LarvalStageUmpire Beddington, Croydon, League, Walcountians

Beddington 5th XI vs Croydon, 2022-05-07

40/40 game. Beddington chose to field. Croydon 167 from 39 overs, Beddington 150/6 – scorecard

Instead of my normal league fixture of the Beddington 4th XI I was given the choice of the 3rds or the 5ths, and took the 5ths match because it wasn’t so far to drive and so more convenient for my evening beerage plans. Many of Croydon’s players were late turning up so they forfeited the toss. Beddington chose to field, which I think was the right decision. It was the sporting decision, not batting against half a team of fielders, but the conditions favoured bowling first as well. It was overcast and humid, and there had been a little rain overnight. The pitch had scattered green patches. The captains agreed that Croydon would provide someone to umpire at the bowler’s end throughout their innings, and that I would stand at the bowler’s end throughout Beddington’s innings. A bit odd, but I’m OK with it. Aside from player safety – stopping play when it’s too wet for example – the umpires’ role is mainly to assist the teams in having their game, and if that’s how they’d like us to assist, that’s how I’ll assist.

And most importantly, cricket teas are back! We’ve had two seasons without, but now that life is pretty much back to normal after the Plague Times the league has decreed that the home team must provide tea again.

Spending a whole innings at square leg meant that I mostly just had to assist my colleague with a few no-ball calls for height, and adjudicate run outs. One I didn’t give because, while I thought it might have been out it was too close for me to be sure – I’d have sent it upstairs to the TV umpire if we had such luxuries. One I gave out. One of Croydon’s openers was dismissed quickly, in the third over with the score on 15, and his replacement was off quickly just two overs later. But their remaining opener and the number 4 batsman steadied the ship and put on almost 50 between them, scoring a steady almost-4 an over. While wickets fell steadily from that point on, I always felt that Croydon were scoring well, and their final score of 167 looked like it would be tough to beat.

During Beddington’s innings the clouds overhead started to clear and by the end it was a lovely sunny evening. Beddington also lost an opener early, and while the other opener didn’t hang around for as long as Croydon’s, Beddington defended their wickets better and at least to start with were keeping up with the required run rate, so it looked as if a win might be on the cards. But where Croydon had started to accelerate a few overs before the drinks break Beddington did not. With five overs left to play they were 20 behind where Croydon had been at the same stage of their innings, and with a couple of overs to go it was obvious that the win wasn’t achievable. However, in the league there are bonus points for scoring 150 runs, and that was achieved on the last ball of the day. Two of Beddington’s young players really stood out for me with the bat. One, a reluctant opener, scored a respectable 20. The other didn’t score much, but he stayed at the crease for a long time and kept his cool with no flailing at the ball. A good cricket temperament!

I was mostly pleased with my performance. The only error I’m aware of is that I didn’t pay enough attention to fielders’ positions, and allowed too many outside the inner ring on a few occasions. Unfortunately I’m told that one of those was for the ball on which a batsman was dismissed, out caught, which wouldn’t have happened if I’d called a no-ball like I should have. I shall try to remember to pay attention to this in the future, although it’s a bugger to enforce, as the inner circle is often either not marked or very hard to see. But it is at least enforceable for fielders positioned right out on the boundary.

Finally, something unusual happened in this game – an all-run four! It should have been two at most, but slow fielding and an inaccurate throw allowed the batsmen to run two more.

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LarvalStageUmpire Abbey Rec, Friendly, King's Road, Plastics XI

King’s Road Social and Cricket Club vs Plastics XI, 2019-09-14

40/40 game. Plastics won the toss and chose to bat. Plastics 139/6. Kings Road 141/3 from 26.1 overs – scorecard

I’m now winding down the season with a few friendly matches, this one back with the Plastics with whom I started the season, and I stood at the bowler’s end throughout the game. It was a surprisingly hot day for the time of year, with clear skies throughout. We were playing on a well-maintained municipal pitch which had a few green patches in the middle but was completely bare and the surface cracking up at the ends especially around the bowlers’ landing areas. Those noticeably broke down throughout the day becoming rather sandy. The field was huge, roughly the same size as the Oval. As we were playing on a pitch right at one edge of the square we moved the boundary in about 20 yards on the far side. Even so, it was still big enough that we didn’t just get a few 3s being run, there was even a run 4 – with no fielding errors involved!

Plastics innings was dominated by the opening batsman who was not out on 72. They got off to a slow start, with the run rate at one point being just 2 an over. But it soon settled on, and remained at, a more respectable 3 and a bit per over for the rest of the innings. The one really notable event was when the first wicket fell after 16 overs. There was an appeal for LBW, which I turned down (there were a lot fewer appeals in this game than in previous ones) but of course the ball is still live at that point. The batsman was out of his ground, so the quick-thinking King’s Road wicket-keeper, who I thought had an excellent game throughout, came forward, picked it up, and took the bails off to stump him. There was much confusion, but he was still out!

King’s Road pride themselves on the quality of their tea and are competitive about it, with the players each bringing a dish, preferably home-made, and both sides voting after the game for which was best. For me, the simple ham and mustard sarnies won it, but the wicket-keeper’s lamb curry was also excellent.

