Badgers Cricket Club – Season 2016 Match Reports
This page holds the match reports for all games played during the 2016 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 nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Greggy’s rather brief visit to the wicket this week means that only ten other Badgers have more lifetime innings than he does. His 190 is one ahead of both Pete Legge and Graham Ward, but he has a way to go to break into the top ten, with Barry Passmore next on the list at 204.
This was Amy’s third fifty of the season, despite only batting eight times, and she becomes only the seventeenth Badger to record three or more fifties (or better) in a single season. Of those seventeen only five have ever managed to make scores of fifty or better as a higher percentage of their total innings (assuming enough innings to make the season averages) with Pat Redding and Dave Aldwinckle both managing the impressive feat of 50% or more on three occasions each.
The 72 that Rod and Amy put on the seventh wicket, whilst an impressive figure, is not even the best for that wicket this season, with Mark and Rob having bettered it at Malpas, and is ‘only’ the twelfth best all time for that wicket.
PLEASE NOTE that there were a couple of problems arising from the processing of the Westcott scorebook for the second innings, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Darrell’s maiden ton is obviously his best performance for the club, passing the 70 that he made against Blindley Heath in 2011, and is only his third score of fifty or more. It was the first hundred and the highest score for the club since Mark made 124 in June of 2013 at Tadworth, the 42nd century in club history, his unbeaten 115 is joint eleventh highest in club history and he becomes the 16th Badger to record a ton. Impressively he received less than half of the strike whilst scoring 16 more than the batters at the other end who faced five more deliveries than he did.
My investigations into the club’s century makers, in addition to highlighting the fact that best performances is one area where the Badgers database is lacking (since I have balked at the idea of finding a way to hold, and enter, the necessary information for those seasons prior to the full details being available), has also thrown up an error in the fortieth anniversary document which is missing Chris Morgan’s unbeaten 115 against Temple Sheen Eccentrics in May 1986 (a season for which full data was not available when I created the document but has been entered since, so I wonder if I’ve missed any others in compiling that list??)
Jake also had a good day, passing 500 runs for the season for the third year running before taking his 20th outfield catch and thus becoming only the second Badger to take that many or more in a season – even his old man has only done so twice and no Badgers’ wicket keeper has ever taken that many.
This was the club’s highest score this season and the first time we’ve passed 200 this year and won the game. It is also the first home game since we hosted Seveno in July 1998 in the delightful surroundings of the Roundshaw Playing Field (undoubtedly the straw that broke the camel’s back in our decision to become a wholly wandering side after a decade of averaging fewer than four home games per season).
PLEASE NOTE that there were a couple of problems arising from the processing of the Cuddington scorebook for the second innings, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Mark missed his first game for the club since 22nd September 2013 at Ockley and in doing so snapped the longest ever consecutive games played streak in club history at 61 matches. He is also in second and third on that list, with two runs of 37 games each, and has played in a quite remarkable 239 of the club’s past 250 games.
UPDATE: One unusual fact about this game, which I missed at the time but spotted whilst running various ‘items of interest’ programs after the season, was that all ten Badgers were caught out, the only instance of that situation during the period for which I have full data (back to 1985 at the time of writing).
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Greggy joined Graham Ward and Pete Legge on 189 innings, tied for 11th most in club history whilst Darrell passed Pat Redding and is just one behind David Winter on 122 in 21st.
PLEASE NOTE that there was a problem with our second innings scorebook that has meant changes to the scores for Jake and Matt, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Mark took his 400th outfield catch in this game, a feat achieved in just 463 matches and comfortably more than twice as many as anyone else has managed.
Wardy played his 190th innings for the club, and a good one it was too, which takes him out of a tie with Pete Legge and into sole possession of eleventh place on the all-time list. He will need to start playing regularly again to move up further though, because he needs to get beyond 200 to threaten tenth spot and he has Greggy snapping at his heels.
Amy added a second unbeaten 50 to last week’s and beat her previous best score for the club by two runs. Incrementally beating your own scores being a great way to keep your name in the headlines but something tells me that it is something we will see more of!? The undefeated 78 that she and Ben added in winning the game is the best partnership for the fifth wicket this season, beating the 63 that Darrell, Ben and Rob put on at Malpas, and yet again she was the dominant partner scoring 54 off 38 balls whilst Ben contributed 20 from 26. In fact our scoring rate was good all day, 192 runs from 187 balls, and only got better when I ran myself out.
