The Hendricks Occasional XI, 2016
Unquenchable Enthusiasm & Incomparable Eccentricity
James turned wearily from the window, his brow furrowed while his hands metronomically rehearsed the forward defensive he’d spent the past 11 months carefully honing. His mind was adrift in a sea of swirling thoughts and he remained lost in silent contemplation as he defiantly blocked his way across his kitchen, throwing in the occasional shouldering of arms to a delivery probing his imaginary off-stump for good measure. It was not, however, the Atherton-esque stroke play - or lack of stroke-play - from years gone by that allayed his consciousness today. Granted, he still rarely went longer than 40 minutes without at least mentally picturing a stately off-drive, and if his dual-unit stainless steel ruler happened to by near to hand he was not above practicing a few cursory strokes at the office; many was the time that an unsuspecting co-worker had walked innocently past James’ work station only to narrowly avoid receiving a vicious blinding or lacerating wound to the arm as the Hendricks co-founder aimed a series of scything cuts and pull shots into what he believed was thin air.
But we digress.
The cause of James ‘Big V’ Hewlett’s current state of nervous deliberation had not, in fact, been brought on by the imminent arrival of yet another legendary touring odyssey for the Hendricks Occasional XI. The tour dates had been fixed and the opposition well in hand; for the first time ever the Hendricks cohort would head out on the road with a full compliment of fixtures already secured. The apprehensive disposition currently gripping him had been brought on by the headlong plunge he was taking into the well-worn institution of marriage and, more specifically, the search for a best man; that age old conundrum of who should stand proudly by his side and shoulder the accompanying duties of such a noble role. Fortunately, in his part-time cricket team he had a fine body of men to choose from, none finer, but to whom would he turn in his hour of need? Much like a captain surveying a loyal contingent of troops for a soldier best fitted to the honour of taking the new ball, so too did James now scour the Hendricks roster for a worthy candidate to attend him.
He ran a fretful hand through his already heavily ruffled hair.
Only time, and a careful assessment of performances on the field, would give this simple West Country cricket fanatic the answers he sought.
* * *
Game One - What Might Have Been (vs Far From the MCC)
As the tour dates were announced, the annual ritual of the team’s most talented ringers declaring their lack of availability came and went with the usual bluster and frenetic concern over where adequate replacements would be sourced from. They keenly felt the absence of both Alex Harding’s prodigious cricketing talent and his rust-engorged Mitsubishi Colt, which had so nobly ferried them between fixtures despite its obvious desire to retire hurt during heavy spells of spark plug-dampening rain.
But in spite of this sporting and vehicular deficiency, as always alarms need not have been raised as the quality found in the form of fresh recruit Jay Modi would prove to be embarrassingly above the admittedly low bar by which the Hendricks XI register ‘adequate’. He arrived with the usual endorsement of ‘having played a bit in school’, which is a qualification that can either mean a borderline county team excellence or someone who has forgotten which end of the bat to hold and is unable to utilise a protective box correctly. Fortunately, Jay fell firmly into the former category and his proficiency with both bat and ball became apparent before the opening game had even commenced.
The pre-game nets session was ferocious. The bowling, sadly, was not.
Casually joining the team’s warm up, Modi immediately distinguished himself by managing to not only propel the ball within the generous confines of the net, but also pitching on a consistent line and length and even producing something described by cricket buffs around the world as ‘turn’ - an elusive concept entirely lost on Hendricks players who have been historically unable to extract even a modicum of spin from either ball or surface. Having assured his place in the bowling attack, he retired to the leisure of a gloriously sunny afternoon shortly after, leaving the Hendricks front-line attack to try and remember how to land the ball at least somewhere near the wicket.
Thankfully the squad was further ennobled by the return of braggadocio all-rounder Will Pitt, who arrived back in the Hendricks base camp more concretely physiqued and unfamiliar with the rules of cricket than ever before. Swaggering in with his customary bravado, reminiscent of the dashing Lord Flashheart from the Blackadder television series, this explosive force of nature announced his presence both sportingly and sartorially; bowling tidily, batting belligerently, and insisting on wearing only a tank top and blue shorts in place of the customary white shirt and trousers.
When play eventually commenced, there was an immediate ripple of anticipation as Ross Quest began marking out his run up, ball firmly in hand. This enormously anticipated and long overdue return to the bowling attack would prove to be without a doubt the most stunning on-field transformation in any sport since Aaron Ramsey had that one half-decent season for Arsenal. Following his confidence-crippling spell of vicious beamers and painful no-balls in the tour of 2014 and subsequent refusal to bowl at all the following year, it seemed a certainty that those who dreamed of seeing the golden-haired colossus storming in from the end of his lengthy run up would never see their fantasises translate into reality.
Oh, how wrong they were.
For Quest had only been biding his time, cocooned away like a cricketing caterpillar waiting to emerge with a glorious unfurling of his newly formed wings as a beautiful, majestic butterfly with a ball in his hand a spring in his step. The newly found confidence surging through him seemed to emanate across the field and through the team, who backed up some devastating spells of bowling with fielding that almost approached the competent. Drops were less frequent and geriatric ground-field fumbling a thing of the past - at least until Ajay Shah wound back the years with a truly masterful display of pensioner-esque athleticism in the final game as he failed to prevent the ball from rolling tamely through his fingers while fielding on the boundary, much like watching an elderly relatively attempt to stop an ageing house cat from wandering between their ankles. The death stare from wicketkeeper Saunders was matched only by the reprising glare from Pitt, whose previously immaculate bowling figures would sadly bear the blemish.
An opening spell of searing pace and accuracy yielded no wickets but the rebirth of a cricketing giant had been reward enough to all those present. Except for Quest himself, who sulked endlessly when he was taken off, bemoaning his empty wickets column on the scorer’s sheet.
Modi’s debut spell for the Hendricks XI was predictably tight as he picked up a couple of wickets and coaxed the ball in to gripping and turning in equal measure, apparently controlling its flight after it had departed his fingers through some form of ancient sorcery known only to himself. The fact that he bowled spin with more pace than any of the team’s seamers left competing emotions of awe, envy and lust writ large across the faces of his confounded teammates, who could only watch and applaud his solo heroics.
He was ably supported by Pitt, whose pre-game preparation of consuming a sizeable spaghetti carbonara, courtesy of Jamie Oliver’s takeaway service, had also extended into the opening overs of the game and between deliveries he dashed back and forth over the boundary edge where his stodgy Italian repast sat waiting for him. An early and inevitable bout of indigestion was quickly overcome and he joined the attack, luminous orange trainers flashing ostentatiously in the late afternoon sun, with four miserly overs of 1-15 proving comprehensively that his two years away from the game romancing his way across the globe in a scandalous deluge of ever heightening sauciness had done little to detract from his performances. Where had he been? Where hadn’t he been.
Some slightly less economical overs followed in which the determined opposition gathered momentum. Despite their highest scorer and eventual Man of the Match thankfully invoking the rarely seen ‘Retire at 42’ ruling - decided upon by Saunders and his opposite number for its connotations of the meaning of life, both being avid Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy fans - the home side built towards a strong finish and a respectable target of 129-5 was set.
An opening partnership of contrasts kicked off the Hendricks’ innings as a rapid and boundary-strewn 28 from Quest was accompanied by an uncharacteristically sluggish outing from the usually free-scoring Ollie May. Fortunately Modi continued his highly pleasing debut and the scoreboard ticked along. But just when it seemed as though our handsome contingent were gaining the upper hand a hammer blow was dealt as Quest found himself superbly run out. Inspired by the medieval Germanic custom of Trial by Combat, the customary post-game 22 yard footrace proved comprehensively that blame for the incident lay with Quest and not Modi, after a floundering attempt to chug his half-pint bottle of lager resulted in the Hendricks opener being comprehensively doused in the sticky nectar of defeat.
