RCC 2s winning draw against Whitely Village

The Spirit of Cricket says that winning is not everything and how one conducts oneself in the game is more important. Usually the Spirit of Cricket is lost in over aggressive play. Not in this game. Here the Spirit of Cricket was fully trampelled on, stamped into the ground and thrown into a dustbin by a team that was too afraid to try to win a game of cricket. Instead they forgot about their requirement to try their best to win and instead played a variation of French Cricket that saw them block and block and block and block and block and block and block and block (ad infinitum).

The Village arrived with the express intention of parking the bus and blocking out for 31 overs for a measley score of 59 runs. The upshot of it all was a deeply depressing draw that helped neither team to progress up the table.

RCC mada a good start to their innings with an excellent opening partnership of 58 runs between Marc Moderegger (63) and Ross Cameron (22) against some lively short pitched bowling. Moderegger in particular is back to his early season form and regularly forcing the opposition's opening attack onto the back foot. This game was always going to be a low scorer and so it proved - a pitch in the guise of the RCC strip of 2009 on a bad day would see to that. Some balls rose, whilst others stuck in the surface. Once the openers were dismissed the RCC middle order again succumbed to the pressure put on it. From a score of 103 for 3 the 2s went to 128 for 9. It took a 10th wicket partnership between Duncan Flynn (13*) and Hemish Gunasekara (6*) to put up a reasonable target of 140 for RCC to defend (and the Village to chase). Flynn like Moderegger looked like he was playing himself back into form and dug-in for a good solid innings.

Then the rain came. Early tea was taken and RCC agreed to declare their innings to allow the Village a chance of knocking off the runs. The variation of the Duckworth/Lewis that the League uses left Whiteley Village with 44 overs to score 140 runs. Each 3 and a half minutes spent waiting for the pitch to dry would remove an over. RCC were desperate to play and tried repeatedly to suggest a resumption. The Village needed coercing to even contemplate going back out there and by the time they had summoned up the courage to tackle their own pitch, they had allowed time to slip away to 31 overs. This still allowed them to chase down the low score at about 4 and a half runs an over.

In fact, the rain had dampened down the lively dry strip and in actual fact it would turn out to be a benign featherbed in the second innings. This didn't stop the Village lacking any type of enthusiasm for the chase and to be honest they closed up shop with just two wickets down. (What the remainder of their batting order sitting in the pavillion thought of not getting a hit I have no idea. Maybe they were happy with this type of anti-cricket or maybe they were annoyed that they pay their subs for pointless blocking by the top order resulting in them not even getting a chance to show what they can do.) RCC tried all manner of pie-chucking, donkey drops, having 10 close catchers and no-one in the outfield to tempt the batsmen to be brave enough to hit the ball for runs. It wasn't to be. The Village couldn't get beyond a pad planted across the crease and a defensive shot into the ground. It was really depressing stuff. (He's not over-exaggerating - Ed.)

People talk a lot about the spirit of cricket these days and how it gets lost. The Olympics were tarred with Badminton players trying to lose matches and runners not running to win races - this game was destroyed by a team not wanting to try to chase 140 runs.

On another equally sad note; this game marked the end of Paul Matthews playing days at Roehampton. Paul has been a stalwart member of the team over the years and has been an awesome player over the last few years - getting into the list of the League's top bowlers. He is a true team man who takes his young family back to Australia to set-up life in the sunshine. We wish them all the best and every success in their new life. We hope he will keep in touch with us all.

Man of the match: Marc Moderegger.
(report by Hemish Gunasekara)