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 […]
5th July 2021
Before beginning this report, the author would like to extend his deepest apologies to Messrs. Emley, Jones & Tetlow who have been waiting an entire week to see their names in lights. I beg your collective indulgence. The Royal Household haven’t had a fixture against the V&A for a jolly long time. Traditionally based at Frogmore (Windsor way, near some sort of castle apparently) where opposition are invited to attend (Queenie included, I might add) – it has not been forthcoming. I suspect one of the V&A from days of yore used a fish knife for the salad, or something. However, with the Royal Parks closed to make sure HRH doesn’t catch Covid from the great unwashed, the Household are homeless and it was our pleasure to host them. A timed game had been agreed in advance, a format favoured by traditionalists of the sport who enjoy the nuance […]
24th June 2021
ANOTHER DANK DAY, RAIN THREATENING. I had seen this coming in the week and tried (hard) to resist captain Adam’s powers of persuasion. But he does have a way with words – and had “kept a space available” just for me. Me and the 9 other mugs he charmed, that is. It was Father’s Day and quite a family affair. We were notionally playing the “All Sorts”, but it was more of a ‘Jacot invitational’. There were at least 6 Jacot’s in the vicinity by my count, 3 of which were playing. Nicky insulted the matriarch, concluding she must have been watching cricket for about 100 years. She’s not much older than him. Louis, a young member of their clan, sporting long-hair and a big grin, opened up for the oppo. Swinging his bat like Charlie Gilmour on the cenotaph, he was fortunate to be reprieved on several occasions. Gilmour […]
21st June 2021
JUNE 19, 2021, STONOR A DANK DAY, RAIN THREATENING (see photo of Otto and Ben) but Alex Lang, the Bandits’ jovial founder and captain, thought we could manage a 35-over game. I won the toss and batted – on a leaden pitch. ‘Do not play back’ I warned, ‘do not attempt to sweep a ball on the wicket’. Deaf ears. I rued the absence of Andy Fraser’s correctness (I refer to his technique, not character) and Lachlan’s invaluable gifts but the bugger had injured himself, possibly combing his hair, or camping. We opened with Vin and Matt Wright. They batted nicely, and even managed boundaries, not easy on such a pudding of an outfield. But both were out for 13, Vin caught spooning it up; Matt bowled going back. Jago and Rob Taylor came in and smote the bowling before Jago misjudged one on the wicket and was […]
13th June 2021
V&A Team: Nieboer (capt.), Jacot, Jonkers, Goodliffe, Tetlow, Hale, Fraser, Gleason, Mayana, Sethi, Wright, Bird, N. (12th Man) THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB is one of our oldest fixtures. We first played them 37 years ago. Stephen Bartley, their co-founder with David Maddocks (still playing), was at school with me and was looking for arty teams to play so alighted on the V&A. We were pathetic, crippled by limp-wristed curators who nancied about like girlies in the outfield commenting on the too too delicious Poussin-blue of the sky. They had to go. There’s nothing homophobic about kicking out a bunch of preening queens and getting in butch guys like Jacot and Bowden. Jacot played on Saturday and was pretty depressed. ‘Bowled first ball and whacked for 10 in my first over, I’m giving up.’ But next over it all changed – two wickets and he was un cochon dans la merde. […]
7th June 2021
V&A PLAYERS: Emley (Capt), Bowden, de Caires, Jacot A, Jonkers, Nieboer, Constantine, Pritchard-Gordon N, Marsh, Tetlow, Bird N, (12th Man) JUNE 5 SHOULD HAVE BEEN D-DAY but in 1944 the weather was atrocious, so it was postponed a day. It was the other way round for us. It rained Friday and shone Saturday. And our day was not marred by Germans. My friend Derek Dowding (late husband of Lady Dowding who presents our awards), a Battle of Britain pilot, said he loved flying before the war but then ‘the Germans ruined the pleasure’. Too often one’s nice day out, or nice plan, is buggered by the enemy or opposition. As the Polish commander said when looking at General Browning’s plan for Arnhem – ‘but the Germans, General, the Germans!’ Or as Mike Tyson said: ‘no plan survives a punch in the mouf.’ Last week, against The Star XI, our plan […]
1st June 2021
It being a bank holiday weekend we were short and our opposition, Jesmond Jaguars, were too; so we combined and found a very nice team to play against, Star of Hackney. Many of this mostly Sikh team were new to village cricket and the vagaries of our pitch, but revelled in the view and the kites and the hens in the Golden Ball. They may not have revelled in my chatter in the pub but they got it anyway and laughed at my joke(s). I do not get that sort of politeness, however forced, at home. My present wife is quite rude and says my throat problem is entirely caused by talking bollocks. Chris Mounsey-Thear made the day. He it was who found the Star XI; AND he made the fabulous lunch of all manner of meats and salads. When I got there at 10.45 he was busy chopping and […]
23rd May 2021
V&A PLAYERS: TOM BIRD (SKIP), PHIL GOODLIFFE (W/K), JAGO POYNTER, NICKY BIRD, ADAM JACOT, JOE TETLOW, OLLIE MARSH, NICK CONSTANTINE, CHRISTIAAN JONKERS, ADAM KNIGHT. We couldn’t get into the pavilion, the key didn’t work. But Jonkers picked the lock! Is there no dubious activity beyond this Woosterish figure? I once referred to his unctuous shop-walker manner as Uriah Heepish but he objected; Pecksniffian sounds better. The Invalids were 10 and we were 10, with me. I am not an asset these days and in the field I was useless. A flattering description actually, and at one point, a ball having whizzed through my hands at gully, Tetlow asked skipper Tom Bird whether he and I should swap places. But Tom demurred, thinking perhaps that there was no place to hide me. I eventually ended as long stop, where I needed a runner. Adam chivvied me in the field, told me […]
5th May 2021
One of my earliest memories of playing in a cricket match was my school’s Parents v School game. The master in charge of cricket was a rotund German with a gammy leg, who for reasons I cannot being to imagine had taken up cricket as a way of blending in with the locals. He was also somewhat forthright in his views, so when my mother mentioned how much I was enjoying playing, he replied by describing me as the most ill-coordinated boy he had encountered and a lost cause as far as cricket was concerned. Usually the School, after season of nets and matches, beat the less practiced Parents quite easily, but on this occasion a recent addition to the Parent ranks happened a regular for Worcestershire II’s. He hit sixes at will and when he tired of that, offered a series of towering catches which a succession of hapless schoolboys […]
29th April 2021
Well the good news is that no one is talking about vectors of disease (or VD, for that matter) this year… sleaze now seems to en vogue: a globular, slimy residue that resides solely within the corridors of power. They’re all far too interested in whether Dominic Cummings will train his beady little eyes on them to worry about a harmless bit of stick and ball. We are much relieved. The Bushmen (or BBC Bushmen CC to give them their full title) are an old and dear foe to the V&A. We’ve had many a good tussle with them over the years and Saturday’s fixture was another terrific outing. Who doesn’t love a low scoring affair, punctuated by various fly-bys? As we limbered up to take the field, The V&A batting first in this instance, two Apache gunships came thundering up the Stonor Valley a mere 100ft above the wicket. […]