Sessionseekers

<<Back to Sessionseekers

What a Balls Up!

Officials were left red-faced when a match-ball was discovered on the Atherstone square in the middle of the close season. And there was outrage at a committee meeting as tempers flared and members tried to lay blame at one another's feet, oblivious to the fact that there was a simple explanation all along.

It is normal procedure for the balls to be collected into a bag after a net session so that none go missing, but the last time cricket was played on the field was a Sunday game against Witherley, so the incident must have happened then. Or at least that is what is thought to have occurred.

Secretary Paul Oldham warned that the Captains must ensure that the match ball is returned to the club after a game as they cost about three quid a time and "can always be used for net practices." Committee member and occasional player, Matthew Wong, took a stronger line saying that "Captains who are careless enough to leave balls lying around after games should be lined up naked against a wall, horsewhipped and shot." before leaving the meeting early to drive to Dover where he was expecting some illegally imported chicken / future pig-swill and several members of his extended family to be delivered in the back of a Dutch lorry behind two tokenistic pallets of cherry tomatoes.

However, when Sunday skipper Chris Horton announced that the Witherley match ball had been presented to him after his brilliant match-winning stumping, the mystery deepened. Just where had this ball come from? Upon closer inspection, it appeared that former Atherstone shopkeeper and shoe repair guru, H. Spittle, sponsored the ball. It later materialised that the ball was originally the one delivered by Stan Riley in a fixture back in 1978.

We contacted club batting legend John "Cleetus" Clark, who takes up the story: "We were playing a league match against Herberts - I remember it well as it was the one game in my 47 year playing career when I didn't field at slip for the full 50 overs. Stan bowled this ball and it was a right pie. He tossed it so high that all the players got bored waiting for it to come down and left the field, with both captains agreeing that the game be declared drawn. It seems that the ball has finally made it back down to earth."

We asked Stan on Sunday morning if he remembered the ball but he said he was struggling to remember his own name at that precise moment in time. Instead, we turned to local "Regular", Howard Dennis who perhaps typically launched into a three month long debate about the precise whereabouts of H. Spittle's premises on Long Street, how shoe repair was better in those days and why cabbages are "two pence dearer in the Coop than in Gateway".

Rumours of an elderly man in a white coat shouting "wide ball" at the time the ball was believed to have landed were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.