The debutant was subsequently joined at the crease by Simon Minchinton, a man whose place in the side has been nailed down year after year primarily by his ebullient, acrobatic fielding, which has always been in useful contrast to the lethargic and poorly coordinated efforts of his teammates. That, and his near-permanent availability for all fixtures and willingness to stump up a couple of hundred quid each season for the privilege of chasing a ball around a field.
However, unbeknownst to the rest of the team, this was the year in which ‘Miniesta’ - as he was incorrectly but superbly dubbed by the opposition, presumably due to his resemblance to an even smaller version of Spanish footballing hero Andres Iniesta - would make the gargantuan leap across the disciplines and establish himself as a gritty but beloved middle order batsman, in the vein of England’s folk-hero archetype Paul Collingwood. Following on from a short-lived innings of nought in the side’s pre-tour warm up game, expectations were understandably not sky high. Determined to silence his critics, he rallied superbly and a steely, determined performance saw him register a new lifetime best of 17, replicating the kind of dogged Britishness that buoyed Collingwood along as he ground out his career-defining 206 during England’s miserable Ashes campaign of 2006-7.
Sadly, Minchinton’s own contribution would also prove to be in a losing cause, although the margin of defeat would be considerably less embarrassing than that suffered by Andrew Flintoff’s men during that ill-fated Australian summer.
Pitt briefly assaulted the crease with his presence, igniting a short but fiery innings that burned intensely but flickered out all too soon. Much like a cavalier young musician carried away by the heady elixir of their own fame and talent, so too was our temperamental rock star deceived by the apparently limitless extent of his boundary hitting potential. Regrettably he met the same sticky fate as many a carefree tearaway, as fireworks and excitement quickly gave way to a melancholy yearning for what might have been.
Some intrepid stroke play from Qas Khattak just about kept the Hendricks’ XI within touching distance, and when Hewlett arrived at the crease with six runs required for victory from the final two balls, the stage looked set for the game to be won with a bludgeoning clearing of the ropes from the great man. The fact he was renowned across the cricketing greens of Britain for his legendary dearth of boundaries did little to dent his confidence, and a hastily run two from his first delivery kept the side firmly in frame for a grand stand finish from the last ball.
Regrettably, a masterfully executed thick inside edge down to fine leg only yielded another two, and so it was that a monumental effort from our dashing heroes fell agonisingly short, in similar fashion to Captain Robert Scott’s doomed attempt to outpace Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Only with markedly less frostbite and death.
The margin of defeat had been just one run*, and despite the disappointment of the loss, the courageous Hendricks assortment found solace in the strength of their overall performance and the ales of a nearby public house. Captain Tim Saunders gave a rousing post-match interview, alluding to Rudyard Kipling’s poetic assertion that triumph and disaster should be treated as the same thing, before concluding that ‘We were unlucky today. We actually had all 11 players turn up early for the start of a tour, which is totally unprecedented, and in my view would have made us good value for the win. But obviously the most disappointing moment was Questy’s shameful display in the post-game drinking race. Spilling beer all down himself like that, it’s just not what you expect to see at this level of the game’.
*It would later transpire that some lackadaisical scoring had placed the Hendricks XI within closer striking distance on paper than where they were in reality, and crucially an additional couple of runs we notched off the total, leaving their eventual, correct, tally three runs shy of their opponents. Incidentally, it was this type of careless miscalculation that contributed to Scott’s Antarctic demise.
Game Two - The Chase (vs The Printers CC)
Concerns were quickly voiced when Saunders announced that the tour’s second fixture was to be played in Milton Keynes. As efficiently laid out as the town is, it’s suitability as a picturesque setting for a tour location is arguably in more doubt. Immaculate rows of neat traffic lights and perfectly angled crossroads are not the stuff of the idyllic British summertime. But the team need not have worried, for once more Saunders had sniffed out another ideal slice of countryside for the occasion, much like a pig in the truffle patch of village cricket destinations.
Wickham continued the 100% record of winning the coin toss and elected to bat, seeking to avoid fielding in the blistering early afternoon heatwave. A dutiful opening partnership between Saunders and Khattak assembled solid foundations for the innings to come, until Khattak was finally removed for 28 when he got a thin edge on an absolute pearler, a dismissal so good it even drew a chuckle and compliment from the usually morose and acerbic Quest, who remarked flippantly, ‘I believe actual cricket just happened there’, before retreating to his customary shroud of cynicism in the shade of a nearby oak tree.
Progress continued to be relatively serene led by a fluent and heavily perspiring Saunders, until he surprisingly holed out for 35 having looked set for an even more substantial contribution. Not to be outdone by his flatmate and closest rival, Quest then followed suit in the same fashion, chipping the ball tamely to point having matched his score from the previous fixture. When a couple more wickets went down cheaper than a pint purchased north of the Birmingham orbital motorway, a familiar middle order collapse looked to be on the cards and threatened to undo the good work of the opening overs.
But it was not to be, as May, keen to make amends for a stuttering performance the day before, forcibly reclaimed the kind of clobbering form that had made him such a dangerous asset in the previous tour. His batting read like a vintage Batman cartoon as words like ‘kaboom’, ‘zapp’, ‘taka taka’, and ‘pow’ seemed to explode from his bat every time he pummelled the ball to another corner of the ground.
But the best was yet to come.
It turned out that Modi, whose contributions in the opening game had already cemented his place as one of the most accomplished players to have worn the Hendricks chapeau (as Quest pretentiously insisted upon calling the recently purchased team hats), was only just getting started. Not content with having already upstaged virtually the entire team with his shamelessly competent displays in all disciplines, he grabbed the bat with aplomb and proceeded to play the finest innings that the side has ever witnessed. Under the ferocious beams of the relentless Buckinghamshire sun he stood as an oasis of calm, possibly inspired by Saunders’ recitation of Kipling’s legendary poem If the night before, deploying a sizzling array of wristy flicks, crisp drives and almighty heaves that saw the opposition heads drop as frequently as the ball did from the clear blue sky. Such was his dominance and growing audacity at the crease that he even introduced the ramp shot to his ever-expanding repertoire as he managed to propel the ball over his own head with a reasonable, if not complete, measure of success.
The two would remain undefeated at the close, Modi on a club record of 78 not out, as they saw the Hendricks XI to what was comfortably their highest-ever total of 223. Celebrations were raucous and spirits high as the two noble heroes left the field.
Promoted to open the bowling, Modi revelled in his work, his legs showing no sign of the fatigue one would have expected to put a crimp in the stride of a lesser man, and his shoulders and back remained intact, despite having carried the team for the majority of the past few innings. Meanwhile, the resurgence of W. G. Quest continued in earnest as he produced the rarest of Hendricks feats - bowling a spell during which he had so thoroughly mastered the consistent pitching of ball on wicket that he was actually varying his line and lengths intentionally, producing, perhaps for the first time in the club’s history, variations in delivery that were entirely predetermined.
However, shortly before turning to first-change stalwart Pitt, disaster struck and threatened to unravel the team’s well-laid game plans. When a short ball from Shah was creamed towards the midwicket boundary, Pitt was the man in the firing line and, opting to take a more circumspect approach to his fielding duties, eschewed the chance of a dramatic diving catch in favour of taking the ball on the bounce. Not factoring in the somewhat unpredictable outfield, what had started as a carefully measured ploy to gather the ball cleanly quickly turned into a testicle-crushing fiasco and the 16 stone behemoth soon found himself crashing to the floor, doubled over in the burning throes of unparalleled agony as the two objects made thunderous and unwanted contact.
