Muck up day

Highlights: McGiffin 59, Liveing two for 48, homemade apple cake

Full scorecard here

With the league already won long, long ago in August, the Northchurch players arrived at a very picturesque North Enfield in high spirits and lovely late summer sunshine for the final match of the season on Saturday. Unfortunately, the previous evening’s team strategy meeting had run on a little later than anticipated and there were a few players not quite at the peak of fitness.

One agenda item at the team meeting had been to draw the batting order out of a hat and the randomly selected line-up was invited to make first use of a pretty good looking pitch.

Openers Suckling and Lindsay got off to a watchful start but the former had to head back to the pavilion after cutting to point in the third over. Romit Patel, fighting back a nosebleed but not looking out of place at the top of the order, played some lovely shots to get the scoreboard ticking. But he too was soon on his way back to the sheds after taking on third man for an ambitious second run.

The captain got off the mark with a boundary but was soon deceived by an AW Khan slower ball for the second time in the season and gifted an easy catch to his opposite number at cover.

This brought Steven McGiffin to the crease, in search of the 11 needed to take him to a thousand league runs for the season. Opening his account with an edge past first slip, the Aussie appeared nervous for the first time, however, there was no further scare and the rare feat was achieved. The next target was to preserve a three figured league average.

Two large maximums helped to secure a seventh half century of the campaign, before he was well caught on the boundary by Del Saunders, who had some work to do to recover from creeping in.

Fidler, one of the chief strategists at the previous evening’s session, came and went in several blinks of the eye as he played at the wrong one of the three balls he saw coming down at him and was bowled for a duck.

At the other end, Lindsay had been busy digging a trench and looked determined to carry his bat, however, his plan was undone when he was bowled through the gate pressing forward to a good off break.

Liveing, coming in at seven, steadied the ship and batted through for a well accumulated 38. Henry Bexon looked sure to provide some fireworks but the big bangs never came after a Roman candle start that drew some oohs but no ahhs.

John Barry fulfilled his promise to ‘go big’ first ball and was dropped after offering a simple return catch to the bowler. However, he did not to capitalise on his life and was soon trapped plumb LBW by a loopy leg break. So plumb, in fact, that he saved the umpire the effort of putting up a finger and was nearly back in the pavilion after the ‘how’ of howzat.

Ollie Johnson, clearly not happy about surrendering his beloved 11 spot, proved that this Northchurch line up would look respectable in any order and played two sweet drives through the covers before being bowled to hand over to useful tailender Mark Hobley, who had six balls to swish at.

Going into tea, the visitors hoped that the 213 posted by the jumbled batting order might be defendable by the part-time bowlers who had been promised a go. MiD to an exquisite homemade apple slice.

Back in the middle Henry Bexon, with new ball in hand and bowling to five slips and a gully, looked every bit the part and was unlucky to see a catch go down in the giggling cordon. At the other end, OJ was very accurate but could not get the usually assured early wicket.

Coming on first change, George Liveing began his league bowling career with a wicket maiden to get the breakthrough for Northchurch by knocking over opener Vaniasingham for eight. He would have a second victim three overs later by trapping Brown LBW for 40. In the meantime hard hitting Lawrence Marsh had already established himself with a couple of convincing maximums.

After three very average seam-up deliveries, John Barry reverted to his slightly stronger discipline of off-spin and was immediately rewarded with the wicket of Enfield keeper, Gillman.

Hobley’s tweakers came out nicely to give him an economical start to his spell and the mounting scoreboard pressure quickly returned the wicket of Pearson, who lobbed up a simple catch back to the bowler.

Johnson, coming back to get through his three remaining overs, picked up the key wicket of Marsh with almost his last delivery to stem a North Enfield acceleration that got them to within 57 of victory with 11 overs remaining.

It was down to spin twins Barry and Hobley to defend the five per over against a heavily muscled Baker and first round centurion, Jones. The pair managed to find the gaps between the fielders to keep the score ticking along before Baker, amazingly, found the gaps between parked cars with a towering 95 meter six that sailed over the pavilion.

After that Northchurch would need a miracle as the batsmen took more risks which paid off and North Enfield were able to wrap up a good victory with an over to spare. Although there was nothing on the match, it was played in excellent spirit and provided some welcome levity at the end of what has been an intense season.

As the dust settled on the division three battle for second place, which for so long has looked like Hertford’s to lose, it was Southgate Compton who emerged victorious after sitting in the middle of a tight table all year. Like the fat spiky one chugging at the back of a Mario Kart field, they had managed to barrel their way through the opposition just before the finish line, to steal the second qualification spot.

Northchurch will look forward to seeing the Compton boys again next season, along with the other teams tha complete the 2018 division two b line-up; Hitchin, St Margaretsbury, Eversholt, St Albans West Indians, Potton Town, Bushey and Old Elizabethans, who would be visiting The Meadow on Sunday for the League T20 cup finals day.