddington Park, League, Mitcham

Beddington 4th XI vs Mitcham, 2021-06-12

45/45 game. Beddington won the toss and chose to bat. Beddington 189/9, Mitcham 108 from 39 overs – scorecard

Another sweltering day, with a breeze and occasional cloud, and another pitch in excellent condition. The outfield was quite fast, but it’s also big, allowing fielders to prevent too many boundaries if they put the effort in. For Beddington’s innings I was accompanied throughout by a single injured player as umpire, for Mitcham’s by a handful of players rotating in and out as the innings progressed.

This Mitcham side have a reputation for being hard to score against and were unbeaten so far in the league. The first Beddington wicket fell after just three balls, and two more fell quickly, putting the score on 15/3 after the first 10 overs. It looked like there was a bit of a kicking on the cards. But a 100 run partnership for the fifth wicket salvaged the game, and some very expensive overs at the end – the last five went for 47 runs – meant Beddington ended up with a very defendable total. While the batting was excellent in that high-scoring middle-order partnership, they were helped by some poor fielding. There was a constant drumbeat of “chase it”, “attack the ball”, and best of all “run you doughnut” from the wicket keeper-captain, and while it’s not an approach I remember from Brearley’s “Art of Captaincy” he was dead right with all his criticisms. I think the captain made a big mistake with not having one of his openers bowl his full allotment of overs. He was a youngster, who came off after six overs as required by the ECB’s regs for young fast bowlers, but he was brought back into the attack too late I thought, in the penultimate over, where he took two wickets. If he’d come back in earlier I rather suspect that Beddington’s high-scoring tail wouldn’t have done anything like as well. He ended on figures of 4/22 from seven overs, including two maidens.

In Mitcham’s innings I started off standing at square leg as usual when it was my turn, but soon switched to standing at point, as the popping crease on the leg side had become almost completely invisible from bowlers landing on it and batsmen standing on it.

In only one of their previous games this season have Mitcham had to chase anything like as high a total, and have also been dismissed for under a hundred only to return the favour to their opponents. This Beddington side’s opening bowlers are good, both taking wickets but also not conceding runs, and wickets will still fall for the later bowlers. It’s hard to build a long partnership against them, and Beddington took the field in a confident mood. Their fielding was also much better than Mitcham’s and the result wasn’t in any doubt from about the 20th over onwards, when it was 46/7. Mitcham’s tail wagged, but unlike Beddington’s which scored with abandon, Mitcham’s was just annoyingly hard to dismiss with one of them hanging around for 62 balls to score 18 runs.

Regular readers will have noticed that I very rarely mention individual players by name, but I’m going to make an exception for the absolutely outstanding effort from Beddington’s Awais Zahir. He took 5 wickets for 28 runs, which is an excellent performance on its own. But he also took a run-out and two catches!

One dismissal I gave (caught behind by the keeper off a faint edge) was a bit controversial. The non-striking batsman told me that he was sure the noise I’d heard was the bat hitting the ground. It was not. Not only did it happen while the bat was several inches off the ground, I also saw the ball change course. I got to make an unusual decision – denying leg-bye runs when the batsman hadn’t played a shot. And I also had to give a player a gentle telling off for using sweat on the ball, contra this season’s Special Plague Regulations. Even if I hadn’t seen him do it right in front of me the gigantic red stain that slowly started to run down his face would have been a dead give-away. I did, however, make a mistake in this regard: I should have made the fielding team sanitise the ball at that point, but I didn’t.

LarvalStageUmpire Beddington, League, Trinity Mid-Whits, Trinity Mid-Whits

Trinity Mid-Whitgiftian vs Beddington 4th XI, 2021-06-05

45/45 game. Trinity Mid-Whits won the toss and chose to bat. Trinity Mid-Whits 156/9, Beddington 159/3 from 34.4 overs – scorecard

Trinity Mid-Whits have a lovely ground in Sanderstead, on the edge of the urban sprawl, bounded by trees on three sides. The fourth side, with the pavilion and car parking, is backed by residential cul-de-sacs and there are no major roads nearby, so little traffic noise and plenty of bird song. It was a warm, humid, but breezy day with scattered cloud. Mid-Whits’ two fields share a boundary for a short distance, and the second field, on which we were playing, has a mixture of both long and short boundaries. There is also a thoroughly knackered astroturf pitch. The player who took a diving catch on that was a braver man than I, I’d have happily stood and watched the ball whizz by! I’m sure the blood stains will wash out of his whites. There had been plenty of rain the day before but the uncovered pitch was in good condition and barely broke up at the bowler’s landing spots all day. The field was damp, especially in the eastern corner, and so quite slow. I expected it to get faster as it dried off in the sun but it didn’t change much. I had an umpiring colleague throughout.

Mid-Whits got off to a reasonable start. They lost a man in the first over, but averaged about 3 runs per over at the start. But then they slowed down. From 58/1 at the end of the 20th over they went to 69/2 from 25 – at only 2-ish per over – and kept at that rate. Things were somewhat rescued by their 7th batsman who came in and really stepped on the accelerator. He was their highest scorer with 46 until he was out with 3 overs remaining. That slow down in the middle of the innings was largely down to the bowling of one man, who went for an average of just 1.89 from his 9 overs. He didn’t take any wickets, but in limited overs cricket it’s that economy that matters the most. Another went for only 2.67 an over from his allotment and also took four wickets.

In Beddington’s innings, Mid-Whits’ most economical bowler went for 3.44 an over, and the innings as a whole consisted of twenty-two 4s, three 6s, and the odd run here and there. Mid-Whits by comparison had thirteen 4s and two 6s, lots of singles, and some 2s and 3s, so it’s no wonder Beddington reached their target with plenty of overs to spare. This would normally be a sign that the field has dried out beautifully and sped up, and that choosing to bat first was a mistake. That was not the case in this match. Beddington’s batsmen simply hit the ball harder so it spent more time in the air and didn’t get slowed down. When they did hit it along the ground I don’t think it behaved particularly differently from in the first innings. There were plenty of dropped catches from both sides throughout the game, but Beddington benefited more from them.

I was pleased with my performance. I turned down plenty of LBW appeals and gave one. Some of the appeals I turned down were most vociferous, but there was no serious grumbling. I also gave a Mid-Whits player out stumped. He was cross with me, but he was a mile out of his ground. That’s not to say that I was error-free. I got at least one, and maybe another, call for byes wrong – the batsman had indeed got his bat on it. The fielders corrected me which I’m fine with. It made no difference to the result of course, but those wicket-keepers do like to have their stats correct! Finally, I forgot to take anything with me for the drinks breaks. The regulations for this season, like last year, are that players and officials have to provide their own.