Had he perhaps been inspired by Tom Metcalf’s attempt two years earlier to catch a ball dropping 50 feet out of the sky with his ankle, and decided that this was the perfect chance to one-up his compadre with an even sterner and more crippling test of his manhood? Fittingly, it was his manhood which paid the price and when medical officials were rushed onto the field they professionally diagnosed the affliction as a severe case of ‘ball to the balls’ and promptly stretchered off the fallen soldier.
As the team trundled along into the middle overs, Wickham fittingly turned to his most trundling bowlers. Legendary Bits & Pieces maestro Tom Metcalf, a man with a canny knack of frustrating batsmen and picking up wickets with his difficult-to-pick deliveries served up with a prodigious lack of pace, was sent on to fulfil the partnership-breaking role he so often played.
Metcalf would, however, save his defining contribution of the tour for a post-game moment of such barnstorming success it will surely live long in Hendricks history. Inspired in equal measure by the underdog footballing heroics of Wigan Athletic’s Will Grigg and our own barrel-chested all-rounder Will Pitt, he artfully reworked the already artfully reworked lyrics of Eurodance sensation Gala’s 1996 hit single ‘Freed From Desire’ to celebrate his teammate’s big-hitting prowess. The resulting homage to Pitt’s brutal tenacity on the field, entitled simply ‘Will Pitt’s On Fire’ - which also included a subtle reference to the unfortunate coming together of cricket ball and genitals alluded to earlier - translated perfectly into a pub chant so well publicised that it has recently taken the entire continent by storm and helped the aforementioned Grigg to earn a nomination as one of the best players of the Euro 2016 tournament, despite not playing a single minute.
The rousing underdog story naturally struck a chord with the slightly inebriated Hendrick’s contingent and had all assembled singing along in full voice, with minimalist arm-raising dance moves in accompaniment. Needless to the say the roof of the sleepy rural cottage had most assuredly been raised. With the deep house remix of DJ Kenno’s original tribute to Grigg having already stormed its way into the iTunes top 100, it seems certain to be just a matter of time before Metcalf’s own loving eulogy to his sturdily-built teammate makes similar waves in the music industry.
Following such a rabble-rousing display was always going to be a tall order, and indeed when Big V shuffled awkwardly up to take centre stage it seemed unlikely that he would be able to top Metcalf’s football terrace rendition, particularly when he telling announced, ‘Sorry everyone, I don’t think I’ll be able to follow that’. Leaning against an unwitting nearby mantlepiece for support and slurring his way through a rambling and entirely unnecessary introduction, he just about managed to convey that he would be performing a Kate Bush cover, although his nonchalant delivery style hinted more at a laboured amateur standup performance than 1980s super ballad.
But as soon as the opening refrain of ‘It doesn’t hurt me, do you want to feel the way I feel?’ passed his lips and an unwise attempt to hit the verse’s high note ended with a voice crack reminiscent of a pubescent teenager asking out a high school crush, the stage was set for another instant crowd-pleaser. Subsequent attempts to achieve the legendary songstress’ falsetto reach proved equally, if not more, unsuccessful and a thoroughly delighted audience were left with hysterical tears in their eyes which recalled the time the same team member once attempted, for purely practical reasons, to balance his phone on the brim of his pint glass only for said phone to drop fall helplessly overboard.
Back on the field, Khattak was next up to bowl and, having been studying the immaculate technique of Modi, he decided to deploy something shockingly akin to spin, generating notable turn, alongside a respectable degree of control and accuracy. This, however, was soon to be undone by the dramatically less conventional approach adopted by Hewlett.
The Big V-locity had used his time away from the game more than productively, experimenting with an exciting array of new deliveries and techniques that he was keen to unveil. Like an eccentric alchemist returning to the outside world following months holed up in his mountaintop laboratory, he arrived with a veritable cornucopia of new combinations; wild and presumably uncontrolled oscillations between leg stump full tosses and medium pace half-trackers produced largely similar results and kept Wickham, fielding at square leg, firmly in business. If the business was jogging to and from the boundary to retrieve the succession of balls that were hammered past him into the neatly maintained hedgerows of the neighbouring suburbia. Such was his disgust with his captain’s fielding that Hewlett eventually overruled his authority, banishing the skipper to the boundary edge with a dismissive flick of his wrist in a mutinous fit of rage.
With the opposition pushing on with ever increasing pace and purpose towards their target, May was introduced to the attack in an attempt to restore the Hendricks advantage. His appearance was as surprising as it was risky, after he had spent the better part of the afternoon lying languidly in the sun, apparently stretching out a series of spasms, aches and ailments that he rendered him almost incapable of movement. Thankfully, when called upon he was able to summon up the strength to drag himself from the horizontal position he had favoured for much of the innings and launch himself into a vertical charge. As he slowly built momentum across a couple of decent overs he and the team were rewarded with a vital wicket as they winkled out a key attacking threat and wrested back control. Commentators would have agreed en masse something to the effect of ‘Well, if ever they needed a wicket….’. Or something similarly insightful.
The three-pronged trident of Quest, Modi and Pitt was once again called upon to close out the innings. Some high quality death bowling proved enough to keep out a dogged opposition stand that brought what had been a thrilling, edge-of-your-non-existent-seat run chase down to the final over. In his post-game interview, Wickham merely shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, well, you know, obviously it great display today - records tumbled and I like to think it was all inspired by the incredible way in which Will Pitt bounced back from that nad-clattering blow early in the day. When we saw Pitty hit the turf took we all feared the worst; no one likes to see a player take one in the clangers - particularly not in such an undignified fashion. But he’s a top competitor and women around the world will be pleased to hear that he’ll be back in working order in no time’.
Game Three - The Fall of Shackleton (vs The Bodleian Library CC)
As one strolled the boundary edge pre-game, amongst the tiring flock of amateur cricketers, the familiar waft of Deep Heat tingled the nostrils and confirmed the state of physical deterioration that had inevitably set in among the embattled Hendricks troupe. The scent increased in intensity as the physical distress of each player heightened. May, in particular, seemed to have done little else than apply liberal quantities of the burning substance to his lower body in the build up to the game, wincing visibly as he announced some stray cream had found its way into more sensitive areas than intended. This was a look that turned to surprise, and shortly after intrigued pleasure, as he became first accustomed to, and then rather fond of, the curious prickling sensation that promptly engulfed his nether regions.
Build up to this much-anticipated regular tour fixture had been dominated by talk of one man, and one man alone: Shackleton. Not legendary Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton - an easy mistake to make despite his death almost a century ago - but rather a much younger incarnation; the scourge of the past two Hendricks tours, the unflappable, unmovable scorer of boundaries who had routinely embarrassed the Hendricks bowling attack for over after over with his effortless stroke play and untroubled countenance. His record against the tourists had long been a source of rancorous frustration, and this year Saunders had resolved to address the issue head on by placing a bounty of a bottle of Hendricks gin on the head of the charmingly mannered menace; a man you would hate the burning passion of a thousand suns if you didn't find him such irresistibly good company.
Once more winning the toss, the Hendricks XI opted to bowl and the innings meandered along with the procedural succession of tight, pacy opening overs that gradually gave way to the increasingly looser, sluggish middle overs. The usually dependable Shah had thus far found the simultaneous mastery of line, length and pace difficult to achieve, and he had opted instead for a proprietary blend of all three, in varying measure. During the first pre-game nets session his slightly erratic warm up was put down to rustiness. By the end of that game it appeared likely that full blown gout - ‘the rich man’s disease’ - had possibly set in owing to Shah’s ever-expanding cheque book, loose control over his personal finances and love of decadent wining and dining having finally caught up with him. By the second game it appeared that the long-discussed but never tested theory that Shah is a man who can only bowl when thoroughly half-cut was finally coming to fruition. In an effort to improve his bowling figures he took a quiet moment before the final fixture to slip into a bleary haze, knocking back a snifter of lighter fluid, as the only ethanol-based substance within reach, and accordingly some of the former control and guile returned to his bowling.
