Badgers Cricket Club – Season 2023 Match Reports
This page holds the match reports for all games played during the 2023 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: Our seventh and final debutant of the season, Addy (or Adi AKA Adersh Raj), was another last minute loan from Woodmansterne – the fourth of this season on top of two others the year before – and had the best debut on record (at least from a batting perspective) adding exactly 100 runs to the two wickets and a catch he secured during the home side’s innings. This was the 51st time that a Badger has recorded a ton, Addy is the eighteenth different player to make a century for the club, and the sixth to record exactly 100 (although only Mark has been dismissed on that figure previously, at Milton on the 2005 tour).
In contrast to Addy’s first outing, this was Bill’s 150th game for the club, the 26th Badger to turn out on that many occasions, and two balls into his third over Jake reached the 1,000 over plateau for the club, becoming only the eleventh Badger to reach that milestone.
This is the first time we have played in October for 35 years, with the last occasion being a second consecutive visit to Newchapel & Horne in 1988 after the two sides had had such a good game on the last weekend in September that both returned to repeat the dose a fortnight later.
When Addy passed fifty he became the ninth player to record a fifty for the club in 2023, which is the most to do so in a single season since 2007, when ten different Badgers did so. That remains the highest ever, with nine also recorded in 2005 and thus this season has seen the second most number of players score a half century at least once in the year.
Finally, those not interested in the depths of club history can switch off now, but I spent some time spelunking in the pre-1984 scorebooks this week in order to confirm my statement about Addy’s ton being the best ever debut score, which I was able to do. The previous best was the 74 made by Greg Pynt a little more than forty years ago against Lingfield in June 1983. No scorecard to link to for that one but I can tell you that Greg made 74 of 140 all out and was last out having batted at five. He then went on to take 5 for 23 from nine overs as the home side clung on for a draw at 115 for 9.
Now arguably Greg’s debut was as impressive as Addy’s, given the five wicket haul, but I am inclined to lay the most impressive debut of all time in the lap of the inestimable Brian Moore, who first turned out for the Badgers in the third game of the club’s existence against Banstead Methodists at Rose Hill back on 30th May 1959. We batted first and Brian scored a relatively paltry 43 batting at three as the Badgers scraped together 108 all out from 30 overs. He then opened the bowling, took two wickets in the first over, bowled unchanged from one end for eleven overs and finished with 8 for 14 as Banstead were bundled out for 54.
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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: Not a statistical note at all really, but a big thank you to Dan Ward without whose connections at Cranleigh we would almost certainly not have managed to generate any statistics at all this week as there was nobody looking for a visiting side this late in the year.
As for genuine statistical information, it is a little thin on the ground this week so I am going to go with the oddball fact that this was Dean’s second 34 of the season, having previously made the same score (off 33 fewer deliveries!?) against Ockley a few weeks ago. Given that Darrell also made 34 in that same game, albeit unbeaten, and we have a few facts to ascertain. This is the first time anyone has made 34 twice in the same season, the first individual score of 34 since Mark last did so, at Teddington in 2018, and the first time that 34 has been scored on three different occasions in the same season since 2014 when Matt Smith, Pete Snook and Mark again made that total. Looking back to 1984, which is the earliest season for which I have full data, there have been 41 occasions when 34 has been recorded, four of them by total extras which is also the most by any individual, with both Mark and I having recorded that figure four times, although two of his were unbeaten.
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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: Obviously not much to say about a contest that only lasted nine balls other than that it is almost certainly the shortest ever game in club history and certainly the shortest that has been recorded. The previous shortest in terms of balls bowled is the Shepperton game earlier this season whilst in terms of runs scored it would be the G.A.M. game from 1991 where they took nearly twelve overs to score fourteen runs.
NOTE that as promised I have updated last week’s report with more detail on gaps between matches against a club.
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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: Matt’s 4 for 22 represents his best bowling figures for the club, bettering the 3 for 4 he recorded in just two overs against Hampton Wick in 2017.
Mark has now played in 579 games, sufficiently far beyond the 575 registered for Alan Tickner that he is now definitely the second most capped player for the Badgers, behind only yours truly.
