Welcome, gentlemen and players, to the second instalment of Trashes to Ashes, a serial blog following my player avatar through the Career mode of Cricket 19, starting at the bottom in club cricket and working all the way up to the most prestigious competition in the sport - the Ashes test series between England and Australia. For full details on the scope and aims of this series, be sure to check out the first post by following this link.
Before kicking things off properly, I'd like to say a massive thank-you to everyone who left comments on last week's entry. It's a little surreal to think this weird little blog series might succeed in finding an audience, but your words of support and encouragement have strengthened my resolve to stick with this project and see how far I can take it.
In this week's blog, we make our debut in both the one-day and Twenty20 formats of the game, as our promising start to the season with Aldbury continues. Meanwhile, some political machinations off the pitch have some shock ramifications for the club's leadership going forward...
Part Two - Consecutive Conquest and Unexpected Usurpation
27th April, 2019
Today saw the start of the one-day league, with our first fixture taking us to Long Marston. I knew they'd be looking to score some revenge after the comprehensive win we took over them in our three-day match last week, and so I was perhaps even more nervous going into this game than I was on my debut! I caught a lift with Dan Reece and we arrived at the ground just in time for the one-day captain, our wicketkeeper Phoenix Yates, to tell us that he'd lost the toss and Long Marston had put us in to bowl. It was a lot hotter than it had been the previous week, and since Long Marston have a full-time groundskeeper, the pitch was definitely going to favour the batting side. Feeling more nervous than I think I ever have before in my life, I grabbed my kit bag from Dan's car and headed for the changing rooms to throw on Aldbury's green-and-yellow one-day kit for the first time.
Long Marston lost a wicket early but managed to steady the ship enough to reach 32 runs by the end of the sixth over. Phoenix tossed me the ball and invited me to start a spell of bowling much earlier than I was expecting. I think part of it was down to my good start with the ball last week, but I also suspect there was a psychological aspect to his decision - the facing batsman was none other than Jose Wilkins, whose scalp I'd claimed in both innings of our three-day game. Unfortunately I wasn't able to replicate that performance by taking his wicket for a third time, but I did make a breakthrough in my second over bowling to Messiah Kingma. Putting down a slower, slightly shorter delivery, I managed to draw him into playing early and chipping the ball back towards me. Instinctively leaping to meet the ball, I secured the second wicket of the day, and Kingma returned to the pavilion with just 17 runs to his name. I stayed on for one more over before Phoenix took me off, replacing me with Benjamin English, who set about decimating Long Marston's middle order with ruthless efficiency.
Long Marston were six wickets down with 100 runs on the board when I returned to the fold in the twenty-second over for my second spell. I bowled a good line throughout, not giving much away but unfortunately unable to take a second wicket. Dominic Steyn, the man I'd managed to tempt into getting caught out at fine leg last week, was a little more savvy today, and even succeeded in finding the boundary at one point. Phoenix pulled me from the bowling attack after five tight but fruitless overs, leaving me with very economical figures of 1 wicket for 12 runs. Long Marston ended up making 158 runs in total, a surprisingly low score given the conditions. Steyn ended up top-scoring with 44 not out, while Benjamin English finished up with the day's best bowling figures - 3 wickets for 45 runs. With a very reachable target of 159 in place, we returned to the pavilion for lunch.
Phoenix told me just before the start of our innings that he was putting me up the order, and I'd be batting sixth while he moved into my number seven slot from the previous week. This was a shock to me, since I'd put in a very underwhelming performance with the bat in our last game and didn't feel I deserved the promotion, but the fact he'd given it to me made me feel determined to earn it. By the time I made my way out to the crease, Aldbury had ticked our score up to 118 runs at the cost of four wickets. Tom Baltus, one of our opening batsmen, was still at the crease with a very respectable score of 62. Unfortunately he gave his wicket away almost as soon as I arrived on the pitch, advancing down the wicket and missing the ball, leaving him open to an easy stumping and bringing Phoenix out to join me in the middle. We needed 41 runs to win, with five wickets in hand, and plenty of time on our side.
I opened my account with a drive through the covers for two runs, and repeated the shot two balls later to score two more, pushing me up past my embarrassing previous personal best of 3. Meanwhile, Phoenix started his innings in style at the other end, finding gaps in the field almost effortlessly and quickly pushing us up within reach of our total. In almost no time at all, I found myself facing the bowler with the teams' scores tied and a perfect opportunity to secure the win and earn some extra kudos. Alas, it was not to be. The bowler in question was Mitchell Leaning, the man I dismissed at the start of my tide-turning spell last week, and his field was in tight to stop us from taking an easy single to win the match. I tried to get the ball past them, but simply couldn't find the gap. Leaning completed an easy maiden, I finished up on 8 not out, and Phoenix hit the winning runs in the form of an enormous six off the first ball of the next over, leading us to victory by five wickets. It felt a little anti-climactic in the moment, almost like I'd bottled a really good chance, but in retrospect I think I did well to hold my nerve against such an aggressively-positioned field and not give my wicket away - something that will definitely help my batting average!
