During the season, there are certain fixtures are that always anticipated with great relish; Sheen Park is one of them, and this season even more so, as thirty-twenty cricket was born out of an idea that Tony Freeman dreamt up during those cold winter nights.

Now the thirty-twenty format didn’t mean the team batting second had the disadvantage of facing ten fewer overs, although we may suggest the idea to Addington Village later this season, but instead a two-innings match, made up of primarily thirty overs, and secondly twenty, with bowlers allowed no more than ten overs over the two. An idea so revolutionary, that even the ECB wanted to know how the game progressed; expect Sky to be bidding millions of pounds in 2010 for such a championship.

Playing Sheen Park is always a difficult proposition; any team who were so many times at the wrong end of an incredibly tight result over the years will fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn’t happen too often, so much so that in 2004 they inflicted a 10 wicket defeat upon Beechwood in only the home team’s second ever defeat at Limpsfield.  That defeat still caused much pain to the players on duty that day, and many of whom were at Sheen Common ready for an 11.30 start; of course, just as previous years, the Sheen Park players were unaware that British Summer Time is still in operation and the clocks went forward at the end of March.

To the cricket, and Woodward once again called wrong; I’m not sure what he’s actually calling each time, but a suggestion of either heads or tails may ensure a better ratio of toss-wins.  Sean Quinn, the competitive Sheen Park captain, wanted to see how Beechwood would pace their initial innings and thus asked Woodward to bat first.  Despite having just 180 legitimate balls to score runs from, it was deemed that Kelly and Freeman would open the batting.  Maybe the Beechwood captain missed a trick not introducing a more powerful hitter at the start, especially as the Sheen Park opening bowlers struggled to find any kind of line or length to begin with. The leg-side bowling was not being put away, and the umpires chose to be very relaxed on how wide wides actually are deemed to be before stretching the arms out.  However, the pair did run well taking the quick single here and there, and the scoreboard ticked over, albeit at a slowish rate.

Eventually Freeman departed, trying to pull and top edging to Quinn at gully.  A couple of overs later Kelly followed him back, another fine delivery ceasing Kelly’s progress, although after kindly walking he openly declared to everyone whilst walking back that he wasn’t sure that he hit it.  Curious behaviour.  It did however allow Beechwood’s musclemen to get in and smash the ball around.  At least Valentine read the script and began to do so, the rest of the middle order unfortunately scratched around like a shaggy old dog.  Warner was put out of his misery edging a “good one” to the keeper, Rob Herd struggled even more before getting clean-bowled, but thankfully our South African was playing great cricket at the other end; how we missed his batting against the Shooters Hill mob last week.  He did survive a very strong LBW shout from Morley, although Savory adjudged the ball to be missing leg stump, much to the annoyance of the bowler.

At the crease now came Bradley, and after killing a lot of flies with some tremendous air shots early on, he got his eye in and found the famous middle.  Brad and Val put on seventy four together to make sure the away side didn’t collapse in a similar fashion to seven days earlier, until Brad was cleaned out by a full-toss; a problematic ball for both Bradley and Indian professionals he bowls against.  When Valentine was eventually bowled for 78, the score had crept up to 145 for 6 with three overs remaining.

Unfortunately Morton and Robinson did not fare so well, Boris’s slog-sweep, despite being a favourite shot of his, in fact being the only shot of his, is not always very successful, and a series of frustrating dot-balls followed.  Robinson was then bowled by some guile from Dusty, and Beechwood spluttered to 154 for 8 after 30 overs, which was a pretty good effort with 100 runs coming from the last 15 overs.

Now it was Sheen’s turn to bat, and Woodward decided to fight fire with fire, introducing the pace of himself and Valentine, who declared himself fit to bowl much to Woodward’s glee, as well as Herd’s and Kelly’s who would have probably shared a calamitous ten overs between them otherwise.  The pace however, helped Sheen get off to an impressive start, with fours, sixes and byes being the order of the day thanks to Quinn and Rega and some indifferent bounce.  The 154 posted by Beechwood was starting to look a little less formidable, and in fact somewhat meagre.

Thankfully Woodward had an excellent leg-spinner to turn for first-change, and for once it wasn’t yours truly but the superlative half-man, half-machine which is Chris Savory. The runs dried up, Sheen Park’s momentum was lost.  In the very next over the destructive Rega smashed a ball from Woodward through mid-wicket; surely a four with just Dean Kelly in the area. Most certainly not, Kelly took a very smart catch, Sheen Park’s opening pair were finally compromised, and Kelly celebrated in a fashion not entirely appropriate for cricket, but the passion was almost justified.

However, this seemed to be a temporary blip for Sheen Park, as Quinn and Pierce began to put a very decent second wicket partnership together, finding a particularly good yield from the bowling of McCrea and Hill, who were possibly slightly short of a length for the pitch conditions.  Savory was then switched to the Tennis Courts End, and soon after picked up the vital wicket of Captain Quinn, who tried to drive down the ground only to be thwarted by the safe hands of Bradley Hill.  The score was 133 for 2 with still six overs remaining.  The next twenty minutes were going to shape the match.  Lee Morton took an extremely sharp stumping to remove Creedon from a McCrea fizzing delivery, and it was wished that he could move his legs as quickly as he moves his hands.

