Rivalries – The added spice of Sunday friendly cricket

In a world where much of the sport we love is becoming oversaturated with novel competitions, increasing number of fixtures, and sanatisation of tradition in pursuit of new audiences and increasing commercialisation, rivalries can still give us a sense of excitement, drama and meaning beyond the surface level visuals of whatever game is in front of you. I think this is why The Hundred has failed to grab my attention regardless of the technical excellence and entertainment it might provide. It’s probably also because I used to be a young fogey, and now, I’m a middle aged one, and I’ve long been opposed to the notion that the purpose of sport is for entertainment.

Rivalry in sport has been defined as “a fluctuating adversarial relationship existing between two teams, players, or groups of fans, gaining significance through on-field competition, on-field or off-field incidences, proximity, demographic makeup, and/or historical occurrences. Rivalries come in different forms and with different intensities. Some rivalries almost transcend their sport themselves. Many people will know very little about Argentinian domestic football but will understand that the River Plate and Boca Juniors rivalry is one of the fiercest rivalries in World sport.

Occasionally, the fervour generated by rivalries between fans and players can create more heat than light and can translate to ugly and nasty consequences, including all-out war. Fortunately, the rivalries that Anson has had over the years have been much more cordial affairs, despite Monky‘s best efforts to try and upset opponents each game.

In fact, the basis of most of our rivalries in recent years has come from amity and close relationship with other clubs, which is probably right for Sunday friendly cricket. Playing against clubs we’ve known for many years with familiar faces returning each season gives a little bit of extra spice and motivation as we look to gain bragging rights with a good run of results or to avenge defeat in a previous meeting. As the adage goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Though as Churchill once retorted, it’s very hard to breed anything without a certain degree of familiarity.

East Ham Corinthians – ‘last fixture with a bit of needle’

Sadly, these days we have lost many of these fixtures, usually because the clubs have folded. The last bastion of our long-standing rivalries is now only East Ham Corinthians. We have had fixtures with East Ham Corinthians since 1964 but since I joined Anson, in 1995, the first fixture we had with them was in 2004 and we’ve played them every season since. They don’t have all the familiar faces from those days, other than Adrian Swain who has played nearly every game. At 70 years old he’s playing 3-4 times a week and is still going strong behind the stumps, though it was always his leg spin that tormented me down the years.

We’ve played East Ham 42 times, more than any other opposition. Our record is lost 22 and won 18, which is something we’re itching to correct. The record is close but currently we are on a 5-match losing streak with our last win coming in 2021. A lot of the games themselves have been close, and this all adds to the lore of the rivalry. As Taggs said at our game with them a couple of weeks ago, they’re probably the last fixture we have that has a bit of needle. With 13 runs left to win we managed to lose our last 3 wickets to lose that game.

Mallards – a dominating force

During my early years at the club our biggest rivals were probably Mallards CC, who played down in Rayleigh, Essex.

On the field they were a strong team. Between 1979 and 2001 we played them 32 times and lost 20 games and only won 4 times. As with all our rivalries, matches were generally well natured, but I do remember it once nearly coming to blows when Les Wilcox’s son, Andrew, gave a bit of a sweary send-off to one of their batsmen, who then retaliated by throwing the gloves off and grabbing Andrew by the neck.

Despite their strength, I had my best match figures against Mallards, at a time when Monky and Ian Attridge were still trying to work out my role in the team. I opened the bowling and ended up with figures of 8-4-8-4. We still lost. In the game at our home ground later that year we only had 9 men and they really went after my bowling and chased down our score of 143 in 21 overs.

They had some characters in their team and one that stands out was Banger. He was an older and portly fella who used to bowl slow and high lobs. In a standout memory of playing Mallards, Banger was once right under a steepling catch at long on only for the ball to go straight through his hands and hit him right in the bollocks. Another fielder coming round from long off just fell to the ground in hysterics instead of fielding the ball or helping poor old Banger. Everyone found it hilarious apart for Banger.

It was also at Mallards where I ran across the bowls green with my cricket bag on my back and holding my bat like GI Joe to get out of the rain. Three card brag replaced cricket that day.

Sadly, other than a couple of old scorecards, doing a quick Google search brings up nothing at all on Mallards CC so I assume that they also folded. It’s sad, that for what used to be a great rival for us, there is hardly any evidence that this club had existed at all.

Britannic Lodge – Thorns in the side

Rivalries can be, created, defined, or exaggerated by one-on-one battles or personal performances. This was often the case with a player called Sibby Shah who was a constant thorn in our side whenever we played Britannic Lodge CC at the turn of this century.

Sibby was a quality all-rounder but as a batsman he could play shots all around the wicket and we were often left scratching our heads on how to get him out. I only once remember getting him cheaply when Taggs bamboozled him with fine bowling and a mistimed shot offered a simple catch to mid-off. I don’t know if it made it better or worse that he was also a decent fella who would come and spend time with us in the bar after the game. Although, he was really upset when I turned down one of his LBW shouts against Paul Evans at Cromer Road on one occasion, apologising loudly, whilst walking back to his mark, to the two players in his team who he had given out in their innings.