4th May, 2019
I was surprised to get a call-up for the team's first Twenty20 match of the season. It's never really been my preferred format of the game, since I tend to score runs quite slowly and in a game where overs are so limited, that tends to be a liability. I guess Felix Caratelli must have seen some promise in me though, because he called me on Tuesday night to let me know I'd been selected for the first T20 of the season, an away game against Pitstone. Once again, I bundled my stuff into Dan's car and we made the short trip north to Pitstone village. It was another hot Saturday, albeit slightly more overcast than the previous week, and the pitch felt very hard underfoot. Imagine both mine and Dan's surprise, then, when Felix returned to the changing room to tell us that he'd won the coin toss and had put us in to bowl first. His rationale was that we'd done well chasing targets so far this season, so why mess with a winning formula?
My first over in T20 cricket wasn't one that I'll be looking back on fondly. I came on to bowl the third over with Pitstone on 10 runs without loss, and in those six balls allowed them to double their score. Jason Murray, one of their openers, hit the ball back over my head for four on two consecutive deliveries. That was pretty demoralising. It was also very damaging to my bowling economy, which prior to today's game was around 1.5 runs per over. I think Felix must have sensed my confidence dropping, because he came to have a chat with me at the end of the over and told me to take a break to get my head back in the game. It proved to be invaluable advice.
I returned to the bowling attack in the tenth over with Pitstone on 62 runs and one wicket down. Jason Murray was still at the crease, but he wouldn't be there for long. On the fourth ball of my returning over, I managed to trap him LBW on the back foot with a yorker dead in line with middle stump. I turned to face the umpire in appeal and felt the whole team joining in with me from every part of the pitch. After a moment's consideration, the umpire slowly raised his finger, and Jason Murray began his slow walk back to the pavilion. The third over brought a second wicket in the form of Ali Creswick, and my fourth and final over brought a third in the form of Luca Christie - both caught behind from thin outside edges off deliveries that could have been carbon copies of each other. These wickets didn't come cheaply, as I conceded 23 runs in the process, but the feeling of securing another three-wicket haul (not to mention the best bowling figures on the team!) was more than worth it.
Pitstone closed their innings on 159 runs with four wickets lost, setting us a target of 160 runs to win. Tom Baltus and his opening partner, the wonderfully named Declan Decker, saw us to that total in just fifteen overs and without giving their wickets away. Tom top-scored for the second match in a row with his unbeaten 88, while Declan backed that up with an equally impressive 64 not out. Their stellar performances secured us a ten-wicket victory - our third win of the season, and a continuation of our unbeaten run. It'll be interesting to see how long we can keep that going!
9th May, 2019
I got an unexpected call this evening from Dan Reece asking me to meet him at the local pub for a chat. I arrived to find him nursing a half-pint of lager with a frustrated expression on his face, and he told me that he would no longer be captaining Aldbury in our three-day games. Not only that, but Phoenix and Felix had relinquished their respective one-day and T20 captaincies. I ordered myself a beer, sat down beside him, and listened as he explained everything to me.
There's a young guy on the team by the name of Michael O'Brien. He started playing this season, same as me, and also like me, he has familial connections with the team. Unlike me, however, his connections go beyond his old man being a former player, and extend to several members of his family being on the parish sports committee. The parish owns the field we play on, and thus while their sports committee isn't in direct control of what happens with the club, they can theoretically take our home ground away from us, and therefore they have a certain amount of leverage in various club matters. Apparently Michael wasn't happy about being left out of our first three-day game against Long Marston, so his family issued an ultimatum to the club chairman - if Michael wasn't given the team captaincy for all three match formats, Aldbury would no longer be able to play at the village recreation ground.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this. I played alongside Michael in the last two games and thought he was a pretty decent guy, but now I see him as manipulative and petulant. I was really looking forward to learning more about the sport under Dan's captaincy, but that's not going to happen now. I also really feel for Felix, who I know was hoping his prodigious T20 captaincy would help him get noticed by the county selectors at Middlesex. Unfortunately I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and deal with it, because taking a confrontational approach is a sure-fire way to get myself deselected, and since players can't change teams mid-season, that would mean no more cricket this summer. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what kind of impact this has on our performance going forward.
Career Stats to Date
Batting:
| Matches | Innings | Runs | NOs | High Score | Average | 4s | 6s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2 | 11 | 1 | 8* | 11.00 | 0 | 0 |
Bowling:
| Matches | Overs | Runs | Wickets | Average | Economy | SR | Best Inns | Best Match |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 28.0 | 59 | 8 | 7.38 | 2.11 | 21.00 | 19-3 | 24-4 |
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Here ends the second episode of Trashes to Ashes. This one was a curious one to write, mainly because I had to find a narrative justification for the game randomly switching up the team's captains, something that can probably be put down to an innocuous bug or glitch. I recall nepotism being a minor issue at a handful of clubs I played against back when I played village cricket in real life, so it seemed like a plausible reason for the change to have happened. I also have to apologise for the lack of a career stat screenshot at the close of this week's blog - I wasn't quite as liberal with my use of the PS4's Share button this time around, so I ended up missing a capture for this particular stage of the season.
I'm off work next week so will try to push out an extra episode with the additional time I'll have. Will our good fortune with the ball continue, or will we hit a dry spell? And will we finally make our way into double figures with the bat? Join me next time on Trashes to Ashes to find out. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care, stay safe, and I'll see you around.
Daniel
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Currently playing - Cricket 19 (PS4)
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