An inspired piece of captaincy then saw the ball tossed to Khattak, who immediately brought his customary canniness, as well as a few eminently hittable deliveries, to the attack. He cheekily enticed the batsmen down the wicket only for a well-taken stumping and sharp catch behind the stumps courtesy of the surprisingly alert Saunders to yield the swarthy King of Spain a brace of useful wickets as he removed two certified big hitters from the game. This included the prize scalp of ‘Sizzla’ - the Bodleian wicket keeper who batted with all the careless flair and destructive abandon synonymous with vintage Calypso cricket, whose eventual Man of the Match performance was based as much on his batting as his high-fiving of the opposition in between overs. A delightful combination.
Metcalf probed away on a nagging line and length, and a few other lines and lengths as well, just to be extra thorough, like a seasoned metal detectorist resolutely combing every inch of a remote beach for remnants of World War Two shrapnel. His persistence and dogged attention to detail eventually paid off as he snared a couple more valuable middle order wickets and ensured momentum remained with the Hendricks XI.
However, in spite of the increasingly regular fall of wickets the tourists’ position was still far from assured while their arch-nemesis and all-round lovely bloke David Shackleton remained at the crease. Hewlett continued to unleash wave after wave of deadly spin, seam and swing from the depths of the extensive bowling cannonade at his disposal, but to no avail. In the face of a relentless barrage from the fearsome battery of Hendricks’ fittest and finest, Shackleton remained resolutely tranquil, continuing to plunder runs on all sides of the wicket. Deciding that a change was needed in order to make the critical breakthrough, the skipper, in his abject desperation, chanced his arm on the rarely utilised and entirely toothless bowling of Wickham.
As he tossed the ball to his new bowler, Hewlett apologetically prefaced the decision with the immortal words, ‘It will just be the one over today I’m afraid, Henry’.
Thankfully, one is all that was required.
After methodically finding his range with a couple of gentle, high-arching deliveries that achieved a somewhat stratospheric trajectory among orbiting television satellites and the International Space Station, he looked ready to strike. Digging deep into his admittedly quite bare arsenal he produced a ball that was remarkably akin to the ones which had preceded it. It looped lazily through the air, gloriously unhurried as if wishing to give the home team a few extra moments to produce the game’s mid-way tea of banana sandwiches and homemade porkpies. Shackleton, for his part, looked largely untroubled as the ball arched towards him, using the additional hang-time to retie his shoe laces, rehearse a couple of shots and prepare and swift cup of Darjeeling. When the ball eventually announced itself within his radius his eyes lit up as he took aim, leant back and released a huge swing aimed towards mid-wicket, already eyeing up the boundary to check if his attempt had carried all the way over the rope for six of fallen disappointingly short for a meagre four.
When the ball was not spotted on either side of the boundary, fear set in and he wheeled around, only to see that the ball had slipped past him and knocked politely on his leg stump, much like a benign vicar calling upon an ageing local parishioner, and somehow had the force to dislodge both of his bails. As he looked up he was greeted with the undignified sight of Wickham charging away in a shamefully unsportsmanlike celebration, whooping and cheering as he high-fived his bemused teammates before vaulting the fence to the adjacent field and continuing his celebrations with parents and children at a neighbouring school sports day event. When he was eventually located he returned to finish the over before mercifully retiring his bowling for another 12 months, while Shackleton was left to lament that such a fine innings had met such an ignominious end.
After an upheaval as wildly unexpected as it was emotionally devastating, the remainder of the innings was, predictably, a touch anticlimactic. Quest did his best to keep the crowd entertained, returning for a final spell that capped off a thumping return to form - or perhaps his first true realisation of form - clean bowing two batsmen in the final over as well as inducing a run out, leaving him with career best figures of 3-24 from his belligerent 6.5 overs. Little did we know that he was saving his scintillating best for later.
Following a debut victory against the Bodleian some two years previously, the Hendricks XI had slumped to defeat the following season, leaving them one for one with all to play for in this tour-defining match. Understandably tensions were high and nerves abounded, after a meaty total of 220 was posted. Would they claim a pivotal second victory against their old foes, or be consigned once more to a morale-sapping defeat?
In the end they needn’t have worried. For Quest had his sights set on the highest of prizes, eyeing up a feat that no Hendricks batsman had ever achieved in the club’s six year history: the scoring of a century. In a masterful display that saw him step up the pace at regular intervals, he effortlessly raised the bar time and time again as his nonchalant, disinterested timing of the ball resembling David Gower at his apathetic peak. When finally he reached his monumental milestone, Quest retired and trudged off the field with shoulders so slumped and a head so bowed you would have thought he had been dismissed first ball. Discarding his cricket kit with sullen petulance, he spent the rest of the afternoon staring joylessly into the middle distance, telling all who would listen how ‘deeply unsatisfying’ the scoring of the Hendricks’ maiden ton had been. Sometimes, there is just no explaining the capricious moods of our great modern geniuses.
Elsewhere, there continued to be individual tales of valour as the remainder of the Hendricks rabble attempted to emulate Quest’s immense personal success and write their own names into the record books. The gregarious top-order pinch hitting of Will Pitt had proved the perfect foil for his teammate’s epic adventure, as he accompanied Quest on his noble mission playing Sancho Panza to Quest’s Don Quixote. Minchinton carried on his fine form with the bat, outscoring his previous personal best set just two days prior with a shot-scoring wagon wheel that featured just one incredibly thick line drawn through the point/third man region as he continued to confound the opposition captain by repeatedly playing the exact same shot to every ball he faced.
To say that Khattak’s play was confident would be an understatement; disdainful is perhaps a more apt way of describing the savage manner in which he dismissed ball after ball from his presence. He mercilessly carted the tiring bowlers to all corners of the ground, as well as to some of the neighbouring university buildings whose windows took a severe pounding - his barbaric 43 earning him a well-deserved nod for the game’s Champagne Moment. He looked like a man keen to bring a swift end to proceedings, the reason for which became apparent when he later revealed he had a pre-scheduled dinner with parents back home in Birmingham, and that tardiness would be punishable by worse than a mere shot of gin.
Even our Master of Patience and Nurdler-in-Chief, Tom Metcalf, was inspired to join in the grandstanding heroics, charging the opposition bowlers like a bull in Pamplona and cannoning the ball back to the long off boundary with alarming regularity. In a world of Brexit, Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign, and Leicester City winning the Premier League title, it appears that anything is indeed possible.
Easing past 200 for the second time in as many games, the Hendricks Express flew across the line with 10 overs and 5 wickets to spare, as the team and a sea of casual onlookers and professional analysts stood dumbfounded by the baffling display of professionalism had that had been served up. During a triumphant post-game interview, Hewlett was effervescent:
‘Well, obviously having old “Golden Arm” Wickers at your disposal in the later overs is a captain’s dream. He may look like he’s never played a game of cricket before - shambling around the outfield like a dangerous lunatic, and propelling the ball as though he’s trying to impersonate a rickety medieval catapult - but actually, when you really study his technique and the layers of mental besiegement he uses against the batsmen, the boy’s a bit of a bloody genius’.
‘Although personally I thought the game’s Champagne Moment should have gone to Ajay and Jay for their belting rendition of ‘Champagne Super-over’ by Oasis, proving that unlike John Barnes, sportsmen can occasionally produce moments of musical brilliance’.
When pressed on his ongoing search for a best man, he merely grunted incoherently, mentioned something about having been in touch with The Wurzels accordion player Tommy Banner, and then wandered away bemoaning the fact that there would be no welly-wanging at his wedding, despite his numerous attempts to incorporate this Gloucestershire tradition. He was later seen stumbling jubilantly down the street, serenading random passers by with a garbled chorus to the effect of ‘Someday you will find me, caught beneath a landslide…’.