We last played Warlingham on 27th July 1968, a match that was also drawn, a gap of more than 55 years. This is almost certainly the longest ever such hiatus in club history but I need to write some code (or at least a complicated nested SQL statement) in order to confirm that and figure out what is second longest. No promises but I might get to that on Monday.
Update: the gap between the two games turned out to be 20,133 days during which time we played 1,039 other matches and it is the longest such gap by just over nine years (3,353 days to be precise) with Old Whitgiftians in 2016 being the previous record gap and the rest of the list being unchanged from the last paragraph of the Hook & Southborough statistical notes from last season.
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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: The two catches that Ben snared moved him into and out of a tie with Foxy for tenth place on the list of lifetime outfield catches. Let’s hope he continues to turn out and move further up the ladder.
When I spoke to Jake later in the evening he was under the impression that he had scored 66, but it turns out that that figure was later corrected in our book (it was always right in theirs) to a 68. The former would have been more interesting as Jake has never made a 66, but as per last week’s report the 68 is much more commonplace. This was his 181st innings for the club, which puts him in a tie with Foxy for 15th place on the all-time list, and also his 47th not out, which as also mentioned last week puts him in a tie for tenth with Allan Butt. He obviously likes batting at Blindley Heath, having scored 430 runs in nine innings over the past eleven seasons at an average of 71.66… and it turns out that the dismissed for 68 also happened against the same opponent.
The 13 runs that Darrell scored whilst helping Jake get us over the line were sufficient to take him just past Wardy into ninth place on the all-time run scoring charts. Obviously Graham has the chance to respond and make it a neck and neck race for a while, but the pair of them need to amass the better part of 1,300 runs to catch up with Brent Noble in eighth place. The fact that Darrell was still there at the end of the innings takes him out of a tie with Dave Tickner, who spectated for a while during our innings, and into one with Foxy for sixth place on the list of lifetime not outs.
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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
No proper report, summary or otherwise, for this one but there was a key moment in the game that I feel was worthy of note, in that the young lad Gareth who opened the batting for the home team had a supreme moment of hubris that came back to bite him and arguably turned the game on its head. With the innings just nine overs old, the team score on 57 for no wicket and his own score on 40 from just 27 balls he loudly announced to his own team on the sidelines to be ready as he was going to retire when he reached fifty.
Whilst this caused much discontent among the visitors it also seemed to have a transformative effect on both his team and Gareth himself as thereafter he barely managed to get the ball off the square, immediately playing out a maiden from Richie, and not long after another from Nat. In the meantime the change bowlers, Billy and the aforementioned Nat, started to make inroads into the Banstead top order to the extent that when Gareth hit the first ball of Nat’s third over to Jake at deep mid on he had added just a single to his own score from 17 balls whilst his team had slumped to 67 for 4 and by the time drinks were taken after 20 overs found themselves 80 for 6.
Statistical Notes: Jake, despite having spent most of the day to that point in the bar, racked up his second ever score of 69 (oddly, he now has pairs of 67, 68 and 69 with one undefeated in each case, plus three scores of 70) in just 41 balls, He brought his fifty up in 34 balls, exactly a third as many as I needed the week before!? His not out moves him into a tie with Greggy for 11th plave on the lifetime unbeaten innings list with Allan Butt just one more up the road in tenth.
Halfway through the fifth of his seven overs in this game Bill passed John Rourke into 13th place on the lifetime overs bowled slate and the first of his two wickets took him out of a tie with Steve Card and into sole possesion of tenth place on the wicket takers list. Jake is just seven ahead of him in ninth place so that could be spicy for a while!?
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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 my first fifty for the club since Horley in 2014 (when I immediately pulled up lame) and upon updating the statistics after entering this game I have discovered that the final run I scored was my 8,000th for the club, the third Badger to score that many. The three fifty partnerships in one innings is the first time that has been done since South Brent on the 2018 tour.
After his rather inauspicious debut last week Joe Bonass-Ward turned out again this week and his first bowling spell for the Badgers was very tidy indeed, featuring 38 dot balls in his eight over spell and only denied his first victims by our inability to cling on to the chances he created for the slip cordon. He also sent down the delivery that resulted in the first ever ‘ball striking a protective helmet’ penalty against the Badgers, albeit that it was a perfectly reasonable straight one that went straight through Mark and straight to the offending helmet.
