Match Reports
Match Reports
18th October 2021
Nick Birdy (above, headless) holding the 2006 Fixture Card with its cover featuring Sir Garry Sobers, who is seated with Ted Dexter at a Hilton Hotel function. Ted seemed a bit confused and didn’t recall his status as our President, but it was late and the evening had been convivial. Our season was mixed – lows, troughs, nadirs and some moments of light relief. The best was superlative batting by Ollie Marsh (and others), but Ollie was a class apart, possibly the best V&A batsman (not forgetting Baz Street) since Robbie Lawson and Vib Fonseka (who, like Nick Emley, fell out with Old Bill and spent time slopping out). The pitch behaved a bit differently this year, no one scored a ton; there were several last year, even in a truncated season. But Phil Goodliffe’s horticultural expertise is a great boon. We had some brilliant games; but it’s […]
14th September 2021
V&A PLAYERS: Rob Taylor (Skip), Adam Jacot, Nicky Bird, Matt Cade, Norman Reid, Nick Constantine, Ali Cheema. Tom P-G, Nick P-G, Marc Terblanche, Dario Simpson The week building up to the game against the Battersea Badgers was one of the most stressful seen at the V&A. With the majority of the battled hardened cricketing regulars not available, a search for good players soon turned into a search for able players, which soon turned into a search for “all appendages a bonus”. Emails beginning with “Hello, how are you?” soon turned into “Can you play/know anybody that can?” But as my dear granny used to say, “when times are tough, you gather no moss” (she enjoyed her Sherry). It was Wednesday evening and a game taking place was looking unlikely. This was when a hero in the form of Adam Jacot arose. Persistence, a large address book and a description of the […]
26th August 2021
IN MEMORIAM TED DEXTER CBE (1935–2021) PRESIDENT OF THE V&A CRICKET CLUB Our President, ‘Lord’ Ted Dexter, died on August 25. He became President around 1978. He lived down the road from me in Ealing, and was a friend of Simon Foster’s family, who was then one of our finest all-rounders. I wrote to Ted who said he’d be delighted to grace our club as President, but to remember to include his CBE in the credit. I used to see him locally and wave to him and he always waved back but with a slight air of not knowing who I was. When Andy Fraser and I met him at the Hilton 20 years ago (at a function in honour of Garry Sobers) we said hullo and mentioned the V&A, and showed him a V&A scorecard. I had hoped he’d say that being our President was his proudest […]
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 […]
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. […]