* * *
‘They realised they were no longer little girls, they were little women’.
This was how the remarkable transformation of the team was eloquently summarised by Quest as the team strolled back to their thankfully un-parking ticketed vehicle, his wistful remark the result of a deft misquoting of Louisa May Ascott’s timeless coming-of-age classic, Little Women.
While the contrived literary reference was more a testament to his knowledge of The Simpsons than his acquaintance with mid-19th century prose, he certainly had a point. And you can be damned sure that these little women will be back next year, even prettier and more confident than ever before.
But we digress.
The cause of James ‘Big V’ Hewlett’s current state of nervous deliberation had not, in fact, been brought on by the imminent arrival of yet another legendary touring odyssey for the Hendricks Occasional XI. The tour dates had been fixed and the opposition well in hand; for the first time ever the Hendricks cohort would head out on the road with a full compliment of fixtures already secured. The apprehensive disposition currently gripping him had been brought on by the headlong plunge he was taking into the well-worn institution of marriage and, more specifically, the search for a best man; that age old conundrum of who should stand proudly by his side and shoulder the accompanying duties of such a noble role. Fortunately, in his part-time cricket team he had a fine body of men to choose from, none finer, but to whom would he turn in his hour of need? Much like a captain surveying a loyal contingent of troops for a soldier best fitted to the honour of taking the new ball, so too did James now scour the Hendricks roster for a worthy candidate to attend him.
He ran a fretful hand through his already heavily ruffled hair.
Only time, and a careful assessment of performances on the field, would give this simple West Country cricket fanatic the answers he sought.
* * *
Game One - What Might Have Been (vs Far From the MCC)
As the tour dates were announced, the annual ritual of the team’s most talented ringers declaring their lack of availability came and went with the usual bluster and frenetic concern over where adequate replacements would be sourced from. They keenly felt the absence of both Alex Harding’s prodigious cricketing talent and his rust-engorged Mitsubishi Colt, which had so nobly ferried them between fixtures despite its obvious desire to retire hurt during heavy spells of spark plug-dampening rain.
But in spite of this sporting and vehicular deficiency, as always alarms need not have been raised as the quality found in the form of fresh recruit Jay Modi would prove to be embarrassingly above the admittedly low bar by which the Hendricks XI register ‘adequate’. He arrived with the usual endorsement of ‘having played a bit in school’, which is a qualification that can either mean a borderline county team excellence or someone who has forgotten which end of the bat to hold and is unable to utilise a protective box correctly. Fortunately, Jay fell firmly into the former category and his proficiency with both bat and ball became apparent before the opening game had even commenced.
The pre-game nets session was ferocious. The bowling, sadly, was not.
Casually joining the team’s warm up, Modi immediately distinguished himself by managing to not only propel the ball within the generous confines of the net, but also pitching on a consistent line and length and even producing something described by cricket buffs around the world as ‘turn’ - an elusive concept entirely lost on Hendricks players who have been historically unable to extract even a modicum of spin from either ball or surface. Having assured his place in the bowling attack, he retired to the leisure of a gloriously sunny afternoon shortly after, leaving the Hendricks front-line attack to try and remember how to land the ball at least somewhere near the wicket.
Thankfully the squad was further ennobled by the return of braggadocio all-rounder Will Pitt, who arrived back in the Hendricks base camp more concretely physiqued and unfamiliar with the rules of cricket than ever before. Swaggering in with his customary bravado, reminiscent of the dashing Lord Flashheart from the Blackadder television series, this explosive force of nature announced his presence both sportingly and sartorially; bowling tidily, batting belligerently, and insisting on wearing only a tank top and blue shorts in place of the customary white shirt and trousers.
When play eventually commenced, there was an immediate ripple of anticipation as Ross Quest began marking out his run up, ball firmly in hand. This enormously anticipated and long overdue return to the bowling attack would prove to be without a doubt the most stunning on-field transformation in any sport since Aaron Ramsey had that one half-decent season for Arsenal. Following his confidence-crippling spell of vicious beamers and painful no-balls in the tour of 2014 and subsequent refusal to bowl at all the following year, it seemed a certainty that those who dreamed of seeing the golden-haired colossus storming in from the end of his lengthy run up would never see their fantasises translate into reality.
Oh, how wrong they were.
For Quest had only been biding his time, cocooned away like a cricketing caterpillar waiting to emerge with a glorious unfurling of his newly formed wings as a beautiful, majestic butterfly with a ball in his hand a spring in his step. The newly found confidence surging through him seemed to emanate across the field and through the team, who backed up some devastating spells of bowling with fielding that almost approached the competent. Drops were less frequent and geriatric ground-field fumbling a thing of the past - at least until Ajay Shah wound back the years with a truly masterful display of pensioner-esque athleticism in the final game as he failed to prevent the ball from rolling tamely through his fingers while fielding on the boundary, much like watching an elderly relatively attempt to stop an ageing house cat from wandering between their ankles. The death stare from wicketkeeper Saunders was matched only by the reprising glare from Pitt, whose previously immaculate bowling figures would sadly bear the blemish.
An opening spell of searing pace and accuracy yielded no wickets but the rebirth of a cricketing giant had been reward enough to all those present. Except for Quest himself, who sulked endlessly when he was taken off, bemoaning his empty wickets column on the scorer’s sheet.
Modi’s debut spell for the Hendricks XI was predictably tight as he picked up a couple of wickets and coaxed the ball in to gripping and turning in equal measure, apparently controlling its flight after it had departed his fingers through some form of ancient sorcery known only to himself. The fact that he bowled spin with more pace than any of the team’s seamers left competing emotions of awe, envy and lust writ large across the faces of his confounded teammates, who could only watch and applaud his solo heroics.
He was ably supported by Pitt, whose pre-game preparation of consuming a sizeable spaghetti carbonara, courtesy of Jamie Oliver’s takeaway service, had also extended into the opening overs of the game and between deliveries he dashed back and forth over the boundary edge where his stodgy Italian repast sat waiting for him. An early and inevitable bout of indigestion was quickly overcome and he joined the attack, luminous orange trainers flashing ostentatiously in the late afternoon sun, with four miserly overs of 1-15 proving comprehensively that his two years away from the game romancing his way across the globe in a scandalous deluge of ever heightening sauciness had done little to detract from his performances. Where had he been? Where hadn’t he been.
Some slightly less economical overs followed in which the determined opposition gathered momentum. Despite their highest scorer and eventual Man of the Match thankfully invoking the rarely seen ‘Retire at 42’ ruling - decided upon by Saunders and his opposite number for its connotations of the meaning of life, both being avid Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy fans - the home side built towards a strong finish and a respectable target of 129-5 was set.
An opening partnership of contrasts kicked off the Hendricks’ innings as a rapid and boundary-strewn 28 from Quest was accompanied by an uncharacteristically sluggish outing from the usually free-scoring Ollie May. Fortunately Modi continued his highly pleasing debut and the scoreboard ticked along. But just when it seemed as though our handsome contingent were gaining the upper hand a hammer blow was dealt as Quest found himself superbly run out. Inspired by the medieval Germanic custom of Trial by Combat, the customary post-game 22 yard footrace proved comprehensively that blame for the incident lay with Quest and not Modi, after a floundering attempt to chug his half-pint bottle of lager resulted in the Hendricks opener being comprehensively doused in the sticky nectar of defeat.
The debutant was subsequently joined at the crease by Simon Minchinton, a man whose place in the side has been nailed down year after year primarily by his ebullient, acrobatic fielding, which has always been in useful contrast to the lethargic and poorly coordinated efforts of his teammates. That, and his near-permanent availability for all fixtures and willingness to stump up a couple of hundred quid each season for the privilege of chasing a ball around a field.
