Badgers Cricket Club – Season 2012 Match Reports
This page holds the match reports for all games played during the 2012 season. The links below provide a direct route to the report for each game plus access to the reports for seasons from 2000 to the present. It is also possible to link to them from the associated rolling results page entries and I hope to extend that facility to include all of the historical results pages, once I’ve figured out the best method of doing so.
Unless otherwise noted both summary and full match reports were written by your host and webmaster, Steve Pitts, as were all editorial comments and statistical notes. For reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, the reports are laid out in reverse chronological order, but hopefully the links above make that an unimportant detail.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: Merrow’s score does not represent any sort of record, with a variety of opponents having bettered it on six other occasions, the highest score being Blindley Heath’s 276 in 2007. However, the margin of victory is the second worst in club history (in terms of run difference), with only the club’s very first game against Riverside in 1959 having a larger gap – 180 runs in that case.
This game represented the fourteenth official game of the season, the fewest we’ve played since 1997, which in itself was the fewest since 1971. I cannot readily work out how many games were lost to the weather in previous years, but bearing in mind that the Badgers did not start playing games in September until the late 70s, you’d have to guess that 2012 was close to being the worst ever (and certainly felt like it, subjectively). Possibly partly as a consequence, the 19 players that we fielded during the season represents the fewest since at least 1981 – a testament to the loyalty of many that did play, with fifteen of those turning out in at least half the team’s games.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: Tadworth’s sub-100 score is the first time that we’d dismissed them for less than 150 in a full game since we started playing them again back in 2006.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: Somewhat to my surprise when I came to check on it, the 53 that Guy and Darrell compiled is only the joint seventh best ninth wicket partnership.
Wardy played his 150th innings, the 15th Badger to reach that milestone, with Greggy needing just three more to join him in that exclusive club.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: Jake’s 24 overs is the second most in a single game in Badgers’ history with only Alan Wilkes having bowled more (25, against Dormansland in July 1992 – and in a neat coincidence they both conceded 65 runs). It may well be the longest ever unbroken spell, given that Wilko bowled his in an innings of 52 overs and the most likely explanation of the overs bowled would be that he changed ends at some point in the innings. Other explanations are possible but the scorebook shows no spell ends so we’ll never be certain. I was a little surprised to discover that nobody else, not even Brian Moore, had bowled more than 23 overs, but then I suppose Brian rarely needed that many overs to bowl the opposition out!? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next four slots in the list are occupied by Alan Tickner, who bowled more than 22 overs on four occasions between 1974 and 2004. All of the preceding paragraph has the usual caveat that I cannot check individual performances for 1981 due to the missing scorebook.
During his innings Wardy passed 2000 runs, the 15th Badger to do so – you need to work on those big innings though Graham, as you have the lowest highest score of anyone in the 2000 club. Whilst on the subject of batting records, Peter’s 44 (from just 28 balls) was not only his best score for the Badgers but his best in any form of organised cricket and we’ll look forward to a few more like it please Mr. Snook :)
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: The 85 that Mark and Pat put on for the seventh wicket was only the fourth best in club history, and for once neither of the pair features in the best – the 97 that Alan Tickner and Jimmy Burke put on against Northcliffe back on 28th July 1974 (second oldest record partnership on the books). Jimmy batted 35 times for the club and made a grand total of 121 runs, so the 26 he contributed that day represented riches indeed, even if it wasn’t quite enough to carry the team to an unlikely victory (having been 40 for 6 chasing 156 we then subsided from 137 for 7 to 140 all out).
Perhaps surprisingly 19 for 6 is not the most parlous position that we’ve found ourselves in since 1987 (the point from which I have full fall of wicket details), with that honour falling to the South Beckenham game in 2002, when we were 17 for 6 chasing just 59 to win.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: This was the lowest score by a Badgers’ opponent since Montrose were bowled out for 15 (with ten men, which included yours truly) on 20th May 1978. Brian Moore took 4 for 3 in 8 overs that day and the Badgers scored the runs in just four overs, with Pete Legge duplicating Alec’s feat of making a golden duck, albeit not from the first ball of the innings.
The previous lowest score since then was Bletchingly’s 28 all out on 30th July 1988 when Alan Tickner took 7 for 15. We took 8.4 overs to knock off the runs on that occasion, although I did win the game with a six :) There have been four other scores lower than 26 by Badgers opposition: Montrose 20 (2nd July 1966, Brian Moore’s 10 for 2 game – although we took 14.5 overs and lost five wickets in winning that one); Sherwood Park 17 (7th July 1973, chasing 133, Brian Moore 8 for 6); Dormansland 21 (17th Jul 1976, chasing 161, Alan Tickner 7 for 7); and Meadowbank 15 (7th May 1977, chasing 65 with eleven men, Brian Moore 7 for 8).
26 matches the lowest ever total by the Badgers, all the way back on 9th July 1960 chasing Waddon Park’s 136, one of three totals under 30 in that season, which themselves represent half of the sub-30 scores in club history, with the most recent being 29 against Sutton Railway on 15th July 1978.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: Greggy played in his 200th game for the club, the 14th Badger to play that many games (the caveats, expressed below in relation to Darrell’s 100th appearance, about others possibly having reached the milestone don’t really apply at 200+, especially since I have assumed that Pete Legge will have played in at least one game in which he did not get to bat over the 19 seasons for which we don’t have full information for him).
