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Ripley CC - Sunday 17th July 2005

LNZ rocked up to this their longest serving fixture on a cloudless Surrey morning with clusters off partners, off spring and groupies.
As ever, the outfield was brown and the pitch solid. It had every look of adding another decisive note to the swaying of the batting award. Though LNZ’s highest ever total of 371 off 50 overs had been reached during the 2001 season, it was also responsible for its lowest total last year of 134 and that was only with the help of a couple of former NZ umpires that strived for parity.
 
Coffee and biscuits were served and bar opened all before the first ball was bowled in anger at 11:42.
 
Previous years of no coin tossing and batting two seasons under the authority of Finlay, whose tactics started and ended with ‘keep em out there and make em hurt’, subsided to LNZ winning the toss and negotiating a 50 game. In fine LNZ tradition opted to bat armed with full Sunday supplements of papers and the calling of lager.
 
Tippen and Fanning shared a solid promising start that was set to reap profits until one Fanning stroke found his edge unbeknownst to the opposition and Matt departed to a bewildered bowler for 57. Tippen continued his fine vein this year with 38.
The past two years of Holmes Tankard awardees, Foley and Burgess, joined forces to see us through until lunch.
 
Three courses of fine dining ensued.
 
The tempo then soared during the afternoon session as Burgess having compiled his 50 in a modest (for his standards) 70 deliveries, unleashed his second fifty in 19. Foley topped 50 before succumbing. This brought Tricky Keyse to the crease fresh from throw downs from wife Karen.  Tricky played his normal hit and miss innings, before unleashing a couple a telling blows to make 22. This earnt him the reward of packing the gear bag. Matt Reinholds red inked with 7 at the end.
LNZ were confident with their total of 307. Collectively we’d profited from a few dropped catches to help our coarse. Asked what a good score was the skipper report ‘history would suggest 240 ort ta do it’.
 
Ripley’s first delivery found the pad of the opener, the slip cordon cacophony was impressive and the index finger of the umpire was raised. Rarely has a wicket been prospered from an oppositions umpire from an opening delivery. Let alone throughout an innings
The second delivery spooned a catch to mid off and was spilled. 2-0 off of two deliveries would have been an impressive start. Amends was made a couple overs later when a second LBW decision was made. In all the oppositions umpire gave 3 LBW’s to us.
Spin then took over with aggressive fields in an offensive push. A couple more catches were spilled and Ripley took to tea after 14 overs with 2 – 74.
 
Surrey’s finest cucumber sandwiches and cakes were consumed upon tea, adding the final sugar push for the off spring to unleash upon the local swings and slides at the corner of the park.
 
Fishy rolled back the years to take on the iron gloves and did well to fend off a catch from LNZ’s incumbent first slip Burg. Fish’s effort was more goalkeeping than wicket keeping. He’s later cited as saying ‘well if it was a couple years ago’.
Later Burg stood front and centre to take two catches in the position as the new breed of purchased kookaburra’s found the edge.
 
Dropped catches were still wrecking havoc in the outfield as they totalled up. Biggest casualty of them all was Tippen’s effort from long on that sent the lad to A&E for stitching. Down to 10 men was going to be no easy task.
 
Spin was attempted once more with Foley, Holden and Reinholds all having a crack.
Ripley sides off the past have gotten to three down and tended to fold through fear. However this seems to be a new breed to take on the 1749 circa side. Ripley were 5 down and behind the run rate, however a couple of huge overs put the game at even and shaped for a testing final 20 overs. We’re in a contest.
 
A final push was then contrived as medium pace replaced spin for the final 13 overs. The 7th wicket then fell with 60 still required off 11. Foley who’d taken over the iron gloves pulled off a sharp stumping to the new downwind pace of Lester. Marty’s sharp eye had called correctly on several close calls during the day. The Claw claiming the downwind added a couple of paces. Surely there’s irony there to claim a stumping.
 
One final catch was left decked with 20 to get. The culprit will remain unnamed, suffice to say, if a fine session were to be reintroduced, it would be for his expletive that his son George heard whilst filling a noble job of fielding for us.
 
Ripley, ‘believe it or not’ and much to Burg’s bewilderment, came home 7 down with two overs to spare.
 
The debate raged on in the changing room afterwards as to how we let slip 307 runs. I philosophically said we were 20 runs short, to which Burg claimed, ‘sure blame it on the batsmen’. The reality was that had we caught one of the ten catches dropped it, would have all been different.
 
Though the result was a loss, all had a good competitive days cricket. Ripley has developed through the ageing of their youth side to be a competitive outfit.
 
Burg claimed the man of the match award for a fine unbeaten ton and two good catches at slip. His name will be etched on the trophy that we donated during their 250th anniversary
Matt Reinholds attempted, but failed ‘the beam’
As did Fishy.
Whom remains on ‘nil point’ after a decade of noble attempts.
 
Emma Fish then catered for the side a fine BBQ that could feed several sides, with a topping off of a couple of pavlova’s.

Scoreboard LNZCC 307-4 (50 Overs)    Ripley 311-7 (48 Overs) Riply win by 3 wickets

Batting

                    Runs    Catches    Stumpings

Bowling

                    O    M    R    W

Vance Thompson     14    1   59    4

Steve Lester       14    0   93    3

Richard Holden      6    0   39    0

Gerard Walsh        3    0   20    0

Sam Foley           3    0   20    0

Matt Reinholds      6    0   48    0

Richard Keyse       2    0   22    0