However, unbeknownst to the rest of the team, this was the year in which ‘Miniesta’ - as he was incorrectly but superbly dubbed by the opposition, presumably due to his resemblance to an even smaller version of Spanish footballing hero Andres Iniesta - would make the gargantuan leap across the disciplines and establish himself as a gritty but beloved middle order batsman, in the vein of England’s folk-hero archetype Paul Collingwood. Following on from a short-lived innings of nought in the side’s pre-tour warm up game, expectations were understandably not sky high. Determined to silence his critics, he rallied superbly and a steely, determined performance saw him register a new lifetime best of 17, replicating the kind of dogged Britishness that buoyed Collingwood along as he ground out his career-defining 206 during England’s miserable Ashes campaign of 2006-7.
Sadly, Minchinton’s own contribution would also prove to be in a losing cause, although the margin of defeat would be considerably less embarrassing than that suffered by Andrew Flintoff’s men during that ill-fated Australian summer.
Pitt briefly assaulted the crease with his presence, igniting a short but fiery innings that burned intensely but flickered out all too soon. Much like a cavalier young musician carried away by the heady elixir of their own fame and talent, so too was our temperamental rock star deceived by the apparently limitless extent of his boundary hitting potential. Regrettably he met the same sticky fate as many a carefree tearaway, as fireworks and excitement quickly gave way to a melancholy yearning for what might have been.
Some intrepid stroke play from Qas Khattak just about kept the Hendricks’ XI within touching distance, and when Hewlett arrived at the crease with six runs required for victory from the final two balls, the stage looked set for the game to be won with a bludgeoning clearing of the ropes from the great man. The fact he was renowned across the cricketing greens of Britain for his legendary dearth of boundaries did little to dent his confidence, and a hastily run two from his first delivery kept the side firmly in frame for a grand stand finish from the last ball.
Regrettably, a masterfully executed thick inside edge down to fine leg only yielded another two, and so it was that a monumental effort from our dashing heroes fell agonisingly short, in similar fashion to Captain Robert Scott’s doomed attempt to outpace Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Only with markedly less frostbite and death.
The margin of defeat had been just one run*, and despite the disappointment of the loss, the courageous Hendricks assortment found solace in the strength of their overall performance and the ales of a nearby public house. Captain Tim Saunders gave a rousing post-match interview, alluding to Rudyard Kipling’s poetic assertion that triumph and disaster should be treated as the same thing, before concluding that ‘We were unlucky today. We actually had all 11 players turn up early for the start of a tour, which is totally unprecedented, and in my view would have made us good value for the win. But obviously the most disappointing moment was Questy’s shameful display in the post-game drinking race. Spilling beer all down himself like that, it’s just not what you expect to see at this level of the game’.
*It would later transpire that some lackadaisical scoring had placed the Hendricks XI within closer striking distance on paper than where they were in reality, and crucially an additional couple of runs we notched off the total, leaving their eventual, correct, tally three runs shy of their opponents. Incidentally, it was this type of careless miscalculation that contributed to Scott’s Antarctic demise.
Game Two - The Chase (vs The Printers CC)
Concerns were quickly voiced when Saunders announced that the tour’s second fixture was to be played in Milton Keynes. As efficiently laid out as the town is, it’s suitability as a picturesque setting for a tour location is arguably in more doubt. Immaculate rows of neat traffic lights and perfectly angled crossroads are not the stuff of the idyllic British summertime. But the team need not have worried, for once more Saunders had sniffed out another ideal slice of countryside for the occasion, much like a pig in the truffle patch of village cricket destinations.
Wickham continued the 100% record of winning the coin toss and elected to bat, seeking to avoid fielding in the blistering early afternoon heatwave. A dutiful opening partnership between Saunders and Khattak assembled solid foundations for the innings to come, until Khattak was finally removed for 28 when he got a thin edge on an absolute pearler, a dismissal so good it even drew a chuckle and compliment from the usually morose and acerbic Quest, who remarked flippantly, ‘I believe actual cricket just happened there’, before retreating to his customary shroud of cynicism in the shade of a nearby oak tree.
Progress continued to be relatively serene led by a fluent and heavily perspiring Saunders, until he surprisingly holed out for 35 having looked set for an even more substantial contribution. Not to be outdone by his flatmate and closest rival, Quest then followed suit in the same fashion, chipping the ball tamely to point having matched his score from the previous fixture. When a couple more wickets went down cheaper than a pint purchased north of the Birmingham orbital motorway, a familiar middle order collapse looked to be on the cards and threatened to undo the good work of the opening overs.
But it was not to be, as May, keen to make amends for a stuttering performance the day before, forcibly reclaimed the kind of clobbering form that had made him such a dangerous asset in the previous tour. His batting read like a vintage Batman cartoon as words like ‘kaboom’, ‘zapp’, ‘taka taka’, and ‘pow’ seemed to explode from his bat every time he pummelled the ball to another corner of the ground.
But the best was yet to come.
It turned out that Modi, whose contributions in the opening game had already cemented his place as one of the most accomplished players to have worn the Hendricks chapeau (as Quest pretentiously insisted upon calling the recently purchased team hats), was only just getting started. Not content with having already upstaged virtually the entire team with his shamelessly competent displays in all disciplines, he grabbed the bat with aplomb and proceeded to play the finest innings that the side has ever witnessed. Under the ferocious beams of the relentless Buckinghamshire sun he stood as an oasis of calm, possibly inspired by Saunders’ recitation of Kipling’s legendary poem If the night before, deploying a sizzling array of wristy flicks, crisp drives and almighty heaves that saw the opposition heads drop as frequently as the ball did from the clear blue sky. Such was his dominance and growing audacity at the crease that he even introduced the ramp shot to his ever-expanding repertoire as he managed to propel the ball over his own head with a reasonable, if not complete, measure of success.
The two would remain undefeated at the close, Modi on a club record of 78 not out, as they saw the Hendricks XI to what was comfortably their highest-ever total of 223. Celebrations were raucous and spirits high as the two noble heroes left the field.
Promoted to open the bowling, Modi revelled in his work, his legs showing no sign of the fatigue one would have expected to put a crimp in the stride of a lesser man, and his shoulders and back remained intact, despite having carried the team for the majority of the past few innings. Meanwhile, the resurgence of W. G. Quest continued in earnest as he produced the rarest of Hendricks feats - bowling a spell during which he had so thoroughly mastered the consistent pitching of ball on wicket that he was actually varying his line and lengths intentionally, producing, perhaps for the first time in the club’s history, variations in delivery that were entirely predetermined.
However, shortly before turning to first-change stalwart Pitt, disaster struck and threatened to unravel the team’s well-laid game plans. When a short ball from Shah was creamed towards the midwicket boundary, Pitt was the man in the firing line and, opting to take a more circumspect approach to his fielding duties, eschewed the chance of a dramatic diving catch in favour of taking the ball on the bounce. Not factoring in the somewhat unpredictable outfield, what had started as a carefully measured ploy to gather the ball cleanly quickly turned into a testicle-crushing fiasco and the 16 stone behemoth soon found himself crashing to the floor, doubled over in the burning throes of unparalleled agony as the two objects made thunderous and unwanted contact.
Had he perhaps been inspired by Tom Metcalf’s attempt two years earlier to catch a ball dropping 50 feet out of the sky with his ankle, and decided that this was the perfect chance to one-up his compadre with an even sterner and more crippling test of his manhood? Fittingly, it was his manhood which paid the price and when medical officials were rushed onto the field they professionally diagnosed the affliction as a severe case of ‘ball to the balls’ and promptly stretchered off the fallen soldier.
As the team trundled along into the middle overs, Wickham fittingly turned to his most trundling bowlers. Legendary Bits & Pieces maestro Tom Metcalf, a man with a canny knack of frustrating batsmen and picking up wickets with his difficult-to-pick deliveries served up with a prodigious lack of pace, was sent on to fulfil the partnership-breaking role he so often played.
