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V&A v The Town & Country XI

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V&A XI: Christiaan Jonkers (captain); Tom Bird; Chris Mounsey-Thear; Lachlan Nieboer; Christy Kulasingam; ; Adam Jacot; Charlie Knight; Chetan Malhotra; Jasper Arnold; Enzo Nicoli; Shiv 

This game was about the sixteenth iteration of a fixture which has its origins in the connection between our erstwhile tea lady and doyenne of the side of cold roast beef, Sarah Jenkins and the Winters family.  Martin Winters had bought Sarah’s house in Cornwall and as a consequence had been introduced to Nicky Bird.  I can only assume that Martin wasn’t firing on all cylinders at the time as it is reported that he found Nicky both polite and amusing and suggested that his son, George, who had recently moved to Wargrave, gather a team to play the V&A.  In the early days their team was made up of George’s school friends and a rag tag of fellows from nearby Wargrave, who were for the most part, not very good at cricket.  They always won the toss, but seldom the match.  One one occasion that had the misfortune to come up against a V&A side which had acquired the services of ex England opening batsman, Michael Atherton and his son, Josh de Caires, then a promising youngster, now a fixture in the Middlesex side.

Things have since changed: first T&C enlisted local farmer and handy Turville cricketer, James Hunt and then supplemented their team with assortment of capable cricket masters from local prep-schools.  Secondly, they have bread effectively so that the munchkins who ran around making a general nuisance of themselves in the early days are now developing into handy cricketers themselves, and now old lags like Pete Bridge are only retained to be mocked in the field.  The V&A in contrast is currently in a period of (often less-than) graceful decline.  The youngsters have become old and the old, infirm.  Our burgeoning youth policy has floundered somewhat on the rocks competing rites of passage: girlfriends followed by weddings followed by christenings (though what sort of idiot chooses to have a christening on a Saturday in the cricket season?).  Consequently the V&A has began to resemble dad’s army in recent weeks.

On a day which promised good weather which never materialised, V&A who won the toss and chose to bat, were met with tidy bowling from the younger Winters and Kingsmill Moore, both of whom bowled their seven overs on the trot and oversaw the demise of Arnold (played on) and Mounsey Thear (neatly caught at square leg).  Newcomer, Shiv came and went for an airy twelve and Neiboer was somewhat unfortunate to be run out.  He had pushed the ball into the covers and called for a run, as is his right.  Unfortunately Chetan was disinclined to acquiesce and was still casually leaning on his bat at the nonstriker’s end when he was met by and irate Lachlan.  A similar fate had befallen Lachlan a couple of weeks earlier and it safe to say he was less than gruntled.  Chetan made amends by anchoring the innings with a solid 51, but the rest of the V&A’s batting did not amount to much and the innings ended on a paltry 111-9 from 35 overs.  

Lunch had been a delicious chicken shawarma, graciously prepared by Steph.  Nicky, distressed at having missed an opportunity to be rude about me last week, attempted to make up for lost time, but rather undermined himself by getting all his facts jumbled.  We got to taste the fabled Nicoli home brew, a wine which speaks to all that is sensible in a unified Europe: created from a central Italian grape, grown in Puglia, imported by a Greek and made is south east London.  Enzo asked for my opinion and I was perhaps a little franker in my assessment than was entirely charitable.  The reality is that it was more than drinkable and I have paid for much worse.

The T&C innings was very much the James Hunt show.  Lachlan and Mounsey Thear having summarily disposed of the openers, Hunt heaved and scythed his way to 80 of the 113 his team scored.  The other batsmen scratched around and looked susceptible, but it mattered not.  Had he been caught, as he very nearly was, before he had scored more than a handful, the game might have panned out very differently, but whilst he remained a T&C victory was assured and the game finished with the seven T&C wickets and ten overs in hand.