We did enjoy playing against Cyril Wolstenholm though, who was a longstanding Britannic Lodge member. I seem to remember Cyril once batting all the way through an innings and scoring about 25. He batted so slowly that the strategy against Cyril sometimes was to not get him out.

On one very famous occasion when we batted first, Cyril spent the whole innings off the field making all the arrangements and finishing up a fabulous cricket tea. He still opened the batting and was out in the first over. As he walked off sad and dejected, Alf couldn’t help but congratulate him with ‘nice tea though, Cyril’.

You want your own players to save their best for rivalries and perhaps Britannic Lodge felt about Lee Gilbert and Paul as we did about Sibby Shah. Four of Lee’s hundreds were against Britannic Lodge, and Paul had best bowling figures of 7-20 and scored a magnificent hundred batting at 6 against them. No one else in Anson has ever scored a hundred from batting so low down the order.

Fixtures against Britannic Lodge were very much of my era as we first played them in 1991 with the final game being played in 2012. In 26 matches we had 11 wins and 11 draws and only 4 losses.

Britannic Lodge once fielded several Saturday teams as well as a Sunday side but by the 2010s they were struggling to retain players. They were subsumed by Hornchurch Cricket Club but allowed to carry on playing under the Britannic Lodge name on Sundays before eventually that was dropped as the last of their long-standing members retired. Their old ground at Cromer Road is now our home ground.

Honourable mentions

There are a few honourable mentions for South Loughton and Waltham Cross Rosedale. I don’t think they would have considered us as rivals, but they were teams that we enjoyed beating. Waltham Cross, mostly because the games were quite competitive, and they had a couple of characters like an opening bat who we referred to as Action Man and a guy called Housego who had his portrait hanging in the club house and would sometimes block out for the draw from the outset of the innings.

South Loughton was just a strange club to us. The grass at their ground came up to the ankles, the dressing room was like a rabbit hutch and the captain, who we called Elaborate Prance, had a handshake that Greg described as someone lightly putting a wet fish in your hand. Sometimes oppositions just rub you up the wrong way which makes victory more sought after.

I’d also give a mention to Forest Gate CC. Not a rivalry per se, but the previous iteration of them were a good bunch of lads and it seemed like every game we played with them went down to the wire, so they were always games to look forward to.

Coopersale – The Harrison-Hancock Trophy

One of our favourite, and sadly shortest lived, rivalries was with Coopersale CC. From the first season we played them, in 2006, we had them as our final fixture of the season, and they regularly did an end of season BBQ which was perfect for a sociable club like ours. A close relationship ensued from there. In later years the BBQ was swapped for a fantastic curry lunch cooked by one of their players and we all chipped in with a few extra quid.

The fixture had all the ingredients for a good rivalry; regular fixtures, close matches on a low scoring pitch, good humour, similar ability level of cricketers, memorable individual performances, and familiar faces returning each year.

Success often hinged on good performances from either Lee or Greg for us, or Graham Hancock and Tony Fraser for Coopersale, but with a good cast of supporting players as well. Many of us remember Mark James being run out on 99 by Luke Edwards acting as his runner in 2014, or Liam’s ridiculous bowling spell of 7 wickets for 7 runs in 2015. If I don’t mention the two sixes that Steve Redway hit at Coopersale in 2009 I don’t think he would ever forgive me.

In 2010 we inaugurated the Harrison-Hancock Trophy, named after Alf and Graham’s dad, both of whom played in the match. It was a great occasion, and it added an extra incentive to win the final game each season and take home the Trophy.

We dominated the Trophy in the years that followed, including in 2012 when torrential rain meant that no cricket could be played, and a darts contest was used to decide the winner. In typical fashion, this was also a close-run thing with Mitchel Gilbert hitting an 83 finish in the deciding game to bring home the trophy.

Sadly, as the years went by, we got a bit stronger and Coopersale struggled to get a team out. It wasn’t unusual to get an email from Graham over the winter saying he was concerned about whether they could go on. Eventually Coopersale decided not to play us anymore as we were too strong for them and 2019 was our last game with them. In all we won 15 out 22 matches and lost only 5.

Rivalries – The new batch

None of our rivalries were or are adversarial. We tend to drop teams that we can’t get along with. As a Sunday friendly side, playing in the right spirit is important to us, but we do still play to win the game. That is what sport is for, after all, and for most of us our matches are our only game of cricket each week and so good performance and victory is still important. Victory and bragging rights over those clubs that we know so well, and have a history with, just mean that bit more.

I’m sure that with our current set of fixtures more rivalries will come with time, but they need to develop organically to have real meaning. There is plenty of potential there, like with Chadwell Heath Lions, who are a team that we’ve played a lot recently since they were founded only a few years ago. Like the rivalries mentioned in this blog we have a good relationship with them and their captain, Narinder Singh, and we look forward to competitive matches. But who knows how the next rivalries will come about.

In any case, I am sure if a competitive spirit and friendly nature endures in all our fixtures we’ll continue to enjoy our cricket.