Metcalf would, however, save his defining contribution of the tour for a post-game moment of such barnstorming success it will surely live long in Hendricks history. Inspired in equal measure by the underdog footballing heroics of Wigan Athletic’s Will Grigg and our own barrel-chested all-rounder Will Pitt, he artfully reworked the already artfully reworked lyrics of Eurodance sensation Gala’s 1996 hit single ‘Freed From Desire’ to celebrate his teammate’s big-hitting prowess. The resulting homage to Pitt’s brutal tenacity on the field, entitled simply ‘Will Pitt’s On Fire’ - which also included a subtle reference to the unfortunate coming together of cricket ball and genitals alluded to earlier - translated perfectly into a pub chant so well publicised that it has recently taken the entire continent by storm and helped the aforementioned Grigg to earn a nomination as one of the best players of the Euro 2016 tournament, despite not playing a single minute.
The rousing underdog story naturally struck a chord with the slightly inebriated Hendrick’s contingent and had all assembled singing along in full voice, with minimalist arm-raising dance moves in accompaniment. Needless to the say the roof of the sleepy rural cottage had most assuredly been raised. With the deep house remix of DJ Kenno’s original tribute to Grigg having already stormed its way into the iTunes top 100, it seems certain to be just a matter of time before Metcalf’s own loving eulogy to his sturdily-built teammate makes similar waves in the music industry.
Following such a rabble-rousing display was always going to be a tall order, and indeed when Big V shuffled awkwardly up to take centre stage it seemed unlikely that he would be able to top Metcalf’s football terrace rendition, particularly when he telling announced, ‘Sorry everyone, I don’t think I’ll be able to follow that’. Leaning against an unwitting nearby mantlepiece for support and slurring his way through a rambling and entirely unnecessary introduction, he just about managed to convey that he would be performing a Kate Bush cover, although his nonchalant delivery style hinted more at a laboured amateur standup performance than 1980s super ballad.
But as soon as the opening refrain of ‘It doesn’t hurt me, do you want to feel the way I feel?’ passed his lips and an unwise attempt to hit the verse’s high note ended with a voice crack reminiscent of a pubescent teenager asking out a high school crush, the stage was set for another instant crowd-pleaser. Subsequent attempts to achieve the legendary songstress’ falsetto reach proved equally, if not more, unsuccessful and a thoroughly delighted audience were left with hysterical tears in their eyes which recalled the time the same team member once attempted, for purely practical reasons, to balance his phone on the brim of his pint glass only for said phone to drop fall helplessly overboard.
Back on the field, Khattak was next up to bowl and, having been studying the immaculate technique of Modi, he decided to deploy something shockingly akin to spin, generating notable turn, alongside a respectable degree of control and accuracy. This, however, was soon to be undone by the dramatically less conventional approach adopted by Hewlett.
The Big V-locity had used his time away from the game more than productively, experimenting with an exciting array of new deliveries and techniques that he was keen to unveil. Like an eccentric alchemist returning to the outside world following months holed up in his mountaintop laboratory, he arrived with a veritable cornucopia of new combinations; wild and presumably uncontrolled oscillations between leg stump full tosses and medium pace half-trackers produced largely similar results and kept Wickham, fielding at square leg, firmly in business. If the business was jogging to and from the boundary to retrieve the succession of balls that were hammered past him into the neatly maintained hedgerows of the neighbouring suburbia. Such was his disgust with his captain’s fielding that Hewlett eventually overruled his authority, banishing the skipper to the boundary edge with a dismissive flick of his wrist in a mutinous fit of rage.
With the opposition pushing on with ever increasing pace and purpose towards their target, May was introduced to the attack in an attempt to restore the Hendricks advantage. His appearance was as surprising as it was risky, after he had spent the better part of the afternoon lying languidly in the sun, apparently stretching out a series of spasms, aches and ailments that he rendered him almost incapable of movement. Thankfully, when called upon he was able to summon up the strength to drag himself from the horizontal position he had favoured for much of the innings and launch himself into a vertical charge. As he slowly built momentum across a couple of decent overs he and the team were rewarded with a vital wicket as they winkled out a key attacking threat and wrested back control. Commentators would have agreed en masse something to the effect of ‘Well, if ever they needed a wicket….’. Or something similarly insightful.
The three-pronged trident of Quest, Modi and Pitt was once again called upon to close out the innings. Some high quality death bowling proved enough to keep out a dogged opposition stand that brought what had been a thrilling, edge-of-your-non-existent-seat run chase down to the final over. In his post-game interview, Wickham merely shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, well, you know, obviously it great display today - records tumbled and I like to think it was all inspired by the incredible way in which Will Pitt bounced back from that nad-clattering blow early in the day. When we saw Pitty hit the turf took we all feared the worst; no one likes to see a player take one in the clangers - particularly not in such an undignified fashion. But he’s a top competitor and women around the world will be pleased to hear that he’ll be back in working order in no time’.
Game Three - The Fall of Shackleton (vs The Bodleian Library CC)
As one strolled the boundary edge pre-game, amongst the tiring flock of amateur cricketers, the familiar waft of Deep Heat tingled the nostrils and confirmed the state of physical deterioration that had inevitably set in among the embattled Hendricks troupe. The scent increased in intensity as the physical distress of each player heightened. May, in particular, seemed to have done little else than apply liberal quantities of the burning substance to his lower body in the build up to the game, wincing visibly as he announced some stray cream had found its way into more sensitive areas than intended. This was a look that turned to surprise, and shortly after intrigued pleasure, as he became first accustomed to, and then rather fond of, the curious prickling sensation that promptly engulfed his nether regions.
Build up to this much-anticipated regular tour fixture had been dominated by talk of one man, and one man alone: Shackleton. Not legendary Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton - an easy mistake to make despite his death almost a century ago - but rather a much younger incarnation; the scourge of the past two Hendricks tours, the unflappable, unmovable scorer of boundaries who had routinely embarrassed the Hendricks bowling attack for over after over with his effortless stroke play and untroubled countenance. His record against the tourists had long been a source of rancorous frustration, and this year Saunders had resolved to address the issue head on by placing a bounty of a bottle of Hendricks gin on the head of the charmingly mannered menace; a man you would hate the burning passion of a thousand suns if you didn't find him such irresistibly good company.
Once more winning the toss, the Hendricks XI opted to bowl and the innings meandered along with the procedural succession of tight, pacy opening overs that gradually gave way to the increasingly looser, sluggish middle overs. The usually dependable Shah had thus far found the simultaneous mastery of line, length and pace difficult to achieve, and he had opted instead for a proprietary blend of all three, in varying measure. During the first pre-game nets session his slightly erratic warm up was put down to rustiness. By the end of that game it appeared likely that full blown gout - ‘the rich man’s disease’ - had possibly set in owing to Shah’s ever-expanding cheque book, loose control over his personal finances and love of decadent wining and dining having finally caught up with him. By the second game it appeared that the long-discussed but never tested theory that Shah is a man who can only bowl when thoroughly half-cut was finally coming to fruition. In an effort to improve his bowling figures he took a quiet moment before the final fixture to slip into a bleary haze, knocking back a snifter of lighter fluid, as the only ethanol-based substance within reach, and accordingly some of the former control and guile returned to his bowling.
An inspired piece of captaincy then saw the ball tossed to Khattak, who immediately brought his customary canniness, as well as a few eminently hittable deliveries, to the attack. He cheekily enticed the batsmen down the wicket only for a well-taken stumping and sharp catch behind the stumps courtesy of the surprisingly alert Saunders to yield the swarthy King of Spain a brace of useful wickets as he removed two certified big hitters from the game. This included the prize scalp of ‘Sizzla’ - the Bodleian wicket keeper who batted with all the careless flair and destructive abandon synonymous with vintage Calypso cricket, whose eventual Man of the Match performance was based as much on his batting as his high-fiving of the opposition in between overs. A delightful combination.
