Match Reports
Match Reports
14th July 2021
11:30 AM start, for a 12:35 PM start… Saturday’s fixture was blown out by soccer which meant mass availability for our Sunday scrap with A Few Good Men. Anyway, “It’s gone to Rome, it’s gone to Rome, it’s gone to, football’s gone to Rome”. By midday, the fabled “11:30am start” was a dead duck as neither team had enough players to offer as sub-fielders to get the affair running, we had no skippers on the ground and no vice-captains stepped up. Why? Stonor valley North and southbound was clagged with columns of petrol heads queuing to spaff over some Super Cars with knacked exhaust silencers in the Stonor Park Municipal Car Park. ‘Penis extensions’, ejaculated Nicky Bird. Now, if my shagged-out biohazard Kangoo van is a penis extension, then I’m afflicted with Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia and other girl’s names that have fallen from fashion. “Transubstantiation. Let’s discuss?” blurted Bird, trying again […]
27th April 2019
The Availability Matrix has arrived. Resistance is futile. It helped Skipper Rob Taylor to be submersed in excess availability for our opening fixture against The Bushmen. Shame he could never be certain how long each player would be available during the game. Herewith a summary of our team’s availability for and during the match, plus player ratings that cannot be challenged unless and until you too have written a match report this season. The early-season match report bar is set low… Rob Taylor. Captain. Available. Selected. Masterful in his skippering. He didn’t have to so much herd cats. Skippering this shifting shapeless shit-shower team of 11, 13, 15 was akin to stacking diarrhoea. DNB due to selflessly batting himself at 10. He interspersed 5 good overs of spin with a constant Alan Bennett style whingeing, “I wish I could bowl faster”. Bowled a sixth over of inverse-pace. One day. Maybe. […]
18th June 2018
Whatever the origin of the phrase, “giving someone the bird” is, V&ACC did it to Chelsea Arts Club at the SCG this weekend. More precisely, we “gave them the Tom Bird”. Tom had earlier been seething that our opposition arrived as late, as sporadically and as understaffed as ever. Our skipper, Dennis de Caires was unimpressed too. In a 35-overs, win, lose or draw game, the V&A batted first and plundered 260 for five with only Nick P-G (2), Adam Knight (2) and Rupert Morris (3) failing. The first two are marked in the book as “LBW (CJ) Bld Munton”. Both were sound decisions by our most competent of umpires. Rupert believed he was bowled by a no-ball beamer that hit the base of his stumps. Fairing far better were de Caires (44 off 34 balls), Ashcroft (76 off 81), Nieboer (62* from 44) and the mighty Tom Bird (52* […]
6th June 2018
The Town & County Folks’ super-star South African all-rounder Ryan Dyer instructed me to do something unprintable on this site. A polite version of his instruction was, “Roger us in the match report, so we can take the piss out of each other”. But how, how much and how far should I go? “All the way”, he said. This is hard to do because “Gorgeous” George Winters’ team are a joy to play cricket against. They expect to be undone by the V&A regulars partly because they play just once or twice a year, but they know they can beat us, as they did last year. They are a very social and sociable team. V&A vs. T&C matches have a formula. The V&A bat first, face up to 10 bowlers starting with Pete Bridge and Andy Deacon, then moving all the way through to Ben Phillis and Keith Poyser. While […]
27th August 2017
Sammy Woods will skipper my all-time overseas-born Somerset CCC XI. Sammy played 299 County Championship matches for the Cidermen, 230 as skipper. So what? He also played Test cricket for his native Australia and for England; Test rugby for England; soccer for Somerset and Sussex, and hockey for Sussex. “In later life he watched sport, drank heavily, continued to relate anecdotes and failed to apply himself”. True V&A, unlike Sunil Gavaskar. Our annual landlord and tenant match defied the bookies. Earlier in the week, Stonor had just 8 bodies, while the V&A was oversubscribed. Stonor recruited the V&A flotsam of Nick and Tom P-G. The V&A lost Lachlan Nieboer at a late hour. On paper, the V&A still looked a stronger side. Neiboer’s withdrawal seemed to dent the V&A mojo with several players stating he would have made the difference. But cricket remains a team game, and it was a real […]
17th September 2016
Our 2016 (home) season came to an end against the Bandits with Lachlan Nieboer as our skipper. Electing to bat first on a stodge pit of a wicket, we promptly fielded first in miserable cold.
21st August 2016
Ashcroft elected to bat first on a greener wicket than that of last week against a 9-man Stonor CC in a timed game. Sadly, there was not time enough to complete the game before the rain came down and stayed down.
13th August 2016
We pondered the question, “Will you miss Boycott when he retires? He’s been on TMS for years”. This is pointless filler. But Rupert, is this pointless filler floorless?
11th June 2016
Lachlan Nieboer took his pads off after his dismissal and said, “I decided that we cannot be beaten by this lot”. Almost single-handedly, he ensured V&A victory. A victory that ebbed away and flowed back to the V&A twice in one game.
5th September 2015
54 degrees, in old money. Damp, grey and spore-laden. The weather. Not the new whites that Adam now sports. He is pristine these days. It was a 70-over game, as per against the Silk Boudoir XI and ACME were asked to bat by skip.