Badgers Cricket Club – Season 2021 Match Reports
This page holds the match reports for all games played during the 2021 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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jake arrived knowing that he needed to score seventeen more runs to tie his team record previous best of 816, set in 2017, and did so whilst adding a few more to end the year with 820 to his name. Only he and his father Mark have ever passed 650 in a season. Meanwhile at the more prosaic end of the statistical spectrum Jon Stokes caught his first catch for the club and hit his first ever six and one of the delights of this season has been watching Jon discover the pleasure to be had in playing cricket. Makes me realise how lucky I am to have been involved in both the game and the club for the whole of my life and to have been able to give the same opportunity to my own offspring.
Mark and Bill put on 62 for the ninth wicket which feels like it ought to be a record, or close to it, but in fact is merely tied for the sixth best ever for that wicket. Not that it need bother either of them as two of those six were recorded by the pair of them, including the record unbeaten 108 and another 62, whilst Mark also had a hand in two of the others.
The game was watched for a fair while by six former Badger stalwarts – Roy Gordon, Steve Goldman, Alan & Dave Tickner, Richard Kemp and Simon Fox – who between them account for more games played (1976 vs. 1772) and ininngs (1662 vs. 1427) than the playing eleven despite the fact that Mark and I are in the top four in both categories.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jake’s unbeaten 63 was his seventh score of fifty or more this season – only himself and his old man have ever recorded more in one year – and takes him into fourth place on the lifetime list of fifties or better, behind only Mark, Pat and AT.
Five balls into his second over Rob reached 1,000 overs bowled for the club, the tenth Badger to send down that many. A sterling effort Rob, I hope the elbow (or whichever bit got injured if I have misunderstood what I have heard) mends soon and you can add to the total next season.
Darrell played his 190th innings for the club, which takes him past Pete Legge into sole possesion of 13th place on the lifetime innings list. Another full season should see him pass 200 and then Barry Passmore.
PLEASE NOTE that there were a number of queries regarding the scoring record when I came to process the game after my holiday, the boring detail of which can be found in the Statistical Sett.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: This was Billy’s ninth 50 for the club and his first since Leigh two years ago. During his innings he passed both Richards, Ward and then Kemp to move into 20th place on the all-time runs scoring chart, finishing 29 runs beyond Kempy and with another 70 required to pass Pete Legge who is next on the ladder.
Amy’s 4 for 18 were her best bowling figures for the club, bettering the 4 for 38 against Ottershaw last season which I signally failed to notice or report at the time, sorry Ames. This one was an interesting mixture with her first two coming via the full run up in a first spell of three overs of inswing bowling, courtesy of a clean bowled and a catch at the wicket, whilst the other two fell to her wiles as a slow bowler, with another pair losing their castles to balls that turned into them appreciably.
With the last ball he bowled in his mandated seven over spell Vinny passed Albert Briscoe into 18th place on the lifetime overs bowled list. The next spot is just under ninety overs away, so you need to get those knees sorted out Vin!?
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jon Stokes first played for us against Mogador Wanderers in early June, purely to make up the numbers and despite apparently never having played in an organised game of cricket in his life before. Setting aside the fact of whether the Badgers brand of cricket counts as organised, he was then brave enough to bowl in the second ever game he played, taking a wicket to boot, managed six overs on his third appearance, and in this one took three wickets to record his best ever bowling including one of the finest clean bowleds I have seen. Kudos Jon, long may you continue to get pleasure out of this wonderful game.
Amy’s unbeaten 82 fell just four shy of her best for the club, recorded against Oxted & Limpsfield in 2019.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Billy’s 5 for 4 are the best bowling figures for the club since Mark’s six wicket haul at Dormansland in 2019, his first five wicket haul in four seasons and his best ever return for the Badgers. At the other end Nat also passed his best ever for the club, taking four wickets for the first time.
This is the lowest all out score against us since a game on Putney Heath against Roehampton in 2014 ended with their ten men recording just 20 and ties the eighth lowest score against us. The match report for that other 26 all out gives information on the even lower scores in club history, which will have to suffice until I find time to write the code to generate a more comprehensive table for inclusion somewhere on this site.