Metcalf probed away on a nagging line and length, and a few other lines and lengths as well, just to be extra thorough, like a seasoned metal detectorist resolutely combing every inch of a remote beach for remnants of World War Two shrapnel. His persistence and dogged attention to detail eventually paid off as he snared a couple more valuable middle order wickets and ensured momentum remained with the Hendricks XI.
However, in spite of the increasingly regular fall of wickets the tourists’ position was still far from assured while their arch-nemesis and all-round lovely bloke David Shackleton remained at the crease. Hewlett continued to unleash wave after wave of deadly spin, seam and swing from the depths of the extensive bowling cannonade at his disposal, but to no avail. In the face of a relentless barrage from the fearsome battery of Hendricks’ fittest and finest, Shackleton remained resolutely tranquil, continuing to plunder runs on all sides of the wicket. Deciding that a change was needed in order to make the critical breakthrough, the skipper, in his abject desperation, chanced his arm on the rarely utilised and entirely toothless bowling of Wickham.
As he tossed the ball to his new bowler, Hewlett apologetically prefaced the decision with the immortal words, ‘It will just be the one over today I’m afraid, Henry’.
Thankfully, one is all that was required.
After methodically finding his range with a couple of gentle, high-arching deliveries that achieved a somewhat stratospheric trajectory among orbiting television satellites and the International Space Station, he looked ready to strike. Digging deep into his admittedly quite bare arsenal he produced a ball that was remarkably akin to the ones which had preceded it. It looped lazily through the air, gloriously unhurried as if wishing to give the home team a few extra moments to produce the game’s mid-way tea of banana sandwiches and homemade porkpies. Shackleton, for his part, looked largely untroubled as the ball arched towards him, using the additional hang-time to retie his shoe laces, rehearse a couple of shots and prepare and swift cup of Darjeeling. When the ball eventually announced itself within his radius his eyes lit up as he took aim, leant back and released a huge swing aimed towards mid-wicket, already eyeing up the boundary to check if his attempt had carried all the way over the rope for six of fallen disappointingly short for a meagre four.
When the ball was not spotted on either side of the boundary, fear set in and he wheeled around, only to see that the ball had slipped past him and knocked politely on his leg stump, much like a benign vicar calling upon an ageing local parishioner, and somehow had the force to dislodge both of his bails. As he looked up he was greeted with the undignified sight of Wickham charging away in a shamefully unsportsmanlike celebration, whooping and cheering as he high-fived his bemused teammates before vaulting the fence to the adjacent field and continuing his celebrations with parents and children at a neighbouring school sports day event. When he was eventually located he returned to finish the over before mercifully retiring his bowling for another 12 months, while Shackleton was left to lament that such a fine innings had met such an ignominious end.
After an upheaval as wildly unexpected as it was emotionally devastating, the remainder of the innings was, predictably, a touch anticlimactic. Quest did his best to keep the crowd entertained, returning for a final spell that capped off a thumping return to form - or perhaps his first true realisation of form - clean bowing two batsmen in the final over as well as inducing a run out, leaving him with career best figures of 3-24 from his belligerent 6.5 overs. Little did we know that he was saving his scintillating best for later.
Following a debut victory against the Bodleian some two years previously, the Hendricks XI had slumped to defeat the following season, leaving them one for one with all to play for in this tour-defining match. Understandably tensions were high and nerves abounded, after a meaty total of 220 was posted. Would they claim a pivotal second victory against their old foes, or be consigned once more to a morale-sapping defeat?
In the end they needn’t have worried. For Quest had his sights set on the highest of prizes, eyeing up a feat that no Hendricks batsman had ever achieved in the club’s six year history: the scoring of a century. In a masterful display that saw him step up the pace at regular intervals, he effortlessly raised the bar time and time again as his nonchalant, disinterested timing of the ball resembling David Gower at his apathetic peak. When finally he reached his monumental milestone, Quest retired and trudged off the field with shoulders so slumped and a head so bowed you would have thought he had been dismissed first ball. Discarding his cricket kit with sullen petulance, he spent the rest of the afternoon staring joylessly into the middle distance, telling all who would listen how ‘deeply unsatisfying’ the scoring of the Hendricks’ maiden ton had been. Sometimes, there is just no explaining the capricious moods of our great modern geniuses.
Elsewhere, there continued to be individual tales of valour as the remainder of the Hendricks rabble attempted to emulate Quest’s immense personal success and write their own names into the record books. The gregarious top-order pinch hitting of Will Pitt had proved the perfect foil for his teammate’s epic adventure, as he accompanied Quest on his noble mission playing Sancho Panza to Quest’s Don Quixote. Minchinton carried on his fine form with the bat, outscoring his previous personal best set just two days prior with a shot-scoring wagon wheel that featured just one incredibly thick line drawn through the point/third man region as he continued to confound the opposition captain by repeatedly playing the exact same shot to every ball he faced.
To say that Khattak’s play was confident would be an understatement; disdainful is perhaps a more apt way of describing the savage manner in which he dismissed ball after ball from his presence. He mercilessly carted the tiring bowlers to all corners of the ground, as well as to some of the neighbouring university buildings whose windows took a severe pounding - his barbaric 43 earning him a well-deserved nod for the game’s Champagne Moment. He looked like a man keen to bring a swift end to proceedings, the reason for which became apparent when he later revealed he had a pre-scheduled dinner with parents back home in Birmingham, and that tardiness would be punishable by worse than a mere shot of gin.
Even our Master of Patience and Nurdler-in-Chief, Tom Metcalf, was inspired to join in the grandstanding heroics, charging the opposition bowlers like a bull in Pamplona and cannoning the ball back to the long off boundary with alarming regularity. In a world of Brexit, Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign, and Leicester City winning the Premier League title, it appears that anything is indeed possible.
Easing past 200 for the second time in as many games, the Hendricks Express flew across the line with 10 overs and 5 wickets to spare, as the team and a sea of casual onlookers and professional analysts stood dumbfounded by the baffling display of professionalism had that had been served up. During a triumphant post-game interview, Hewlett was effervescent:
‘Well, obviously having old “Golden Arm” Wickers at your disposal in the later overs is a captain’s dream. He may look like he’s never played a game of cricket before - shambling around the outfield like a dangerous lunatic, and propelling the ball as though he’s trying to impersonate a rickety medieval catapult - but actually, when you really study his technique and the layers of mental besiegement he uses against the batsmen, the boy’s a bit of a bloody genius’.
‘Although personally I thought the game’s Champagne Moment should have gone to Ajay and Jay for their belting rendition of ‘Champagne Super-over’ by Oasis, proving that unlike John Barnes, sportsmen can occasionally produce moments of musical brilliance’.
When pressed on his ongoing search for a best man, he merely grunted incoherently, mentioned something about having been in touch with The Wurzels accordion player Tommy Banner, and then wandered away bemoaning the fact that there would be no welly-wanging at his wedding, despite his numerous attempts to incorporate this Gloucestershire tradition. He was later seen stumbling jubilantly down the street, serenading random passers by with a garbled chorus to the effect of ‘Someday you will find me, caught beneath a landslide…’.
* * *
‘They realised they were no longer little girls, they were little women’.
This was how the remarkable transformation of the team was eloquently summarised by Quest as the team strolled back to their thankfully un-parking ticketed vehicle, his wistful remark the result of a deft misquoting of Louisa May Ascott’s timeless coming-of-age classic, Little Women.
While the contrived literary reference was more a testament to his knowledge of The Simpsons than his acquaintance with mid-19th century prose, he certainly had a point. And you can be damned sure that these little women will be back next year, even prettier and more confident than ever before.