Curdridge v Easton & Martyr Worthy, Round 2, Sunday May 3 2009

Easton 204–8 beat Curdridge 163-9 by 41 runs

Hundreds don’t come around too often in 40-over cricket. Last year there were 33 of them from more than 500 matches in the npower Village Cup. When you come in number five there’s even less of a chance. All of which made Steve Green’s match-winning 98 on Sunday the more frustrating.

Green is captain of Easton and Martyr Worthy, who had made the trip south to Curdridge’s tree-lined ground which lies within a few miles of Southampton. It was round two of the cup’s regional phase on another pretty Hampshire ground with a slope so steep you could call it a hill. One man duly appeared with his dog while a grandfather took a wide-eyed boy slowly around the ground. Those who stood still were soon warming their hands, unless you were the one sleeping under blankets on the bench.

Curdridge’s chirpy New Zealander, Paul Martin, had nipped the ball around on his way to 2-16 from his nine allotted overs to have Easton in trouble at the halfway stage of their innings. Enter Green, who was coming off a 96 the previous day in a friendly match.

Slip cordons aren’t too common in the Village Cup, but had Curdridge employed one they might have had Green well before he took his side to a total above 200. At the other end was Andy Birch, and he was the anchor as the pair added 125 at better than a run a ball.

The onslaught came from Green, whose heavy build brings power to his strokes. Balls pitched up were sent into the small pavilion on the leg side and when the Curdridge bowlers then dropped short Green would swivel on his legs and heave the ball for four. Balls got lost in hedges. He was closing in, and his team-mates knew it.

“They were shouting at me, telling me how many I needed,” said Green. “But I lost count. I thought I might have needed a six.” Clearly he did, for he launched another ball to deep mid-off, where the sort of catch was taken that is often spilled at this level. Green left the field frothing. “I think I haven’t scored a century for five or six years,” he said.

Still, it was more than enough to beat Curdrige, who first played in the Village Cup in 1969 but hadn’t made an appearance for a good few years. Despite an encouraging start the Curdridge batting order was overcome by Matt Bolland, whose height puts batsmen on the back foot and thus susceptible to a full length. Bolland has now taken eight wickets in two cup matches.

Curdridge have never gone beyond the regional phase and are several rungs below Easton in the pyramid structure of clubs. It is difficult to attract young players, according to the captain Mark Emms. “My son played a couple of games last year. Then he got his first BMX and now I can’t tempt him away. It’s very hard to get young players to play. Very few want to commit themselves for a whole day on a Sunday. They tend to play a bit at school and then they drift away. We tried to set up a colts section through our local school but it didn’t happen.”

But if young support is dwindling, there is loyalty elsewhere. Mike Gibson is 68, and has been at Curdridge for thirty years, playing up until three years ago. “Somebody asked me to play for Curdridge and I said as long as I can just bring the bag and just play cricket I will come,” he says. “I’ve done practically everything for the club since, including being chairman at one time. Now I’m just a supporter and a drinker.”

Benj Moorehead

TWC will report on Easton’s next match and follow the winners of that and each subsequent game through to the Lord’s final

Easton & Martyr Worthy v Bramley, Round 1, Sunday 19 April 2009

Easton (165) beat Bramley (83) by 82 runs

Only six of the 300-odd clubs making up the 2009 npower Village Cup were obliged to take part in round one last month. Two such clubs were Easton & Martyr Worthy and Bramley, both of Hampshire. The two might have thought themselves unlucky given that the vast majority of sides had received a bye to round two. But on a warm and sunny spring Sunday, it was those still stuck in the nets who must have felt cheated of an opportunity.

Easton is a village of thatched roofs just north of Winchester with a beautiful cricket ground shaped like a bowl. Shots square of the wicket rarely make it up the slope and over the rope. Better to play straight or nudge down towards the tree that stands inside the fine leg boundary. Two sleepy sheep and a chorus of birds twittering in the trees made up the spectators. “What more could you ask for?” wondered Andy Stead, Bramley’s captain.

His side, undeniably, were the underdogs. Bramley is just 16 years old and has never passed round two of the cup. “Just to get an eleven together is a good thing,” says Nigel Alderman, who has been at the club since it came into being. “Last year we only played four games because of the weather. That makes it hard to recruit the players. This year we’ve cut the hedge at Bramley just so people realise there is a cricket pitch there.”

Alderman is one of the older members of a Bramley side with an age-range of 15 to 55. Among their number is Martin Turner, who answered an ad in the local paper to play for the team. This is his first match in 23 years. Easton are a different sort of club. They have a sponsor, a youth system and unlike Bramley, they play regular league cricket on Saturdays. What’s more, they came within a whisker of Lord’s in a semi-final on this ground three years ago, a day when so many came to watch that the boundary rope had to be pulled in to fit them all.

Bramley did well to bowl their opponents out for 165 after Easton had won the toss. David Birch, the opening batsmen, scored a skillful fifty but Bramley were able to contain the run-rate, largely thanks to the loopy offspin of Stead, who took 4 for 21 bowling off a Chris Gayle-style shuffle.

“Getable” was the word as cakes and sandwiches appeared in the hutch but sadly for Bramley, it was not to be and they were blown away by the pace of the Easton attack. Turner, enjoying his first cricket in over two decades, prodded away in his own particular manner before he was last out with Bramley over 80 runs short of victory.

Easton’s Steve Green, who grew up watching his father play in the Village Cup, was beaming. “You can’t beat the spirit of this competition. It’s the best cricket I’ve played. Especially the latter stages, with the travelling and mini-bus, the excitement and the tension of the games. We’re thinking ‘wow, it’s only so and so games until we play at Lord’s!’”

That dream is still eight games and four months away from being realised. The smiles on the Bramley faces showed, however, that it’s not always the winning that counts.

Benj Moorehead is editorial assistant of The Wisden Cricketer