London Saints v Trafalgar – Sunday May 19th – Nursery Road Playing Fields, Wimbledon (A)
London Saints 216 – 6 (H.Rogers 105 no, J.Griffiths 25no, B.Collis 21)
Trafalgar 41 (P.Rogers 7 – 10, Leamon 2 – 7)
In an attempt to encourage shorter match reports this year we start with the match’s stats:
- The 175 run victory is our highest winning margin in LSCC’s 44-year history over 470 games.
- The unbeaten 6th wicket partnership of 96 is our best ever 6th wicket partnership. It involved 3 players – mainly Harry Rogers and John Griffiths but when Harry retired in came John’s son Ollie to continue the 6th wicket partnership (pushing Il Duce and Hilda, from 2007, into 2nd).
- Phil Rogers’ analysis of 7 – 10 is our 2nd best ever bowling analysis.
- Harry Rogers’ 105 not out is our 3rd highest ever score, retiring when our record score of 119 was in his grasp?
- We had 3 potential hat-trick balls (has that ever been done before by LSCC?)
- Their Skate was out for a golden duck
- Freddie Leamon’s 2 wickets on debut is our youngest player (16) to get 2 wickets on debut since Stephen Ramdial in our 2008 Nelson Cup win.
- Our previous record v Trafalgar was Played 6, Won 2, Lost 4 so it’s now 3 v 4
So despite being injured and unavailable to play Il Duce still had the crucial role in our record victory as he had the kit bag. The aforementioned kit bag was stationary on the North Circular Road, behind 2 accidents, with the game due to start in 90 mins. It eventually arrived a few minutes late but a combination of going to the wrong car park (twice) and not being able to carry the kitbag due to an intercostal muscle injury meant that Trafalgar, despite winning the toss, agreed to field in the heat as our full kit had not arrived. This proved crucial as they wilted in the, for this spring/summer, unseasonable hot weather. So Il Duce may have wrapped up Champagne moment and MOTM before the start until the ‘ Rogers ‘ had something to say about matters.
This was a tale of 2 Rogers, Harry and Phil and 2 brilliant individual performances that will go down in LSCC history.
Firstly, Harry. Despite supporting Wet Spam, Harry is a really decent bloke and a jack of all trades. He was a few minutes late as he had been playing in goal for his side’s last league game of the season in which they narrowly missed out on promotion, and was slotted in to bat No 4. We opened with Dickie and 16-year old debutant (No 222) Freddie Leamon who was a recruit and mate of Lana after her original recruit Eddie (do all your mates names Lana end in ddie?) pulled out earlier in the week with a mixture of girlfriend and dog issues (they are not the same I must add!!) Freddie is going to be some player in the future, as he showed in his brief bowling spell later, and he raced to 15 before being bowled by our old friend Kerrigan ‘The Chucker‘ Smith. He also dismissed Dickie and when Mike was bowled we were looking a bit shaky at 27-3. Harry was joined by last year’s POTY Ben in an excellent rebuilding partnership of 63 which included some very quick singles. With Ben looking increasingly confident and maybe looking to repeat last year’s POTY form he was bowled for a fine 21. so we were 90-4. Flatliner (the 2nd version) helped to put on a further 29 with Harry who by now had started to accelerate. In came Phil who was promptly run out by Harry !!, never mind Phil would have the last laugh.
The Wheelie-Bin skipper then strode to the crease (at No 8 – duck avoidance?) to join Harry who, maybe feeling sorry about running out his namesake decided to make Trafalgar suffer. Upon reaching 50, he asked Il Duce (who was umpiring) whether he should retire? Il Duce maybe overstepping his ‘non-playing’ mark immediately responded “No go and get a ton” (maybe influenced by the black and blue bruising that the Trafalgar opening bowler had inflicted upon his body many years ago?). Believing John to be a No 8 rabbit Trafalgar brought the field in which played into John’s ‘cut, cut’ hands and together him and Harry quickly brought up their 50 stand. With 3 overs to go Harry saw the change of bowling as a chance to cash in and in 3 balls hit 4,4,4 to reach 99 and next ball reached his ton in style with a 6 (was he counting his runs?) to finish on 105. He immediately walked off to retire knowing that his skipper would have retired him on 100 knowing that John held the LSCC record score of 119 (surely that wouldn’t have influenced John’s decision?)
