There was a somewhat clunky start to the match, as despite batting first and having at least 9 players present at the scheduled start time of 1:30 pm, Dulwich still appeared to have no batters interested in padding up as late as 1:45 pm, leaving a somewhat confused Plough to wonder what exactly was happening as they took to the field for an extra-long warm up while waiting for the Dulwich opening pair to finally take the field.

The wait clearly riled up opening bowler Damon Greeney, whose opening spell consisted mainly of unhittable laser beams, and following 15 consecutive dot balls, he trapped Dulwich’s dangerous-looking opening bat plum in front for an LBW.

13-1

Damon was well-supported at the other end by Giordy Diangienda, who himself got into the wickets action not long after, with Dulwich’s other opener chipping out to Tom Glynne-Jones for the first of his 3 catches.

22-2

If the Dulwich batters thought they would get an easier ride from the 1st change bowlers, they were very much mistaken, with Aman Jain keen to make an impression on the game, taking 2 wickets in his first over (both catches again taken by captain Glynne-Jones)

30-3 and 31-4

Another notable peculiarity of this game was being unceremoniously turfed out of the main bar area and clubhouse upon arrival due the fact that a children’s birthday was due to take place during the match, leaving both teams banished to a marquee on the other side of the pitch. This minor inconvenience was fully forgiven when we all realised that this was a Spiderman party, because who the hell doesn’t love Spiderman? The arrival of the Webslinger himself coincided with the start of John Walton (also your correspondent for this report)’s second over, with the famous theme tune booming out as he took the ball to attempt to continue the Plough onslaught, much to everyone’s amusement. The music may have also served to inspire the Dulwich batters, as the No. 5 began to open up, sending a couple of balls to the boundary, including a huge 6 back over Walton’s head. Thankfully for the Plough, this did not last for too long however, as Walton shortened his run up in a bid to disrupt the batter’s flow, resulting in him chipping the ball straight back to the bowler.

55-5

This marked the beginning of the end for Dulwich, as only one of their remaining batters managed to put anything close to a score together for the remainder of their innings. Aman Jain was replaced by Sawyer, who continued to stifle the runs scored, and at the other end Spiderman was replaced by our very own Batman, Mr Hari Vignesh. The Dulwich batters by this point were looking to put some sort of partnership together, but Batman was having none of it (and neither was Sawyer), with this pair taking 1 and 3 wickets respectively for very few runs.

60-6, 67-7, 69-8 and 72-9

Dulwich then had a small flurry towards the end, but Greeney returned and only needed one ball to remove the number 11’s off stump.

Dulwich U17s - 90 runs all out

TEA - some were raving about the curried chickpea and chicken sandwiches, but they weren’t really my bag to be honest. The other veggie sandwiches weren’t terrible, but certainly nothing special, though the bread was fresh as clingfilm had been correctly deployed to prevent any staleness creeping in. Pineapple wedges were a nice touch and the cheeseballs would have been a big winner if they had been heated. 5.5/10.

And so onto the chase. Plough openers Smith and Osboune stepped up and were greeted with some seriously quick bowlers, in particular from the left-arm opener (who had also opened the batting). It was however the other opener who drew first blood, having sprayed the ball all over the place, out of nowhere he bowled an almost unplayable ball that jagged off the pitch to clip the top of Osbourne’s off stump.

This worrying start looked even more concerning as shortly after this, we lost Ean Smith and Jamie White in quick succession to the aforementioned left-arm opening bowler. Suddenly, 91 runs to win was looking like a tall order, as Dulwich’s bowlers sent the ball down with a lot of pace (if not line or length).

Thankfully for the Plough, the 4th wicket partnership would however see us home. Rahul dug in for a “Loves to Bat” contender innings of 12 from 45, allowing the hero of the innings Oscar Sawyer to demonstrate that arachnid copulation was not on the agenda (which was lucky for the man in the Spiderman suit, who was at most 25 metres away at any point), as he proceeded to let rip like an angry badger, trapped in a vacuum cleaner, dispatching the ball in all directions, including one huge straight six into the Herne Hill Velodrome car park, much to the enjoyment of his very grateful onlooking Plough teammates.

Match report from John Walton