Bill recorded his 211th wicket for the club, and as presaged in the Ewell report thus ties Steve Card for tenth in the lifetime list. His 57th catch also puts him into a tie for 14th place with Pete Legge on the list of lifetime outfield catches. Darrell played his 214th innings and thus passes Ian Gregg and Brent Noble into ninth place on that slate, whilst his 52nd not out puts him into joint seventh with Dave Tickner on that list but still in the middle of a very congested group such that three more will see him tie and pass both Foxy and Brian Moore in the two places above him.
This was the fifth consecutive game in which the Badgers batted first, something that has not happened since early 1999 (perhaps indicative of why we generally choose to field first is that we didn’t win any of those, recording two draws and three losses).
Ockley very kindly sent down 20 wides to bolster our score, and the last time that happened was at Leigh in 2011 with Stoke D'Abernon going one better earlier the same season. I do not have the data recorded fully before 2008 so cannot say how often it has happened prior to that point.
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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: Two debutants this week, who possibly picked the wrong game to turn out for us, with both Joe Bonass-Ward and Sam Bugler recording ducks and not getting a chance to contribute in the field. In stark contrast this was Mark’s 575th game for the Badgers which might tie him for second place all-time with Alan Tickner, or it might put him anywhere from one to three appearances behind (see the equivalent paragraph in the 2020 Ottershaw report, when I reached that same mark, for the background to that statement).
Jake’s slightly fortuitous (in terms of dropped catches survived) not out in this game puts him in a tie with Brent Noble for 12th place on the lifetime unbeaten innings list.
Obviously we have no way of knowing whether this is as unique an occurrence as it feels but poor Rob contrived to be dismissed twice for a golden duck in the same innings having been recalled after being bowled by a ball which he clearly was not ready to receive but then nicking off the follow up. To add insult to insult, he took a bit of tap when bowling and in conceding a six off his very first ball went past Jake into ninth place on the lifetime runs allowed list. Potentially the pair could jockey for position for some time to come, so I will not report further on that ‘race’ until they catch up with Dave Tickner in eighth.
This was the Badgers worst eleven player score since being bowled out for 42 chasing a Reigate Cavaliers total of 170 back in 2002 and happens to tie with a ten person effort chasing 168 against Broadbridge Heath in 2008. You have to go back to a Wallington Cottages game in 1984 to find a worst effort batting first although there are plenty more lurking in the history books, especially in the early days, with the 26 against Waddon Park in 1960 being the nadir. Clearly I am getting worse, as I scored four in those other three games, but still doing better than both my old man and uncle Allan, who both got ducks in the 1960 game!?
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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 first game we have had abandoned after it started since the 2017 game at Banstead and the first where that happened before both teams had had a chance to bat since Horlay in 2011. As per the notes in that match report, this game will count towards the averages with the same reasoning as back then.
It turned out not to be much of a game, but it was Jake’s 200th appearance for the club, becoming the 17th Badger to play that many 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: With his third wicket of the day Bill passed Alan Wilkes into eleventh place on the lifetime wicket takers list for the club with 209. Steve Card in tenth is only another two away and then he is chasing Jake and Darrell. With the final ball of the match Billy also tied Dave Bowerman for 14th place in the list of lifetime overs bowled. Johnny Rourke in 13th is not all that far ahead so Billy ought to move into 13th on that list before very long.
Darrell played his 267th game for the club, taking him past Mick Willmott into ninth place on that list and his 212th innings over that span took him into a tie with Richard Kemp in 11th place on that slate.
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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 first time that we’ve ended up with both openers retiring due to a local rule limiting runs – the closest we have come previously being Malpas on the 2012 Tour where Wardy and Mark both retired from numbers two and three. This has caught me out because the logic that I have in both the scorecard checker program and the database and associated Python scripts only caters for a third party in a partnership, not a fourth. This was not an issue with the Malpas case because both retirements were (incorrectly) recorded as the fall of a wicket but it has caused me some trouble this time. As of the time of writing these notes I have corrected the Python code but the detailed scorecard still only shows three names.