On to King’s Road’s innings, and to start with it looked like it would be a close game. But it wasn’t long before they were pulling away. After scoring only 19 in the first six overs – which put them behind the required run rate – they got a lot quicker. They were well over half way to the target by the time we took tea, and after tea scored even quicker. You only need to look at the bowling stats to see why. King’s Road’s bowlers got 9 maidens in their 40 overs, and gave away two wides and two no-balls. The Plastics got 1 maiden and gave away 7 wides and 7 no-balls. King’s Road’s bowlers were more controlled and economical, and in limited overs cricket if you can’t bowl a team out quickly being economical is better than taking wickets.

Onto the beer innings – we first went to the Prince of Wales for a quick refresher, a flat roof pub next to the ground that has been done up inside and has a reasonable range of beers but some unfortunately broken down furniture on the patio out the back. We then moved on to the William Morris, which appears to be a new pub in an old riverside mill next to the Wandle. The evening was still warm, and sitting out by the river with some beers and trying to drunkenly explain how to adjudicate wides was a nice end to a good day out. King’s Road are a good club, and I’d be very happy to umpire for them again.

Normally after I’ve written my match report we’d get into the Maoist self-criticism section and you could all laugh at my ineptitude. But I don’t think I made any bad mistakes in this match. Instead I’d like to single out one of the King’s Road batsmen, Raju Mazumder, for excellent sportsmanship. The very first ball of his team’s innings hit him on the pad and raced away towards the boundary. However, he had not played a shot. This is one of those weird edge-cases that very rarely happens, most players don’t know about, and is all too easy to forget as an umpire because it’s so rare. Law 23.2.1 says that leg byes are not given if no shot is offered. Knowing that this is such a rare case, the batsman called “no shot”, which was a very helpful reminder to me! I would have erroneously given four leg byes for his team otherwise, but thanks to his honesty I signalled dead ball, and if it wasn’t for a wide later in the over the Plastics would have opened with a maiden.

LarvalStageUmpire Beddington, Hillside Gardens, League, Wallington

Wallington vs Beddington 4th XI, 2019-09-07

40/40 game. Beddington won the toss and chose to field. Wallington 117/9. Beddington 118/7 from 30.4 overs – scorecard

This was the last league game of my first season umpiring, and again I took the bowler’s end duties throughout. The field was noticeably longer than it was wide, making it noticeably harder than normal to get boundaries from straight drives and nicks behind, and easier to get boundaries off to the sides. So much easier that Wallington have erected very high fences along those boundaries in an attempt to lose fewer balls when they get tonked for six. In this game, however, there were only two sixes, one of which ended up in a neighbour’s back garden anyway. There is a slight slope from one side to the other, but I didn’t notice it have much effect. The pitch was a bit concave, with the wickets standing on slight humps at the ends.

Going into the match, Wallington were already relegated and Beddington already promoted, although in second place and a win would give them a chance of topping the division (results elsewhere ended up preventing this). Despite there not being much to play for I felt that both teams still gave their all. After all, if you’re playing at this level you’re primarily playing because it’s fun, and this was the last opportunity for league fun.

Wallington got off to a slow start, and something like a quarter of the overs Beddington bowled before the drinks break were maidens. And unfortunately they never really sped up. All five of Beddington’s main bowlers had an excellent economy rate under 3 an over, some of them being closer to 2 an over. Even the one part-time bowler went for less than 4 an over. An unusually high proportion of Wallington’s batsmen were out bowled or LBW. I gave three out LBW, which would normally make me wonder if I’d been a bit trigger-happy, but in this case I’m comfortable that I wasn’t.

After their innings Wallington provided a notably good tea.

Beddington’s innings got off to a much faster start. A mid-innings wobble, losing four wickets for just 17 runs, gave Wallington a small chance, but a good all-rounder performance and management of who was on strike in the tail ended up giving Beddington a comfortable victory.

I got to use a very unusual umpiring signal in this match! Although I didn’t actually see it happen due to the bowler standing in the way, there was a point in the Wallington innings where the fielders all told me that the keeper had fumbled a catch and the ball had hit his helmet that was lying on the ground behind the stumps. Five penalty runs to the batting side! Although I had to be told to give it I don’t really count this as an error on my part as my view was blocked.

However, regular readers will know that I have written about one of my umpiring errors in every entry in this journal so far. And I’m afraid that this time it was an absolutely colossal howler. I gave a no-ball for having more than two fielders behind leg. Unfortunately I had gone left/right colour-blind – the batsman was left-handed so his stance was reversed from normal, and the three fielders were actually behind the off-side. Oops. Oh so very oops. Profuse apologies, much blushing, a reversed decision, and when I joined the players back in the Beddington club-house for post-match beers some well-deserved taking the piss. But after making such a ridiculous mistake I’m very sure that I’ll never make that one again. It’s going to be a much easier mistake to fix than, for example, my earlier repeated forgetting to give byes. And I think that the lesson I’ve learned from it about how important it is to pay attention to the batsman before the ball is delivered, as well as to the delivery and what the batsman consequently does, will help me with judging LBWs. I’ve mentioned earlier about an error I made giving a left-handed batsman out LBW, but I think going into “concentration mode” a little bit earlier on each ball will also improve the quality of my LBW decisions over all.