V&A XI:Nick Scott-Ram, Jasper Arnold, Adam Jacot, Christiaan Jonkers, Enzo Nicoli, Christy Kulasingam, Chetan Malhotra, Martin Shenfield, Roop Sharma, Sardar Khan Alokozai, Chris Mounsey-Thear

The Howitzers hail from Conington in Cambridgeshire, not to be confused with a village of the same name a few miles downstream.  It’s an easy mistake to make as the V&A know to their cost when we arrived to the wrong Conington a few years ago only to find no cricket pitch and the locals unwilling to raise a team.  To have two identically named villages located so close together seems unwise to me, but perhaps they had tasked an intern writing the Cambridgeshire section of the Domesday Book that day.

The Howitzers style themselves as “friendly, sociable and inclusive” and they are as good as their word, playing in good spirit and even laughing at Nicky Bird’s jokes.  Nicky likes to describe the V&A as inclusive.  When asked by some funding body to demonstrate the club’s inclusivity he replied, without hesitation, “well, we have players from minor public schools as well”.

Both sides wanted to bat first, the Howitzers because two of their chaps had taken a wrong turning and ended up in Reading and us because Chris Mounsey Thear needed to prepare lunch.  In the end the need for vittels quite rightly won out and Martin Shenfield and Chetan opened the batting with the sun glowing invitingly over the Stonor Valley.  It was a steady start in the face of tight, though far from menacing, bowling.  Chetan struck one four before playing round a straight one and Shenfield, a reluctant opener, decided it was better to get on or get out so departed, also bowled.  This brought Jasper in to join Christy.  Jasper can be rather like to the run out equivalent of Typhoid Mary: apparently oblivious but leaving destruction in his wake, so it wasn’t long before a not entirely gruntled Christy was on his way back.  Sardar Alokozai, a young Afghan playing his first game of cricket in England, managed only a brief stay at the crease and Mounsey Thear, relieved of culinary duties lasted little longer.  At 39-5 after ten overs, things were looking bleak.  Nicky had counselled me that caution might be of the essence in these circumstances, adding ruefully, “but that’s not really your way”. Neverthelss, Jasper and I saw the V&A through to lunch and a slightly steadier 97-5 from 20 overs.  The fruits of Chris’s mornings labour, ham hock and assorted salads, proved a delicious respast.  Over lunch, Nicky quizzed Orlando of the Howitzers, a barrister by trade, on whether the art of sticking ones thumbs in ones braces was still practiced in the inns of court and was told that he, Orlando, had been advised early on in his career, above all else, “never to show too much shirt” whilst advocating.  So one must presume not.

After lunch, the V&A’s score moved along in sprightly fashion before I became the second of Jasper’s three run out victims.  However, without Jasper’s 71 not out, the V&A’s innings would have been in a sorry state.  As it was 157-7 from 30 overs was respectable if not convincing.

And so it proved.  After the false hope of two early wickets, Orlando and Brady guided the Howitzers home with comparative ease.  Their batting styles were somewhat contrasting: Orlando, measured and cultured, placing the ball into the gaps, punctuated by the occasional powerful drive through the off side, made a chanceless 57.  Brady’s approach was rather more bucolic, scoring primary with an ungainly swipe to leg, and chancy: he was dropped three times and survived at least one very close lbw shout.  Despite this contrast each was equally effective, scoring almost at will in the light of unthreatening bowling and immobile fielding and the margin of victory, eight wickets with some ten overs to spare, was a measure of their dominance.  The V&A is rather resembling Dad’s Army in the field these days.  With one or two exceptions, we range from the vaguely unathletic to the borderline infirm, where acts such as running and throwing in from the boundary are but a distant memory.  However, whilst the body may be weakening, one must never underestimate the wonders a day’s sunlit cricket at Stonor can do for the soul.

V&A 157-7 from 30 overs (Arnold 72*, Jonkers 46); Howitzers 158-2 from 18.4 overs (Brady 89*, Hollaway 57*).  Howitzers won by 8 wickets.