Daniel was most insistent after the game that I find out whether his 23 out of 27 was the best ever percentage of the team’s runs by a single player, and for a completed innings his 85.2% is indeed the highest on record (at lesat going back to 1984, since prior to that I do not have the individual scores in the database). The previous best went unremarked earlier this year when Jake scored 99 out of 118 (83.9%) against Merton and thus passed his old man, who holds the next three places in the list. Again a more complete report will have to wait for a rained off game or some other reason for no Sunday cricket in order for me to create something more comprehensive.
Having played Putney at Woodmansterne earlier in the season this is the first time that the Badgers have played home and away against the same opponent in the same season since Wallington Cottagers in 1984. The away game was at The Grove in Carshalton whilst the location is not recorded in the scorebook but the fixture card lists Rose Hill in Sutton as the home ground. There are no prizes for guessing who is the only person to have played in all four games.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: This is the fifth time we have lost a game by a single run but the first time we have been all out in doing so. The first ever was at Tadworth in 2013 and the most recent Horsley & Send in 2017.
Jake’s innings was his 150th for the club, which puts him in a tie with Albert Briscoe for 17th most in club history. He may yet catch and pass Mick Willmott, who has 155, in 16th spot but the next gap will require a couple of seasons to span. The fourth ball of his first over also took him past John Rourke into 12th place on the lifetime overs bowled list whilst the third of his four wickets was his 200th for the Badgers, the 11th player to reach that plateau. It was also the eighth occasion that he has taken four wickets or more.
Rob passed Alan Wilkes into 22nd place on the all-time appearances slate (although it might actually be 23rd – see the previous comments about Dave Bowerman and 1981) with every chance to move up a couple more slots before the year is out. The final six off Vinny’s ‘over horribilis’ raised him another slot in the ‘my legs are tired’ category of lifetime runs allowed, passing Wardy into 16th place.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Daniel contrived to be in the right place at the right time, and with his best catching boots on, to become the first Badger in club history to snare five outfield catches in the same game – and came within a few inches of it being six as another just eluded his grasp at backward square (for the same batsman to then be caught by Rob at mid on a couple of balls later). As mentioned in the Tadworth report only Mark and Greggy have previously managed four in one game and even the club’s wicket keepers have only bagged five victims caught behind on a single occasion, yours truly at Cudham in 1990, and five total victims three times, with Mark most recently doing so against Ottershaw in 2018 courtesy of a single stumping alongside four catches and me taking a liking to Cudham again in 1995 with two caught behind and three stumped.
One utterly irrelevant aspect of Dan’s feat that attracted my attention, although not until I was writing these words, was the fact that each of his five catches came off a different bowler, which is obviously even more unlikely than anyone taking five catches in the first place. All-in-all then Daniel a quite remarkable feat 😀
Whilst I did say after the game that I would not spend time digging through the old scorebooks, to find whether there had been other instances of three or more catches in a game, I took a quick look and decided it would be feasible to check things out from the catching summary pages that have been written up in the backs of the books for most of those historical seasons and it then didn’t take me long to fill out the couple of seasons for which that summary either did not exist or was incomplete. Therefore I have preserved the information gleaned for posterity in a new section of the Statistical Sett.
Jake recorded his sixth score of fifty or more this season which has moved him into a tie with your correspondent in fourth place on the all-time list of fifties or better. Third place is currently held by Alan Tickner on 44, so at the current rate of progress another season or so should see Jake bearing down on that 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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: A quiet week for all-time milestones but Jake moved himself closer to a historic run scoring season with another 59 unbeaten runs meaning that he is now in fourth place all-time for runs in a season behind only himself in 2017 and his old man in 2010 and 2011.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Dean, having started his Badgers performances with a five-fer on his debut, added a tidy 44 not out, that would have been a maiden 50 in more batsman friendly conditions – a number of his twos would have easily been fours on a dry outfield – to surpass his previous best score by some distance.
With the first of his three wickets Rob tied, and then passed, Foxy in 13th place on the all-time wicket takers slate. The pair ahead of him, Jake and Bill, are also still adding to their tallies and Alan Wilkes in tenth place is more than 50 away, so in all likelihood it will be some time before Rob moves up any further in the list.
