Camden I v Barrington (away)

03/05/25

SEARCH FOR LEVEL PLAYING FIELD GOES ON

Thirds lucky to escape Barrington battering with teeth and four points

Barrington (20pts) 145-3 beat Camden (4pts) 143-8 by 7 wickets

Maybe other teams will drop catches and bowl wides. Maybe Sutton will be able to up his strike rate. Maybe relegation might not be such a bad thing after all.

Maybe not. Those words, written at the end of the 2023 season, were followed by another relegation. Eleven overs into the 2025 season opener at Barrington, Camden had been reduced to 26-3, with Ketul (6) falling to a spectacular leaping one-handed catch at point. The same fielder had already held on to a steepler to dismiss Prathyush (9), and Redfern (2) had been run out by a bullet throw. Sutton, meanwhile, was nine not out. Just how far would the Thirds have to plummet in the nation’s flattest county before they encountered a level playing field?

With only eleven players making themselves available for the Junior 3 West curtain-raiser, Captain Redfern’s selection meeting had been understandably brief. His innings here wasn’t much longer. Ordinarily, the outgoing batsman – whose call for a second run it was – would only have himself to blame. But this is Redders, and regular readers will know that there is always someone or something else to blame. In this case it was the deceptively slow outfield, but Sutton didn’t escape culpability – for the historical crimes of being visibly annoyed when his skipper had turned down runs in the past. It was to get more Camden. Sutton (18) missed a rare straight one from the hosts’ change bowler, and Mitchell (4) was well caught in the gully to leave the scoreboard reading 42-5 in the eighteenth over. Enter Robinson, the ex-former-ex-all-rounder no stranger to a crisis such as this. It was Irtaza, however, who would give the innings some much-needed impetus. The left-hander made a mockery of the pitch’s lack of bounce and the slow outfield, hitting four wristy fours en route to 25 from thirty balls, before being trapped LBW by the returning opening bowler. Subbu was bowled in the same over, leaving the Thirds seven down for 81 with thirteen overs to go. By this point, the sun gods had seen enough. The clouds rolled in and a cold wind picked up, but watching Robbo bat brings its own kind of warmth. Not enough to warm the hands of the scorers, but Robinson’s unbeaten 40 would see the Thirds to the semi-respectable total of 143-8. The Syndicate man found allies in Karan (3) – the pair adding an innings-high stand of 33 for the eighth wicket – and Hodsdon (9*). The final few overs saw a feast of Stephens, featuring the only three of the innings. An innings containing just nine fours. In the week that 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s 35-ball hundred in the IPL contained eleven sixes, it just goes to show that cricket is a broad church.

We’ll never know if Captain Redfern had a plan. Even the most ambitious plan wouldn’t have been for Subrata (1-28) to take a wicket with his first ball for Camden. But that’s what happened, Ketul taking a simple catch at extra cover. Had Subrata, the 177th debutant, achieved a Thirds’ first?  If there’s not a stat for it in Redders’ files, then it probably hasn’t happened. As Mike (or was it Frank) Tyson might have said: everyone has a plan until they get a cricket ball in the mouth. The Thirds wouldn’t find that level playing field at Barrington, as Sutton – backing up a Ketul throw – found out the painful way. The veteran opener somehow escaped serious injury, and returned to the field after a couple of overs. Nothing is inevitable in this great game, but nobody was surprised when – first ball back – the answer to where he could hide was nowhere.

There was no hiding for the Camden bowling attack, either. Citing the wind, Redders declined to bring himself on, but did take a catch to give Ketul (1-19) a first wicket for the Thirds. Walking off with 79 to his name, the hosts’ captain had landed some knockout blows of his own. Landing in the trees, mostly. Amidst the carnage, Karan bowled terrifically without reward. That was until he was granted what everyone bar the scorer knew to be a ninth over. ‘Deadly’ Derekar made the most of it, finishing with the outstanding figures of 9-3-24-1. Redders came on and beat the bat with his slow-motion away-swingers, but the game was up. The home side strolled to a seven-wicket victory with 11.2 overs to spare. Brutal.

Man of the Match: Stephen Robinson