Theoretically this was the ninth best opening partnership ever, but since it features four players it is going to exist in a kind of limbo from the perspective of the record book because it is a different beast to all of the other opening partnerships. To be honest this has caused me some anguish over how it should be handled, but for now you will find it in the list of first wicket partnerships and once it has been published I will find it very difficult to change my mind.
Matt Mann played his 100th game for the club, becoming the 44th Badger to play in that many games. Rob batted for the 122nd time for the Badgers in this game, thus tying David Winter for 24th most innings all-time and Bill also joined a one-time club stalwart with his 103rd innings putting him into a tie with Alan Wilkes in 28th.
When it came to our turn to bowl Rob passed 4,000 runs allowed lifetime, the tenth Badger to bowl enough overs to reach that plateau, a list in which he is just a handful of runs behind Jake. Vinny’s second ball took him past Andy Parker into 17th place on the all-time list of overs bowled
Darrell ended up playing for our opponents, who were a player down due to a football injury, taking one of the only two wickets to fall in a four over spell that featured two maidens and top scoring from number nine with an unbeaten 34 (from 23 balls faced for a strike rate of 147.8).
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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: The Badgers rotated eleven bowlers in this 22 over 12 players per side game, with the only previous occasion we used that many being the Iscoyd & Fenns Bank game on the 2015 Tour, when we swapped wicket keepers in order to do so.
This game has been loaded to both Play-Cricket and the database because I scored directly into the scorecard checker program as well as writing up the paper scorebook. However, it will not count towards the averages.
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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: Joe Hyatt made his debut in this game, the latest in a line of Woodmansterne regulars to turn out for us to help when we are short. His day had a nice symmetrical feel to it – one run scored, one wicket lost, one run allowed and one wicket taken – if only he had taken a catch too!?
I can find nothing of interest in relation to this game statistically other than to observe that Jake finds himself in a position shared by very few other Badgers down the years in that he made 39 runs and saw his average go down (albeit only in the hundredths column). I am quite certain that if he were reading this Pat Redding would be nodding in understanding (only in Pat’s case it would have been a 59 by the time he packed up, and somewhat more than that over the previous couple of seasons).
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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: Matt Mann recorded his second-best bowling figures for the club, bettered only by the 3 for 4 he recorded in just two overs against Hampton Wick in 2017.
Calum became the first Badgers wicket keeper not called Steve Pitts to record a pair of stumpings in an innings since another Banstead stalwart Monty (Steve Montebello) did so against Ewell in 2018.
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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: Goldie’s 4 for 32 are the best bowling figures of the season to date – and the best for the club since Dean took 4 for 25 against the same opponents in September last year – whilst Darrell’s 74 is the best individual score with the bat – and the best since his unbeaten 104 at Sunbury in July last year.
Richie Searle, a one time teammate of Goldie and Dean at Carshalton Athletic, became our first debutant of the 2023 season and acquitted himself admirably with the ball despite a wicket that really didn’t offer anything other than hard toil for anyone bowling seam up. 36 dot balls from eight overs made it apparent how tidy his spell was.
The caught and bowled that Mark snared to end the home side’s innings was his second of the day and took him to 500 lifetime fielding dismissals – comprised of 478 outfield catches, 18 wicket keeper catches and 4 stumpings – making him the second Badger behind yours truly to take that many. This is another of those ‘longevity’ records where he is bound to catch me before we are done, but for now I have a 25 dismissal lead.
Jake’s frankly execrable over late on in their innings saw him give away 12 runs off the bat and thus become the ninth Badger to allow 4,000 runs from their bowling for the club.
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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: Wardy’s brief sojourn at the wicket yesterday tied him with club president Roy Gordon in sixth place on the list of lifetime innings for the Badgers with 231 trips to the crease. It took Roy a fair bit longer to reach that figure though, at least 329 matches spread over 35 seasons compared to Graham’s 255 matches in 22 years.
Vinny sent down three maidens in his six over spell, thus taking him past Huw Campbell into 18th place on the lifetime list. The next three positions are all attainable in the short term, so watch this space.