Jake passed Richard Kemp into 18th place on the lifetime run scorers chart and Andy Parker into 15th place on the wicket takers list. Pete Legge is now immediately above him on both lists and close enough that he could pass in what remains of this season. In fact I would argue that 11th on the wicket taking and 16th on the run scoring are possible before the season is out.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Chairman Al played his 288th game for the club, which is far enough ahead of Brian Moore’s 284 (or more) for me to be fairly certain that he has now played more games for the Badgers than all bar five others. Here’s hoping that he still has a few more left in the tank!!
Halfway through his innings Bill passed 1000 runs for the Badgers, becoming the 31st member of the club to reach that total. For someone who was always considered a bowler when he played league cricket you have to wonder whether Tadworth missed a trick given that, at 38.8, he has (as of this writing) the fifth best batting average in club history, behind some illustrious names and just ahead of the Skipper.
Amy nearly doubled her previous best score for the club, from two weeks ago against Banstead, in making her maiden fifty for the Badgers and thus becoming the third member of the Gordon clan to achieve that feat (something her grandfather never quite managed). The notable thing about her innings, from my umpiring vantage point, was how – in contrast with the rest of the Badgers’ batters, especially Darrell and Rod – from her very first shot, a sweetly timed cut between the two cover fielders, she pretty much unerringly found the gaps rather than the field.
Mark and Amy now have two fifty partnerships together but the contrast between the two could not be more stark. Admittedly Amy was probably only nine years old for Broadbridge Heath game in 2011 but that day she made none of the 52 runs that the pair put on. On this occasion they put on 81 from 79 balls of which Mark made 20 from 32 whilst his daughter was responsible for 45 off 47 deliveries.
We have now played eighteen games without a drawn game (since last year’s game at Ockley) which is the second longest stretch without a draw in club history. Strangely, given that we did not play our first limited overs game until 1989, the longest dates back to the very first season, when having drawn the second game of the club’s existence we then went 32 games without another – until 15th July 1961.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Bill’s bowling figures of 5 for 12 are the best of the season so far, surpassing Paul Reeve’s 5 for 29 in the Horley game.
As presaged in the Tadworth statistical notes Jake moved past Richard Ward into nineteenth place on the all-time run scorers list, his penultimate scoring shot doing the trick, and needs just ten more to pass Richard Kemp into eighteenth. His unbeaten 60 run partnership with Rod is also the best second wicket stand of the season to date, nearly doubling the 34 that Rod and Ricky put on at Oxted.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Rob’s wicket in this game was his one hundredth for the Badgers, the 25th bowler to reach that milestone. It would probably be unfair of me to point out that it took him more than 250 more overs to do so than Billy, but both contributions are equally valuable so I won’t make anything (much) of it!?
Amy’s unbeaten 30 was her highest score for the Badgers, beating her previous best of 22 from the game at Weybridge Vandals last year. Something told me that there would be much more to come, but since I’m writing this after the Blindley Heath game then I will comment there instead.
Paul Reeve also made his best score for the club, albeit from just five games, with his dogged 31 also being the team’s top score for the innings.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jake’s 79 was his second highest ever score for the Badgers, behind only the 89 that he scored at Oxted last year. His partnership of 55 with his old man was the sixth time they have put on at least fifty together but the first time they’ve done so for the fourth wicket (perhaps unsurprisingly given how rarely Mark bats above seven).
PLEASE NOTE that I had some fun and games with the processing of the Smallfield Manor scorebook for the first innings, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: The first of Bill’s victims in this one was his one hundredth wicket for the club, the 24th Badger to take that many. He is also comfortably in second place in terms of average, ahead of most of those who played in an era where runs were (or at least seemed to be) considerably harder to come by than they are nowadays.
Rob played his 100th game for the club, just two weeks after Jake, and becomes the fortieth Badger with that many appearances.
