Horizontal Happiness for Strollers
A beautiful, sunny day. Two expectant teams. The first big game of a new English summer season. A thrilling game.

No, this wasn’t St John’s Wood, and it wasn’t England vs New Zealand. The venue was Walthamstow, and the match was between the Horizontals and the Strollers. And what a match it was.
Pre-match tension was high as the team made its way to the ground. “It’s taken me as long to drive here as it will take to fly to Estonia,” grumbled Chris Deavin as he crawled along Tottenham High Street. “I’m standing outside Walthamstow station, where’s Dickie, the road’s shut,” snarled Jolyon Fallon as the kick-off time approached.

Excitement reached fever pitch when an early arrival, and the only southern hemisphere player ever to be accepted into the Strollers’ fold, Kiwi Greg Roughan, texted the skipper to say: “Park outside the ground, there’s a huge queue to get in.”

Had the Strollers discovered a fan-base? Had the Lord’s overflow heard about the game, and come all the way over to Walthamstow? No. The queue was for the rubbish dump whose entrance was directly opposite to the ground. A foretaste of the cricket to come, perhaps.

Horwood, in his first game as skipper, walked to the square with the opposition captain. It was his call: heads or tails. On the way to the ground, he had sought advice from Deavin, a previous captain, as to what sort of tosser he had been. Horwood called heads. The coin landed tails. On a hot sunny afternoon and in a time game (20 overs after 6.30) the decision was inevitable. The Strollers would be asked to bowl first.

The team had seen a last-minute change. Guy Barker had put himself down for the first three games. He had failed to appreciate that when your wife has just given birth, and to twins at that, she’s probably unlikely to let you go and play cricket on an entire Sunday afternoon. Particularly when you haven’t asked her. So his inevitable withdrawal saw Sean Garvey called up as a late replacement, a second debutant alongside Adam Harper.

But Barker’s absence had left the bowling thinner that it might have been, both in terms of quality and girth. Deavin opened the bowling. Graeme Holmes took the opposite end, in his new guise as an “off-break bowler”. A strange choice, perhaps, to open with the new ball. Particularly as, while he has shown an ability to achieve a nagging length, he has nowhere near the stature to aspire to join the ranks of the original ‘Fat Naggers’ of Strollers’ fame, Caldwell, Brown and Horwood.

But the boundaries were long and the outfield (un)cut to a length that would cause an immediate obesity epidemic in sheep if they had been allowed to graze on it. The ball did not roll. So Horwood set tight fields for both bowlers and sort to apply pressure to the batsmen.

And the wickets soon came. Horizontals’ opener Arif was uncomfortable against Holmes’s twirlers, and was inevitably bowled for a low score. Deavin bowled well, with little luck, but Horwood soon reaped the benefits of the pressure applied by the opening pair to bowl the Zontals’ number two with a ball that kept low. Holmes then dismissed their number three, who lifted a catch to Stirling at point, who looked rather scared as the ball hung in the air but took the catch safely.

Then one of the champagne moments of the day. Off Horwood’s bowling, the oppo number four swung across the line and lifted the ball high into the air in the direction of mid on. It was a certain wicket. Everyone watched the ball. Especially Sean Garvey, in whose direction it was inevitably heading.
What was going through Garvey’s mind as the ball hung high in the Walthamstow sky? Death or glory on my debut? Keep my eye on the ball? Have I got a spare pair of pants in my kitbag, perhaps?
The ball reached Garvey’s hands. They clasped. The ball spilled out. It rolled down his front. He clasped again. It spilled again. It disappeared from view.

Garvey was lying on the ground. Was he groaning or cheering? Was he a medical freak? Because as he turned, there it was. Between his legs. A third ball. A bright red ball. He’d taken the catch. Walthamstow were 40-4 after 16 overs. The Strollers were on top.