Sheen Park continued to make steady progress before Valentine run-out half-centurion Pierce with a direct hit from mid-on; the celebration between bowler and fielder confirmed that a danger man had been removed at a dangerous time.  With two overs remaining Bradley Hill bowled Stanfield, but not before he could make a very quick fire twenty. In the end, Sheen Park finished their thirty overs on 168 for 5, with Beechwood grateful it wasn’t the 200 plus it looked at one stage it could have been.

After a sumptuous lunch/tea between, which included some delightfully spicy chicken, Beechwood once again got their pads on, with Valentine and Warner opening the batting, Beechwood 14 in deficit.  Both made a responsible, somewhat watchful start considering it was now a twenty over game; however once the eyes were in and the tea had settled down, they started to bat well.  Valentine, already buoyant from his first innings blitz was starting to find the boundary at regular intervals, and Warner, who found life a little difficult to begin with, started to show the trademark consistent power shots that we had not really seen during the season, apart from his Buckhurst slaughter-session.

It was Valentine who departed first, not quite timing a Pierce delivery and presenting a relatively simple catch for Quinn.  Disappointment from the onlooking Beechwood players and supporters that he went so quickly was slightly curtailed by the fact that he had actually scored a very rapid 42, and Warner was starting to find his feet and the middle of his bat.  Tony Freeman came in next and played an excellent supporting role, providing the dianne sauce to Warner’s serving of 16 ounce T-bone steak. Warner was now dealing mainly in fours and sixes, before being bowled by Corless for 46, but more importantly the score was rising to 129 for 2 after 16 overs.  The foundation was set, the bricks were laid, and now for the topping out ceremony.

Bradley Hill came in and unfortunately struggled, his mind seemed elsewhere, namely a thousand feet above his head.  He quickly went for two and Beechwood were in the position of facing the final four overs with the much-maligned Freeman and Kelly as our main hope of quick runs.  And that was exactly what was delivered, not by agriculture, but by a display of excellent running, constantly being able to put all fielders under pressure, and having the array of delicate shots between them to find gaps throughout the field.  The pair scored 27 from the final four overs, and gave Beechwood a real shot at victory, setting the hosts 145 from their twenty overs to win the game.

Beechwood took to the field, and East Sheen’s infamous micro-climate returned, as rain fell from sky.  It was debated (by myself, to myself) who would benefit more from this wetland shower, and I thought it may just juice the dying pitch up a little for the seamers.  Sheen Park opened with the dangerous Rega and Bennett, and started well against Hill and McCrea, scoring at over seven an over.  Hill then bowled Rega a ball that bounced a little unexpectedly (my “juice” prediction started to come to fruition) and the gloved Morton ran to take a good catch.  An early wicket, and Beechwood knew they were in business.  Bennett continued to make good progress with Pierce before a second run-out, this time calmly dealt with by Savory rolling the ball along the ground, Bennett was gone, although the reaction from other fielders was a little muted; whether it was tension, tiredness or slight disinterest I assume I will never know.  However, it was now 64 for 2 and Savory was once again keeping Sheen quiet.

The mighty Quinn was now at the crease, and the motivation was there in his eyes for all to see.  He’d been a match winner for Sheen before against Beechwood, and quite fancied the prospect again.  Savory however, was ready for him.  Quinn launched into a leg-break and sent it deep to long-on. Underneath was Rob Herd.  Sublime or ridiculous, which was it to be? The answer, sublime, much to the delight of the fielding side. A fine catch under pressure. In fact the next few overs continued to demonstrate the old adage of “catches win matches”.  In this case, it slammed the brakes on Sheen Park’s progress with Warner taking a great running catch in the deep to remove Pierce from Valentine's bowling.  I once again debated with myself (as I like to do quite often) how is it that Warner managed to immediately throw the ball in jubilation after taking the catch, and indeed gaining quite a lot of distance on the throw.  That can be discussed some other time, but now Sheen Park were on the ropes, 83 for 4 after 13 overs and 145 looking a long way off.

Stanfield once again came in and showed great attacking resistance, before Valentine struck with a caught and bowled.  The scent of victory was in the air.  It was now the Valentine and Woodward show.  Good seam bowling in ever-dimming light mopped up the tail, all of whom were clean-bowled.  Sheen Park had batted twenty overs, but more importantly Beechwood had bowled them out for 127, Deakin losing his stumps to Woodward's last ball of the match, and a 17 run victory was complete.  A very good start to the thirty/twenty brainchild of Freeman, possibly a few tweaks could be introduced for the next encounter, but undoubtedly the formula proved to be a very popular and successful venture. Congratulations to all twenty-two players for contributing towards a hard-fought but fair and friendly game of cricket.  And well done to Ron Kelly for keeping score for nearly eight hours.  Thankfully he was restricted to just one glass of wine!

Beechwood: Freeman, Herd, Hill, Kelly, McCrea, Morton (w), Robinson, Savory, Valentine, Warner, Woodward (c)