A straightforward nick off behind in Rob’s third over brought my 500th dismissal for the Badgers – comprised of 247 wicket keeper catches, 208 stumpings and 45 outfield catches. Mark is not all that far behind me, with his 457 outfield catches plus 18 behind the wicket and four stumpings leaving him just 21 away from that same 500 total. No one else is anywhere near and only the other long-time keeper for the club, Mark’s father Roy, is even halfway there, which once again brings Mark’s remarkable figures into stark focus.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Graham’s three catches took him to and past the 100 catch mark, becoming the fourth Badger to catch that many, behind Mark and the Tickner brothers. Jake is only four behind him, having caught a pair himself and Darrell’s three took him past Brent Noble and Brian Moore into sole possession of sixth place on the list, six adrift of Jake. Dave Tickner in third place has 150 to his name so the trio will only be scrapping with each other for a while yet.
Wardy and I were pondering after the game whether the feat of a pair of threes in the catching department (excluding keepers) was a first, but it turns out that it has happened twice before since 1984 (the earliest season for which we have full data), most recently by Mark and Ben against South Park Manor in 2014 and prior to that by Mark and Alan Tickner at Reigate Cavaliers in 1998. The event is quite rare, outside of the Gordon family, with 62 total occasions, only 26 of which did not feature either Jake (7 times) or Mark (29 times!!) Wardy and Darrell lead the chasing pack, along with AT, on 4 such games, with Greggy and Ben on 3 and no one else having done it more than once – Adrian Cowell, Steve Ducker, Darren Hanley, Allan Butt, Pat Redding, Barry Davenport, Matt Mann and Rob Knew making up that group. Two of Greggy’s were actually four catches in a game, something which Mark has done four times.
Ben’s innings takes him to 133 and past Mike Law into 20th place on the all-time list. Daniel deprived himself of a second fifty for the club by running one short (again!?) early in his innings and then tried to claim it was my fault because I had failed to credit him with a run that he swore blind (at the time, not just after the fact) had brushed a finger tip but which I signalled as byes. His later protestations were cut short when Foxy pointed out that he had given him a run he should not have had early in the innings when forgetting to signal a leg bye, because he was too busy explaining to the bowler why he had turned down an LBW shout (only in Sunday cricket, eh?)
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Seven games into the season and Jake has already passed 500 runs for the year, a feat that has only been achieved 23 times previously in a full season, by six different players including Jake himself. It is the fifth time he has scored 500 or more in a season, tying him with Pat Redding in second place all-time behind only Mark who has done it on eight occasions. The 99 he scored also put him into a tie with Pat, as the only other Badger to record that score, although Pat ran himself out on that figure rather than being not 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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Mark’s 4 for 25 are his best bowling figures since taking 4 for 17 at Blindley Heath in 2019 and the 27th time he has taken four or more wickets in the 410 games he has bowled in.
For the second week running we fielded two debutants for the club – Jon Stokes and Alex Smith – and though neither managed a run, in common with three other Badgers on the day, both performed well in the field. I repeat my statement from last week: welcome both and we hope to see the pair of you again in Badgers’s colours.
Just under halfway through his spell Bill moved into 16th place on the all-time overs bowled list, with Foxy in 15th firmly in his sights before the season is out. Darrell’s two catches took him into and out of a tie with Greggy for 8th place on the outfield catches list, with Brent Noble and Brian Moore another four ahead in joint 6th.
This was the first time since 2009 at Woldingham Village that a Badgers keeper has made three stumpings in an innings and the tenth time since 1984 (the first season for which we have full data, although there were only four occasions prior to that where anyone recorded three or more stumpings in a season), all of them by your correspondent. Three is not a record though, I have recorded four in four of those ten innings, most recently at Leigh in 1997.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jake made his 160th appearance for the club, tying him with Albert Briscoe in 19th place on the all-time list (but see the note about Dave Bowerman and 1981 in the Ham report from a few weeks back), and notched up another unbeaten score. All of the red inkers do wonders for your average and he has moved up above Billy into sixth place on the lifetime averages list with his old man the next target. Of course average is one category where stocks may fall as well as rise but if he carries on the way he has been so far this season then things could get interesting in the Gordon household.
Two more debutants for the club this week, both of whom acquitted themselves admirably, in Max Rayner and James Fair. Max took two wickets in a five over spell and helped Jake add 71 for the fifth wicket whilst James, who claimed not to have played in twenty years but looked like he had been bowling all season, snared a wicket whilst sending down seven overs with an economy rate of exactly 3 and then helped Jake see the ship home during a seventh wicket stand of 45. Welcome both and we hope to see the pair of you again in Badgers’s colours.
