Mill Hill School, Sunday 11 August 2024.

St Anne’s Allstars 250 (52.5 overs: Mathan Olaganathan 63, Matt Biss 33, Imran Razaq 33, Tom Taylor 5-54) beat Mighty Wanderers 172 all out (42.4 overs: Pansindu Kumarasena 3-8) by 78 runs to retain the James Abrahams Trophy.

Allstars Debuts: Bassem Khan, Imran Razaq, Pansindu Kumarasena, Sajid Mahmood, Tahir Younis.

Report by Sheahan Arnott – Photos by Sheahan Arnott and Nathaniel Hill

Mill Hill School is quite the ground to get to. Set inside a gated community on the grounds of an old stately home located sufficiently outside London to safeguard the attendees from “dangers both physical and moral awaiting youth while passing through the streets of a large, crowded and corrupt city” as John Pye-Smith wrote in 1807.

 Well it’s not outside London these days – albeit about half-an-hour further out of London than where Dick Whittington supposedly heard the Bow Bells tell him he’d be Lord Mayor one day – but it definitely feels like a place you’d find in a PG Wodehouse novel more so than our fixture list. 

And with branded deckchairs outside the historic pavilion (as the Inspector Morse episode Deceived in Flight), it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine Stiffy Byng reclined in one telling Stinker Pinker that she thought he’d got a rough decision from the umpire had I not been guiding everyone to the ground like a human lighthouse. 

Getting a team together during the week had been laborious, but we had a full complement by the time we tossed and had loaned Sai to our opposition to square us up at 10 v 10. Wanderers skipper James Knight won the toss and sent us in. I was pretty happy that we’d get first use of an outstanding looking wicket, a fast outfield and leave them to swelter in the blazing English sun for a few hours. 

We’d agreed to a much longer format than we’d usually play – 100 overs with lunch and tea breaks, and a few of us reckoned it had been about 20 years since we’d played a game that started before midday, but Matt Biss and Imran Razaq strode to the crease just before 11am and the game began. 

Regular Allstars will know that making it to the end of the first over without losing a wicket is a fantastic achievement, so when Matt and Imran made it to drinks with their partnership unbroken, we were already in unfamiliar territory. 

Mighty Wanderers bowled well with Imran taking full toll on anything loose, and riding his luck with three dropped catches. At the other end, Matt was his usual indefatigable self, blunting the best attack we’ve played against in a long while. 

Imran fell three balls after drinks, bringing the WG Grace-esque figure of Tahir Younis to the crease on debut. He wasted no time showing he’s a class bat, but lost his stumps to Nick Charlton for 14, before Sajid Mahmood did the same to Tom Taylor an over later. Bassem Khan became Nick’s third victim – and our third wicket in as many overs – to leave us at 70/4 and in real danger of throwing away an excellent start. 

Mathan Olaganathan refused to be overawed by the situation, flicking his second ball for 4 off his toes and somewhat calming my captain’s nerves. Matt and Mathan dug in against some excellent bowling, with Mathan showing a full range of glorious shots at one end while Matt negotiated challenging bowling at the other. 

Mathan brought up his half century off 48 balls, and after some very angry calls with Domino’s employees, we broke for lunch at 165/4 in a much stronger position than we’d looked 20 overs earlier.

We’d faced 40 overs, and I told the not out batters to hold out the next four overs and we could start to accelerate our scoring and push towards an imposing total. Mathan, however, didn’t take this on board and was bowled first ball after lunch for a classy 63 in a critical partnership of 95. Harshad Keskar picked up where Mathan left off, and added 40 or so in rapid time before Matt’s vigil came to an end.

I don’t think my writing can do justice to just how well Matt batted. He gave a solitary chance in his first 120 balls – a catch to cover that was called a no-ball – before finally getting out attempting to lift the scoring rate. It was a hot, long day at the crease against a very good bowling attack, and he was more than equal to the task. 

In the end, the scorebook says he made 33, but they were worth a lot more than that given leadership and experience at the crease helped keep our more aggressive batters’ heads in the game. I’m not sure if anyone else in club history has faced as many balls in an innings, and I’m not sure I’ve played with anyone else who could. 

Nathaniel Hill came and went first ball, and – in a role reversal of last season’s game – I came to the crease on a hat trick. With the hat trick ball negotiated, it was time to add some mayo to our score, and consecutive boundaries did just that. Harshad and I took full toll on a tired attack, before Pansindu Kumarasena replaced Harshad and kept the rate up.

A flat six over long-on brought up our 250, and as the fielders went to look for the ball in the undergrowth, I called out to their captain and said we’d declare having batted 53.4 overs. He told me they’d found the ball, and I asked the bowler whether he’d taken 4 or 5 wickets. He told me four, so we “undeclared” to give him two balls to see if he could take his fifth wicket. He only needed one as I hit a catch to long on and wrapped up the innings.

Getting to 250 from 70/4 was an outstanding effort from (just about) everyone who batted, and I knew we had more than enough runs to win if we took early wickets, but with 47 overs remaining in the day would we have enough time…?

I told our bowlers that attacking the stumps would be key to us winning, and though Pansindu and Mathan didn’t bowl as though this applied to them, we did restrict scoring early. Pansindu got the first breakthrough, bowling Tim Maddison for 4 with a brutal ball that pitched on leg stump and hit middle (bowl at the stumps boys!).

Harshad got wickets two and three, and at 37/3 in the 15th over, we were looking good. Tom Taylor came to the crease and batted like he had somewhere else to be – because he did. A la Joe Root, he attempted to ramp the first ball he faced and pushed the scoring rate up and up. 

Bassem snuck a ball through Rigby’s defence on 37 to take his first ever wicket, and Tahir went through Taylor on 40 to give him his first wicket for the club. A calamitous call nearly led to James Knight getting run out for a diamond duck. James certainly thought he was out when he threw his bat and remonstrated with his partner, but the umpire disagreed. With David Heafield looking untroubled at the other end, this was the partnership we needed to break to give ourselves a chance to win the game. 

Not content with spending 40-something overs with his pads on, Matt volunteered to keep in lieu of there being any alternative. He snaffled his first catch off Harshad, but his second was even better – a sharp reflex catch off Irman to dismiss Knight that any keeper would be proud of. 

We took our last drinks break at 6.35 (sorry, yes I know I said I’d be home early but we’re still going) and I brought Pansindu back on to bowl. Almost immediately, he bowled Tjasink leaving us two wickets from victory. Two wickets became one wicket, as Heafield slapped Pansindu to midwicket and Sajid took a tremendous, instinctive one-handed catch. 

Both remaining batters were content to play for the draw, and as the overs counted down and down, I knew we had one last roll of the dice – Imran’s fizzing spinners from one end and Tahir’s loopy off-breaks from the other. But we never got to that last roll, as I sent an in-swinger through Shashank and knocked over his leg stump. 

Had we not had last year’s last over thriller, taking the winning wicket with 25 balls remaining might be seen as a close result, but after 8+ hours on the cricket field, we were all absolutely stuffed and ready to go home. 

And I am pleased to report the James Abrahams Trophy is back on my desk ready to spend the next 12 months where it spent the last.