A nice moment followed as John was joined at the crease by his son Ollie (with last year’s Duck Trophy winner demoting himself to No 11 in more blatant duck avoidance shithousery!) and they put on a further 15 runs meaning that the 6th wicket partnership between the 3 of them broke the LSCC record. We finished on a very respectable 216-6, an excellent score on a good pitch but with long grass meaning that boundaries were difficult to come by.
Trafalgar don’t provide teas so it was a quick turn-around from our home made teas and onto the Rogers Mark 2 show, this time of the Phil variety. On the 3rd of September 1993 v Ex Blues, Phil bowled 14 overs taking 7-55 for the London Saints. Never in his wildest dreams could he have thought that he could have beaten that, mainly because back then we played ‘timed’ games with unlimited overs per bowlers so to get 7 wickets in the permitted maximum of 7 overs these days is almost impossible – in fact today Phil did it in 6 overs to record the 2nd best ever LSCC bowling figures. Opening the bowling Phil produced a wicket maiden in the first over and with Flatliner Nanton keeping it tight at the other end proceeded to take 3 further wickets to have Trafalgar reeling on 11-4 with the 4th wicket being the Trafalgar Skate, (who always wears his Jobshite shirt to the game and in the pub afterwards) for a golden duck. Some weaker captains might have taken Phil off at this stage as clearly Trafalgar weren’t going to get near our score but Judas123 was in a ruthless mood and in Phil’s 6th over he obliterated them with 3 further wickets including being on a hat-trick for the 2nd time in the match. What a performance 7 wickets, 5 of them bowled, one LBW and one caught behind, more of that later.
Phil was replaced by Tiger and at the other end Dave was replaced by the nipper Freddie to bowl his leg spin. His proud dad on the touchline was telling myself and fellow injured player Speedo about his past exploits including taking 4-0 in 4 balls and then keeping wicket and taking 4 catches behind and a stumping. Clearly this lad will go far as he proceeded to bamboozle the Trafalgar tail with a double wicket maiden and a 3rd potential hat-trick ball of the innings. Their skipper came off shouting “the kid bowled me a bloody googly and I had no idea what to do with it”. The innings was wrapped up by a trademark Tiger wicket with the batsmen caught deep on the boundary by Harry (you can’t keep these Rogers out of the action for long).
An amazing start to the season with our most convincing victory of the LSCC’s 44-year history – well played lads – I say lads as our average age was 37, with 3 teenagers and no one over 60, unheard of in recent times, in fact on some occasions we’ve not had anyone under 37! At last the changing of the guard.
Champagne Moment – On any other day the Champagne Moment would have gone to Harry bringing up his century with a 6 or Phil’s 7th wicket but it goes to Dickie behind the stumps to take the catch to earn Phil his 5fer. It looked fantastic from the boundary as Dickie took a diving catch but Phil who had the best view explains it as ‘it took an inside edge then hit the pad and with Dickie going the other way he had to dive full length the other way to take it’ – a remarkable catch on a remarkable day.
Man of the Match – One word – Rogers (how can you split them)
London Saints
Leamon b Smith 15
Cushion c + b Smith 7
McIntyre b Chinmoy 2
H.Rogers not out (retired) 105
Collis b Stanton 21
Nanton b Crichlow 12
P.Rogers run out 1
J.Griffiths not out 25
O.Griffiths not out 6
Extras 22
Total 216 – 6 off 35 overs
Trafalgar
Whitehouse b P.Rogers 0
Love lbw P.Rogers 5
Arvind b P.Rogers 4
O’Keefe (Skate) b P.Rogers (golden duck)
Smith b P.Rogers 0
Anish b P.Rogers 5
Stanton ct Cushion b P.Rogers 0
Chinmoy ct H.Rogers b Pearce 8
Hussein b Leamon 6
Stroud b Leamon 0
Crichlow not out 0
Extras 13
Total 41 all out off 14.2 overs
P.Rogers 6 – 1 – 10 – 7
Nanton 4 – 0 – 15 – 0
Leamon 3 – 1 – 7 – 2
Pearce 1.2 – 0 – 7 – 1
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