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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: Matt Stokes returned his best bowling figures for the club, bettering his performance in the first game of this season at Beechwood, whilst Nat’s figures were his best outside of the four-fer at Putney in 2021. Those three wickets from his eight overs have also lifted his bowling strike rate (wickets per hundred balls) above five and thus puts him in first place amongst those who qualify for the lifetime averages, marginally ahead of my old man whose 117 wickets came at a tick below five. Not sure that this will work, but this might be a link to the dynamic averages bowling table sorted by strike rate.
For the first time in nearly nine years Darrell sent down three maidens in a game, which took him past David Winter and into a tie with Mick Willmott for 21st place on the lifetime slate. Whilst David took his 108 maidens in just 530.4 overs bowled (20.4%), Mick needed 1486 for his 109 (7.3%) and Darrell now has 1163.5 to his name (9.4%).
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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: Wardy’s unbeaten 62 opening the batting is his best score since a 63 not out against Leigh in 2014 and his first half century in nearly five years, with the previous one coming at South Brent on the 2018 tour. It is also the 63rd time that a Badger has carried their bat in an innings of 100 runs or more, and the second time that Graham himself has done so. Twenty-four different Badgers have achieved the feat with yours truly having the most with eight, Pat Redding six and four others on five. The innings also moved him out of a tie with Allan Butt into seventh place on the all-time innings slate, with the president just one ahead in sixth.
Josh returned his best bowling figures for the Badgers, bettering his performance against Sunbury last season, and did so by dismissing three of the home side’s top four.
Darrell recorded his 50th not out for the club, a list on which he is already in ninth place with the next four places evenly spaced out above him a single unit apart, so a repeat of last season’s unbeaten tally will see him in joint fifth place by season’s end.
Whilst scratching around during the first dozen overs of our innings I finally managed to drag myself past Dave Tickner into third place on the lifetime runs scored list for the club, albeit that Dave took 61 less innings to record his 7,919 runs. The chances of me catching his brother Alan in second place are pretty much zero, but I did manage to tie Al for most innings for the club on 505 – during which time he scored more than 1,600 more runs than I have. Mark will no doubt take that record from me one day, whilst at the rate he is going Jake will pass me on the runs scored charts inside the next five years whilst taking less than half the innings to do it.
Finally, Dave Tribe turned out for Dormansland, nearly 44 years after scoring an unbeaten century against us, and nearly 45 years since the first time he and I played against each other (in October 1979). I was also run out (for a duck) the day that Dave scored his ton, so plus ca change.
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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: With his unbeaten 55 in this game Jake became the second most prolific scorer of fifties (or better) in club history, behind only his old man and taking him out of a tie with both Pat Redding and Alan Tickner, having reached that milestone in 45 of his 172 innings. He needs to nearly double his tally to pass Mark, who is quite capable of adding to his too, so it will be many years before I will need to worry about tracking that one.
Daniel recorded his highest score for the Badgers, passing the unbeaten 53 he made against Walmer on tour in 2019 and joining a select group of Badgers’ luminaries who have finished an innings on 69 – (in order of first having done so) Brent Noble, Chris Morgan, David Aldwinckle, Alan Tickner, Mark Gordon, Simon Fox, Pat Redding and Jake Gordon, with Brent and David having done so twice (both not out in Brent’s case, one not out in David’s) and Mark four times.
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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 decent bowling performance saw the five wickets spread amonst five bowlers and the only real item of note being Matt Stokes’ maiden wicket for the club in a spell which also saw him return the best economy rate of the six bowlers used.
Halfway through his third over Jake joined and then passed Steve Card in eleventh place on the ‘tired legs’ list of lifetime overs bowled. It will be some time before he catches anyone else on the list as Wilko is more than 200 overs away in eighth and both Darrell and Rob are spaced out in between but at least 100 overs ahead.
Given that there is not much else to comment on, one season related stat to pad this section out. This is the club’s 65th season and skipper Mark Gordon’s 36th playing in at least one game, which puts him into a tie with Allan Butt for fourth place with only Alan and Dave Tickner, who have 38 and 39 respectively, between him and the current record of 47 that I extended to that number in this game.