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
View the scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: A couple of milestones this week with Greggy reaching 1000 runs for the club, the 27th Badger to pass that landmark, and Darrell playing in his 100th match, the 31st (or so) to play that many games (although the usual provisos apply about lack of full detail on games played prior to 1987, the fact that we have some cases prior to 1988 where we cannot be sure of all those that played in a game, and of course the missing 1981 scorebook, so there may be anywhere from two to six others to add to the 30 definites).
View the scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
View the scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: This was only the second time that Greggy has opened the batting, with the other being on tour when the order had been drawn from a hat the previous evening, and he top-scored! His contribution leaves him just 14 short of 1000 lifetime runs for the club.
We’ve played Leigh 18 times previously but all of those had been on Saturdays so this was the first Sunday game between the two clubs.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: The unbroken 102 that Mark and Graham compiled to win the game is the fourth best sixth wicket stand of all time, with the other three all having been recorded in this millennium and all featuring Mark.
After abortive attempts at the previous two games this match was a first for the Badgers, in that it was scored electronically using an Android tablet and the CricHQ app, which is available at no cost to ECB-affiliated clubs (and pretty much anyone else) thanks to the Nat West Cricket Force initiative. A big thank you to Jacqueline for doing the honours and for putting up with (and ignoring) Daniel’s blandishments in an attempt to take over.
View the scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but a lack of inspiration, perspiration and contribution has left us bereft in 2012
Statistical Notes: The skipper’s seven-fer represents his best ever return for the club, with his previous best coming all the way back in August 2002. Given that there are only four Badgers who have taken more wickets than Mark (and at some point in the not too distant future that will be only three), I was a little surprised to discover that he had not snared six or more wickets in an innings on a previous occasion.
With the other three wickets all being run outs, this was the first time since Brian Moore’s 10 for 2, that a Badger has taken all of the wickets credited to the bowlers in a completed innings. Conversely, against Reigate Cavaliers in 1994 there were seven different wicket takers. As to the three run outs in an innings, that has happened twice before – against Milton on tour in 2002 and against Tadworth in 2008.
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Summary: Still no sign of the English summer, but finally we were able to get the season underway on a grey and bitterly cold day and on a pitch that (not unsurprisingly) was slow and (sometimes very) low. You have to feel sorry for any groundskeeper trying to prepare pitches given the weather in recent weeks and the wicket keepers needed some sympathy too – conceding 27 byes between the pair of them as the ball scuttled around at ankle height. The Badgers took to the field with two debutants amongst their number, both of whom acquitted themselves well in the field – Alec Cochrane didn’t have many chances to show us what he could do, but Peter Snook pulled off several neat diving stops and his maiden catch.
The Stoke innings was definitely a ‘game of two halves’ with openers Lo (93) and Cooke (45) putting the bowling to the sword, riding their luck and, especially in Lo’s case, hitting the bad balls very, very hard. Jake’s introduction as second change did slow the scoring rate a little, but the Stoke pair eventually found ways of scoring off him too, and it wasn’t until Darrell pouched a neat caught and bowled that the pair were eventually parted for 150 in the 23rd over. It didn’t look much like this would change anything, with the new bat clouting three fours from the last four balls of the over and knocking Darrell out of the attack but Jake changed the face of the game in the next over beating Lo’s forward prod to have him stumped before clean bowling the new bat second ball. Jake finished with very creditable figures of 2 for 35 from his eight overs and the remaining overs would be shared by Allan and Guy, with the former keeping things tight at one end whilst the latter mopped up at the other end, eventually finishing with 5 for 25. Al did get his reward in his last couple of overs and mopped up the last of the tail to finish with 2 for 17 from 7.2 overs that included the only two maidens of the innings and Stoke had subsided to a still formidable 212 all out.
Steve and Darrell got the reply started slowly but when Steve was dismissed with the score on 19 the top order folded spectacularly (echoes of last year??) to leave the skipper striding to the wicket with his team six down for just 34 runs and more than fifteen overs already used up. This was a repair job that always going to be beyond even Mark’s considerable powers but he and Ben did reclaim a little respectability, adding 54 for the seventh wicket, with Mark bagging the lion’s share with 35. At that point I set us a target – reach 120 so that we had at least scored as many runs as ten of Stoke’s batters – which Guy (22) eventually ensured that we surpassed by adding 26 runs for the last wicket before being dismissed to leave us with a final score of 123 from 35.2 overs.
Statistical Notes: Allan’s seven ball nought not out was his 200th innings for the club, becoming the tenth player to bat that many times, whilst Darrell reached 500 overs early in his short spell, becoming the 23rd Badger to send down that many.
One strange statistical anomaly to note, Extras provided 30 of our runs in this game (mostly wides and byes) which is something that doesn’t happen often – 30 or more batting extras have been recorded only nineteen times over the past twenty-six seasons and only twice over the past three seasons, both of them against Stoke!?