With the second ball he sent down – it should have been the first but that was rather wide and did not count – Rob joined Steve Card in tenth place on the all-time overs bowled slate and by the end of his spell was eight overs closer to Darrell in ninth. Once upon a time you would have wished him good luck in trying to catch another active player but my son has morphed into a batsman these days so the eighty odd overs between them might be bridgable in the next season or two if Rob’s body holds up!?
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Nat tied his best bowling from the first game of the season – shame about those wides in the final over – whilst Dog, having toiled away without reward at Leatherhead where he arguably bowled just as well if not better, recorded a four-fer to set himself a tough target for the future and become the 70th Badger to take a four wicket haul or better. I know that we tend to focus on five-fers in the wider world of cricket, but for my book a four-fer is at least the equivalent of a fifty for a batsman in our standard of cricket, especially in a limited overs game – over the lifetime of the club there have been 546 occasions on which four wickets were taken in an innings, by 70 different players, whilst there have 584 scores of 50 or better by 64 discrete Badgers. There is even a case to be made for a fifty matching a three wicket haul but that is a longer discussion that I will save for an occasion when I have more time.
In the middle of his penultimate over Jake passed Rob into 10th for most runs allowed and is now three ahead of him with Alan Wilkes just over three hundred runs ahead of the active pair.
When Ben Rayner kindly charged past a ball from Dog outside his off stump and even more kindly walked despite not being given out by the square leg umpire, I was able to notch up my 450th wicket keeping dismissal for the Badgers (absent any extra ones hidden amongst the games between 1977 and 1983), comprised of a truly oddball ratio of 246 catches to 204 stumpings.
Finally we had an event in the game that I have no memory of ever having happened before in a Badgers game, although there is no way of proving it, in that Daniel contrived to turn a three into a single by running short at both ends, somewhat to Jake’s dismay – although Dan did make up for it somewhat by hitting the next ball for six, but then he could have done that after grounding his bat properly and Jake would have received the three runs he deserved.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: I left the field at the drinks break after my umpiring stint wondering aloud whether this was the first time we have started a season with three half century or better opening partnerships – Matt and Darrell having added 84 together, at what represents a decent clip for the first part of a Badgers’ innings these days, to follow on from Jake and Mark’s 75 at Beechwood and the 63 against Leatherhead by Goldie and Darrell again, both of which were achieved at a rather more common 21st century rate. It turns out that this is an even more rare beast than I was giving it credit for and this is only the second time in club history that we have notched up three consecutive first wicket stands of 50 or more, let alone at the start of a season. In fact, you have to go back a decade to find three in a season never mind three in a row, the only previous instance of which started at Ewhurst in 2003.
For the record there have been at least 114 opening stands of 50 plus (the doubt, as ever, arising from the missing 1981 scorebook which means we know there was at least one in that season, but not whether there were others hiding beneath it). Three in a season has been done 13 times now with four and five in a season 3 times each, so it will be interesting to see if we add to those numbers as the season progresses.
Darrell made his best score for the Badgers since, and other than, his century against Cuddington in 2016, breaking his hoodoo over getting beyond 70 in the process. Early in his innings, with the third of the eleven fours he hit, he passed Albert Briscoe into 14th place on the lifetime runs scored chart. He finished up on 2,652 and needs at least two or three more substantial scores to start moving through the cluster of five Badgers around the 3,000 mark.
Jake’s cameo 39 from just 18 balls, including 24 runs from the first five balls of the over in which he was caught on the long on boundary, means that he is averaging 10 runs for every six balls he has faced since the extended net that comprised the first half of his innings at Beechwood.
Wardy’s rather brief visit to the crease took him past Brent Noble and Ian Gregg into sole possession of eighth place on the all-time innings list on 214. He needs another fifteen to catch Allan Butt in seventh, so that probably won’t be this season.
Rob joined Graham Davenport on 152 games for the club, ostensibly also tied with Dave Bowerman on the same mark, although my best guess is that Dave is missing anywhere between 8 and 15 games played from 1981 where he batted only seven times but had 146 overs to his name. There are several players clustered between 152 and 160 appearances, including two others – Jake and Ben – who are also active, but the 178 by my old man in 18th place on the list is beyond what Dave could possibly have reached. However, there is every possibility that the positions between 19th and 21st will all be occupied by current players 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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: You wait ages for a century and then two come along at once!? Jake notched up his second ton in two weeks, coming within three runs of matching the previous highest ever score for the club – Chris Morgan’s unbeaten 140 against Englefield Green all the way back in August 1980. The 155 (from 96 balls!) that Jake and Darrell put on for the second wicket is the second best all-time for that wicket and their best ever stand together, surpassing by some distance the 106 for the fourth wicket they recorded at Old Whitgiftians in 2019.
