U11 NEC side start by beating Banstead

In a magical mystery tour of science, geography, and cross-sport mixed metaphors, Graeme Law takes a colourful look at the start to his Under 11 team's season....

Gravity doesn’t appear to exist.  The ball hangs in the air, high above the tree-line in the grey sky, seemingly fixed in time and space. But everyone watching knows it’s got to come down eventually.

And when it does, someone needs to try and catch it. A catch in the first over has already been missed, and so - even though it’s only the third over - it somehow feels like this could determine the trajectory of the whole season.

After a long, cold winter, the monotony only broken by our all-expenses paid tour to the Caribbean (what - you missed it?), the season has finally restarted. Last season the Under 11s NEC team finished a cruel, cruel runner’s up in the second division, and the subsequent promotion puts them in with the big boys.  

Expectations have had to be recalibrated - some of the clubs we’re up against now have more county players than we have total boys - but we’re quietly confident of pushing for a Europa cup slot (we’ll work out the logistics of mid-week winter matches in Bulgaria and Latvia if we make it). 

We’ve had a good transfer window - we’ve kept hold of all last season’s NEC squad, and brought in Sam Flower, an exciting all-rounder - because, heaven knows, we don’t have enough exciting all-rounders in our team already.

And it’s Sam who’s been given the job of bowling the first over against Banstead. One catch has already gone down off his bowling - if another goes down, will he ask for the transfer to be nullified and head elsewhere? And will the team be able to bounce back - this is no longer pairs cricket, and every wicket is crucial. 

But Lyle Wesson is under this sky-scraper of a catch, and he doesn’t miss.  15 balls into the new season, and we’re up and running.

Unsurprisingly given that it’s our first match, our bowling is a bit rusty, so Banstead get a few easy runs. But Sam Gill (“Gilly”) picks up a couple of wickets - including a steepling catch taken by Roman Cameron - and Matty Beggs (“Beggsy”) takes an unbelievable low diving catch off his own bowling.  After 13 overs, Banstead are 51-4. With two decent batsmen at the crease it looks like Merstham could be chasing well over 100.

But we’ve been holding back our famed pace attack until the later overs, and the Banstead batsmen can barely lay bat on ball, let alone hit the ball with any force. Our fielding is sharp and committed, typified by Tom Parkman (“Parky”) haring round the boundary to stop a certain four with a full length dive.  In the last 11 overs we only concede 25 runs, and six of those are off just one ball - a Matt Cripps' (“Crispy”) freak of a high full toss that is edged for four. But Crispy is back to his scintillating best in the next over - a double wicket maiden of pace and accuracy.

Banstead end on 76-6 from their 24 overs - a great result for Merstham, but it could be challenging on this tacky wicket with variable bounce. 

Bailey Warren and Lyle open, and do exactly what we were hoping they’d do - nullify Banstead’s opening bowlers, while keeping the scoreboard ticking over. Lyle is out in the seventh over to a fast leg-cutter that would have bowled out the best of batsmen, but with 22 on the board he’s set us up fantastically. That brings Roman (“Boom-Boom”) to the crease, and  he doesn’t do what we’d hoped. He does way, way more.

The boys have been given licence to play their natural game - and for Boom-Boom that’s to smack the living daylights out of the ball. He does that with joyful abandon - driving and pulling Banstead out of the game.  The only disappointment is that he runs himself out when so close to being retired, but his 27 from only 21 balls has taken us to the brink of victory.

Bailey and Beggsy then knock off the remaining runs with little fuss but a lot of style, seeing us home by eight wickets and with over seven overs to spare. 

Sterner tests doubtless await, but that was a fantastic all-round team performance to get the season off and running.

The previous week, the ESCL team had lost a thriller against Newdigate.  Merstham bowled first and with wickets falling regularly Newdigate were struggling to post any sort of target. But their last pair scored 36 from the final three overs, taking them to a pairs score of 239.  Merstham’s bowling was uniformly strong - Rayham Ahamadali picked up three wickets for only two runs in his two overs, Seb Parsons took two wickets and there was a wicket each for Parky, Harrison Brindley and Ruari Gibbs. 

In response, Merstham looked in control at a score of 230 after 16 overs, with everyone contributing and Thomas Harris top-scoring with 14.  But against some very good bowling in those last few overs, a couple of wickets and an inability to score boundaries meant that Merstham ended on 222, 17 runs short.

Whilst a disappointing result, it was a really encouraging performance from the Merstham boys, particularly given that a couple of them were making their club debuts.