But the team was wondering where the opposition’s batting had gone to, and quickly found them at five and six. A left-right combination put on 89 for the fifth wicket in quick time as the frontline bowlers withdrew from the attack and Harper, Stirling and Poole struggled for line and length.
The game was slipping away from the Strollers. It would need something to special to turn it round. And Fallon provided it. Fielding at a short extra cover, the left-hander pushed to the off side and went for a quick single. Fallon swooped in, picked up and threw down the stumps at the batsman’s end. The right-hander was gone. The breakthrough achieved.

Horizontals were now clearly pushing for a declaration towards tea. Their left-hander was scoring freely, but wickets began to fall again as Deavin and Holmes returned to the attack, taking a wicket each. And there was a second run-out; yes, two in one game. Roughan swooped on a ball pushed to the on side. He fumbled. The chance looked gone. But as he collected and threw, the batsman fell in the middle of the pitch. Roughan launched a howitzer towards the stumps. Somehow, Deavin collected and removed the bails.

Horizontals declared at 160 for 8 after 41 overs. Strollers would have about the same number to make the total.

At first glance, the run rate of four an over looked achievable, but that didn’t take account of the outfield. During the Horizontals’ innings, the ball crossed the boundary no more than 8 times. There would be a lot of running between the wicket before the total would be in sight – not traditionally one of the Strollers’ strong points.

Fallon and Harper walked to the middle with instructions to take their time to get in on a difficult pitch to time the ball. They did, reaching just 19 before Fallon fell to the annoyingly accurate Scully in the 10th over to a ball that pitched on leg and swung away to catch him plumb in front.
Then Poole strode to the crease with the purpose of a man who couldn’t quite believe that he was not top of the Strollers career batting averages and was determined to put this clear oversight right.
Then the difficulties of the outfield became apparent. Poole in particular played some fantastic strokes but could rarely get more than 2 runs for them. On any other pitch he would have scored at least a dozen boundaries, but in a long innings he only scored two. The fact that he was finally dismissed for 58 makes it possibly the finest Strollers half century we’ve seen.

At the other end Harper was playing an equally important role for the team, pushing singles and twos while Poole played his shots. The combination kept the board ticking along and the target in sight. When 6.30 arrived and the final 20 overs kicked in, Strollers needed 98 for victory. Five an over would be a very tough ask, especially as the Horizontals’ bowlers were giving little away.

But Harper and Poole were picking up the pace. Singles were stolen when none seemed there. Harper was diving for the crease, earning a 5.6 from the sidelines for one effort and an audition for a future John S****’s advert from a passer-by. All the while a few lusty blows kept the target at around five per over.

Once Poole reached his half century (how many is that now for the Strollers? We’re sure Simon can tell us) his appetite for the quick single seemed to dim. Certainly, he was not matching the exertions of Harper to reach the crease. Was it tiredness, or the 20-year-old trousers with the 32-inch waist? Whatever it was, his innings ended on an inevitable run out, with the partnership broken on 98 and 44 still needed for victory off 10 overs.

Batsmen were sent in with the instructions of playing their shots but this was a pitch on which it was impossible to come in and score immediately (or so we thought). The middle order of Morgan, Deavin, Betts and Horwood managed just three runs between them. But Harper kept the scoreboard moving until finally being dismissed just two short of a half century – an Andrew Strauss-like debut from the opener.

When Roughan came to the crease, Strollers needed 17 off three overs. Scully, the annoyingly accurate one, had two to come. This did not deter the doughty Kiwi. Six came off the over.

Penultimate over: 11 needed. Holmes, just arrived in the middle, hit consecutive balls for two and three. Roughan then belts the ball deep to the longest boundary on the pitch. A FOUR! Now just two needed, 8 balls left. Another single before the end of the over and just one needed off six balls.
It came two balls later. Celebrations erupted (other than Poole and Harper, who could move only very gingerly by now). A winning start to the season, a win by three wickets. And what a start.

Fittingly, it was Roughan who hit the winning runs. Three games for the Strollers, and he has now notched two run-outs (including the famous ‘knocking over the stumps and a can of Stella at the same time’ incident) and also a run-a-ball knock to secure the game. At this rate he may qualify to be an Englishman. But he’s certainly a Stroller.

Clive Horwood
24.05.04

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