PLEASE NOTE that I had some fun and games with the processing of the Ripley scorebook for the first innings, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Wardy’s catch in this one took him out of a tie with stalwarts Brent Noble and Brian Moore on 89 lifetime catches, and into sole possession of fourth place in the Badgers outfield catching ranks. The top three are not on the radar just yet with the Tickners half a world away and Mark off in the stratosphere somewhere.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Having won a game by a single run for only the second time in club history just a couple of weeks ago we managed to lose one by the same margin for only the second time, with the previous occasion coming against Tadworth in June 2013.
The 74 that Rob and Mark put on for the seventh wicket is only tied for tenth highest for that wicket which, if nothing else, is an indicator of how topsy turvy our batting order can be. In a strange coincidence, the record seventh wicket partnership came in that one run loss at Tadworth!?
This was Jake’s 100th game for the club and he became the 39th Badger to play that many games. As an indicator of how times have changed over the past forty years, I didn’t get to play my first until I was seventeen ☹
PLEASE NOTE that I had some fun and games with the processing of the scorebooks for the first innings, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: This is the first time in club history (best as I can tell, and certainly going back to 1985, the first season for which we have full data to this point) that eight different Badgers took a wicket in a game.
For anyone wondering about the batting order, it was based on descending order of runs conceded in the Iscoyd innings, with Matt as wicket-keeper considered to be responsible for all extras!?
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: This is only the second time in club history that the Badgers have won a game by a single run, the previous occasion being against the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in July 2004.
Paul Reeve took his first five-fer for the club in only his second game. Nothing like setting high expectations Paul :)
I thought that our subsiding from 53 for no wicket to 63 for 7 was an impressive collapse, but arguably the home side managed to surpass it by stumbling from 62 for none to 63 for 5. Obviously I don’t track opposition partnerships and collapses but five wickets for one run would tie a Badgers record whilst ten runs for seven wickets is a long way off a record for us, with the worst such in recent times being our decline from 9 for nought to 15 for 7 against Merrow in September 2012 (although I seem to have missed the significance of the feat at the time). There are two even more spectacular seven wicket declines in early club history with a tumble from 26 for 3 to 31 all out against Barnes AC in 1963 being matched in a 1978 game against Sutton Railway where 24 for 3 became 29 all out.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: With his first scoring shot in this game Jake passed Barry Passmore into 20th place on the all-time run scorers list and, with the way he has been scoring in recent times, you have to suspect that the next four or five spots are within his grasp over the coming weeks.
Mark snared three catches and a stumping in this one, the first time since Woldingham in June 2009 that a Badgers’ wicket-keeper has had four dismissals to their name, and the first time since Dormansland in May 2005 that that included at least three caught behind.
PLEASE NOTE that I did not play in this game but had some fun and games with the processing of the Tadworth scorebooks, the details of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Bill’s 83 is the highest score for the Badgers so far this year and is his second best for the club, behind the maiden ton he scored back in 2008 at Chiltern Gipsies (whilst he was still ‘Blow-in Bill’). The 103 that he and Jake compiled for the third wicket is 16th highest for that wicket but the first time that we’ve had a 100 run third wicket partnership since 2010.
This is only the fourth time in club history that we have scored more than 200 runs batting first and lost the game, with the most recent being two years ago on tour when Iscoyd & Fenns Bank chased down 207 (on a much smaller ground).
Bagshot recorded the unusual feat of both a team hat-trick and a separate individual hat-trick. Alec, Pete and Bill fell to consecutive deliveries, the first two coming from the last two balls of a Jonathan Atkinson over, and the latter from the first ball of the over at the other end. Atkinson then completed his personal hat-trick, having Rob caught from the first ball of his next over. Much to the amusement of all and sundry when asked after the game if it was his first such the blase reply was that he’d taken nine or ten of them in his time, so nothing special from his point of view.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Greggy became the ninth Badger to turn out 250 times for the club, having made his debut on 16th May 1998 against Rowan.
Darrell had a double milestone in this game, taking his fiftieth catch in his 150th game – becoming the 13th Badger to take fifty catches and the 22nd to make 150 appearances for the club.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Darrell passed 1000 runs for the club, becoming the 30th Badger to reach that milestone, but that was overshadowed by a family milestone for Jake, who in passing 1461 runs surpassed his grandfather Roy’s lifetime mark, despite Roy having 231 innings over 35 seasons!? This puts Jake, at such a tender age, into 23rd lifetime for runs scored with the next two slots up for grabs in next week’s game.
