3rd XI vs Harrow Town

Saturday, 16th August 2003 - League

In one of the most disgusting, non-uplifting and ramshackle part of London, North London descended upon the putrid turf of Harrow. The ground was worryingly small even if just the 2’s were to contest their game on the field – let alone accommodating 2 games. This posed a slight problem as the 2’s did have Blounty and Jeff Bennett in the same team – surely one of them had be on each side of the field just to balance it out – thankfully, Chairman had been called up to the 3’s so the matter didn’t go any further.

Mickey Leighton was captain, did a good job in winning the toss, and did an even better job of winning ultimate head case of the weekend. He decided to field first and with the bowling attack the 3’s had there was no possible thinking or game plan, it was pure madness. Sadly, none of us expected what was going to happen next – actually, wait……….no, we did in fact – Stridey was playing.

Matt Buckley opened the bowling and was our only effective bowler (if you can put it like that) in what turned out to be a disastrous bowling display (by the team). He bowled a nagging line that had Harrow’s openers in some discomfort and should have brought reward with a regulation catch that went straight to Chris Stride – which he dropped. The batsman was on 4 at the time.

113 runs later, Stridey caught him out in the deep off the Chairman in the only successful period NLCC had out in the field. Chairman had 2 overs previous removed the other opener (Stridey also dropped him earlier in the innings) with a beautiful long hop, the batsman so wanting to despatch him out of the ground didn’t necessarily compensate power for misdirection as he hammered it straight back down the Chairman’s throat and he took a smart catch.

The damage had already been done by then and with more and more hefty blows and shocking bowling being deservedly put away to all locations of the ground, Harrow amassed a daunting 347-2 off 37 overs.

Humiliation wasn’t really the summary soundbyte – it was more a resignation to the inevitable. Such shoddy fieldsmanship along with some awful bowling by James Connell and Mickey Leighton (to an extent) along with the very short leg and off side boundaries meant that Harrow racked this total up with minimum fuss.

In reply, we got off to a slow start even though their bowling was just as erratic and naive – Matt Buckley perished relatively early (we had 63 overs in return) for not very many and throughout the innings everyone contributed with minimum effort and fuss, Stridey 32, Tom ‘Transvestite’ Atchinson 30 odd, Brant Eustice 42, Mickey Leighton 80 odd not out and Chairman 21.

In hindsight we should have won. When the Chairman came out, though only 6 wickets down he was misinformed to hold out for the remaining 17 overs. In the end, with Mickey spraying shots back over the bowler and clubbing away anything short with no compassion NLCC ended up 277-7 after 63 overs.

Over the whole day there was a lack of understanding and hardly anyone in the team had any grip on what they were doing. There were some good passages of play (mainly in the batting department) but no one had a game plan and we shown for this. The game had petered out into farcical circumstances and the cricket was on the whole of poor standard – the County format not serving the game at all well.

Report by: Chairman (The)