The question was asked after the game whether Jake is the first to score back-to-back tons and the answer is no, although he is the first to do it in a single season – Darren Hanley made 104 not out at Ifield in the final game of 1993 and then 108 not out in the first game of 1994 at Pearl Assurance. This was also only the fourth time in club history that any Badgers have made centuries in consecutive games, with the only two other examples being Alan Tickner at Ceraf in 1999 and David Aldwinckle the following week against Ewhurst and Mark at Milton in 2005 in the Sunday game on tour, followed up by Pat Redding the next Saturday at Woldingham Village – it might be worth noting that all four of those innings were recorded opening the batting, as have been 23 of the 36 centuries made since 1984 (prior to that I do not have the information recorded) and almost certainly there aren’t many candidates for having been made in the last twenty and a half overs of an innings.
Darrell was rather overshadowed by Jake in this innings, contributing 31 to the second wicket stand and scoring at almost a third of the rate that his partner did, but his first scoring shot took him to 2,500 runs lifetime for the club, the 15th Badger to ratchet up that many and simply by turning up and playing he passed Foxy into 13th place on the all-time appearances list.
Our final total of 259 was the second highest in club history, just one run shy of the 260 we posted against Streatham & Marlborough in 2005 in another limited overs game. I have to admit to remembering nothing about that particular game but perhaps Mark, Darrell or Wardy do because they (amongst the current regulars) also played.
This game saw three debutants for the Badgers, all courtesy of Andy Curtis inveigling three former running mates out of semi-retirement to enable us to get a full team out this week – thanks to Goldie, Dog and Deano for helping us out of a hole, you are always welcome back – and there was some speculation in the Pitts household as to whether or not this was a record. Turns out that our memories are much too short and Jacqueline herself was one of a trio to play for the first time at Seven Sports in 2006, alongside two others – Simon Clementson and Nick Piper – with a grand total of thirteen appearances between them, but that there was an even more recent (and perhaps slightly more auspicious) occasion in 2009 against South Park Manor which saw the debuts of Jake, Daniel Ward and Andy Iwanoczko who have amassed more than 250 games played for the club.
None of these are the most debutants in a single game since 1984 however, that took place in May 1999 at Valley End where four players made their only ever appearances for the club – Olu Omulo, John Hopkins and two initials only Palmers, thanks for coming.
Dean’s five-fer in his first ever game for the Badgers puts him into a very elite club containing just one other member since 1984 – one Greg Hughes who managed 5 for 14 at Ockley in September 2010 – although again that is not a good augury as that was Greg’s only game for us too.
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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 anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Jake recorded the club’s 45th ton and became the seventeenth Badger to notch up a century in an innings, causing some consternation as declaration time loomed and some surprise amongst the watching team members that he had never previously reached 90. He also moved into a tie with Alan Wilkes and, coincidentally, Ben who turned out for the first time since the middle of August 2019, on 156 games played for the club. This was also the first time that he and his old man had opened the batting together, unsurprisingly since neither of them does so very often – this was only the eighth time that Jake had done so and only the 14th time that Mark has since becoming captain – and their 75 run stand was their fifth best together, with the others being for either the sixth or seventh wickets.
Nat, employing a run up the like of which I have not seen since the early days of the late Bob Willis, recorded his best bowling figures for the club, bettering his two-fer against Tadworth last season by way of a three-fer for one less run.
Wardy’s eleventh hour visit to the crease, to assist Jake in getting to that ton over the final 17 balls of the innings, means that he moves into a tie with Brent Noble and Greggy in eighth place on the all-time list of innings for the club and the six runs he scored during his brief sojourn were just enough to take him past Darren Hanley into ninth on the runs scored slate. Jake is in the place immediately above him, albeit just over 400 runs ahead and pulling away, and Brent Noble in seventh requires him to score more than half as many runs again as he already has to his name, so it will be some time before further advancement occurs.
Darrell played his 226th game for the Badgers, taking him into a tie with Foxy for 13th on the appearances list, whilst his wicket taken saw him become the eighth Badger to reach 250 wickets lifetime, where he has a way to go to catch Greggy in seventh, who is still dangling just four shy of the 300.