The 62 that Mark and Bill put on for the ninth wicket, of which Bill made just three whilst the skipper hogged the fairly awful bowling at one end and deposited much of it into the trees at the bottom of the ground, is the fourth highest for that wicket.
Whilst looking for interesting things to report from this game I noticed that all six Badgers’ bowlers had taken wickets. Investigating this further it appears that that is not all that unusual (16 previous occurrences since 1985, most recently at Tadworth in 2014) but that I had failed to notice that seven different bowlers took wickets at Ham & Petersham, only the second time that that has happened (which makes Bill the first ever Badger to go wicketless whilst seven other bowlers took wickets, since at Reigate Cavaliers in 1994 all seven who bowled took a wicket).
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: One of the ‘advantages’ of processing every scorecard in detail is that I can dream up ever more ridiculous items of statistical trivia, and this week’s relates to Bill’s miserliness with the ball and impressive patience with the bat, in that 81 of the 96 balls that he was directly involved in were dots – 33 of 36 whilst bowling and 48 of 60 whilst batting.
This is the second time that Jake has scored a fifty and taken four wickets, and whilst I suspect that there are a few others buried amongst the pre-1985 matches, it is a feat which has been achieved on only eight other occasions dating back to the first season for which we have the full data. David Aldwinckle, Alan Tickner and Mark Gordon are the only others to have done so, with the first two having two such performances each whilst Mark has clocked up four, including the only five-fer and fifty, at Maori-Oxshott in 2004. In addition that fourth wicket took Jake out of a tie for 16th place (with David Winter) on the wicket takers list, into sole possession of that place. He has moved up several slots over the last few weeks but needs another 17 to tie 15th spot.
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My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: This was at least the thirteenth one wicket win in Badgers history. There may be one or two more hidden away but prior to 1985 the database does not record the number of players, since the full data has to have been entered for that, so I have to assume that only nine wickets down represents a one wicket win. From 1985 onwards there have been four matches where we did not field eleven but won by one wicket, with two seven downs, one eight down and the exceptional case at Malpas on tour where we played a twelve a side and thus were ten wickets down when winning by one wicket!?
Amy recorded her best bowling figures for the club – three for 25 – by virtue of it being the first time she’s taken three wickets. One suspects that there is plenty more to come in that arena. On the subject of bowling, this was Bill’s fiftieth game for the Badgers and only the second time in that span when he has gone wicketless whilst all ten opposition wickets fell (the other being Horsley & Send in 2014).
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: With the second scoring shot of his innings, a two past mid off, Mark became the highest run scorer in club history, finishing the day on 9,617 lifetime runs for the Badgers, some 51 beyond Alan Tickner’s existing mark. Onward to the ten thousand then Skip 😉 Appropriately he went on to post his 67th fifty for the club, to put with the five centuries he has to his name, and also to top score in a Badgers innings for the 92nd time, which means he does so one quarter of the times he bats (even more impressive when you consider where he puts himself in the batting order most of the time – his lifetime average batting position is 5.8)
Bill’s 49 is the fifteenth time (dating back to 1985, which is the earliest season for which we have full records at this point) that a Badger has finished on that somewhat frustrating score. Three of those were not outs, so ten other Badgers have experienced being dismissed on that score, with Justin Ducker having done so twice.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: With the line at his mercy the skipper contrived to score just over half of the nine runs he required to pass Alan Tickner for most lifetime runs scored for the club. The focus shifts to next week for that one. Greggy played his 248th game for the club, which might take him into ninth place lifetime ahead of Richard Kemp. As ever the confusion arises because of the missing 1981 scorebook and by my estimation Kempy probably played one more game than he is officially credited with, so whenever Greggy next plays he will definitely be the ninth placed Badger in terms of matches played.
On a rather more mundane note I played a game in a fortieth consecutive season for the club, leaving Dave Tickner in second place on the all time list for both seasons played and consecutive seasons played. To add a nice round number to the occasion, I also played my 450th innings, still some considerable way behind Alan Tickner’s club record of 505.