Gentlemen of West London v West XI

Sunday 3 September, Crown Taverners CC. Gents won toss. Cloudy, damp.  20C

Won by 80 runs

A free scoring 160 partnership between centurion  Rinku Lall and Gregg Cloette earned the Gents an 80 run victory over West XI to seal their retention of the Bob Ashton Memorial Cup in style. Such an outcome seemed unlikely at 1pm when both teams had retired to the Crown and Cushion having been told that the game was off due to the steady rain. West XI’s Taylor departed, so poor was the outlook.

But luck was on our side – the promised improved weather finally arrived as did the irrepressible Jack Davis and another Crown Taverner, whose game had been rained off at Hambledon. Jack had a look and declared the pitch playable if there was no further rain with a 2:15 start. A 30 over game was agreed and although the outfield was still damp captain Gilkes won the toss and elected to bat, a good call as it turned out.

Gilkes and Kumar got the Gents off to a flying start, in particular exploiting Dane’s difficulty in adjusting to the damp conditions, artificial wicket and short boundaries. At the other end Wright bowled well, his 6 overs costing only 23. Kumar was bowled attempting to force the pace which brought Lall to the wicket, a man who has literally rewritten the Gents batting records this season. Hill and Cox bowled with a measure of control for a while, but Lall quickly hit his stride to banish memories of his golden duck in the first BAMC meeting. Gilkes stalled and fell 5 short of his half century but that only signalled the start of the mayhem. Cloette and Lall then proceeded to take the game away from West XI with an awesome display of controlled big hitting. All of the bowlers took heavy punishment, even the normally frugal Taylor - at one stage 40 runs came in the space of 2 overs. Lall reached 3 figures in the grand manner with a towering 6. West XIs day got even worse when Rowan Allerton  injured himself on a collapsing fence as he attempted to retrieve one of the days many boundary clearing shots.

A partnership of 160, 6 short of a 3rd wicket record and what would have been Lall’s 3rd club record of the summer, was ended by Hill, whose prone appeal for LBW was mistaken for a cry of pain by your reporter. Cloette finished the innings with a flurry of big hits, luckily missing the parked cars, and was only 3 short of a century of his own to take the Gents to a mammoth 279-3.

To their credit West XI didn’t spend time feeling sorry for themselves and made a decent fist of a reply. Taylor, Dane, Wright and Allerton, with the aid of a runner, batted well against a steady Gents attack, but the required 9+ per over was never a serious proposition.

At the end of the day it was possible to look back and reflect that the off - on nature of the game had affected West XI more than the Gents, some of whom had time to get the unplanned lunchtime refreshments out of their systems. That was in contrast to the 2008 game in New Beckenham in similar conditions when it was the Gents who switched off when a ‘cancelled’ game was resurrected and lost by a similar margin.

Big thanks to Jack and his colleague at Crown Taverners CC for calling the game on and helping with the bar and umpiring. The Gents animal lovers will be pleased to hear that Smudge the cat is fit and well but sensibly decided to spend the afternoon sleeping.