Badgers Cricket Club – Season 2025 Match Reports
This page holds the match reports for all games completed so far this season. It is my intention to post at least a summary report for each game, at the same time as the result for the game, with full reports becoming available as and when those designated for the task turn in their copy. The current report will always be available in the latest section of the results page but will also be available here.
The links below provide a direct route to the report for each game plus access to the reports for seasons from 2000 to the present. It is also possible to link to them from the associated rolling results page entries and I hope to extend that facility to include all of the historical results pages, once I’ve figured out the best method of doing so.
Unless otherwise noted both summary and full match reports are written by your host and webmaster, Steve Pitts, as are all editorial comments and statistical notes. For reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, the reports are laid out in reverse chronological order, but hopefully the links above make that an unimportant detail.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Yet another debutant this week, in Paul Kain who captained Woodmansterne against us a few weeks back, and who both bowled and batted without disgracing himself.
Jake changed the face of the game with his 63 from just 24 balls and en route broke his old man’s record for fastest fifty (at least from the period for which we have the detail, Mark needed 20 balls against Overbury on tour in 2022) by reaching reaching that milestone from just 19 balls. Midway through his blitzkrieg innings he passed Brian Moore (5,827) for fifth place in the lifetime runs scored list, finishing on 5,857 (at a current average of 40.39, which is rarefied air just above Chris Morgan with only Darren Hanley, David Aldwinckle and Pat Redding north of that, and none of those played before reaching adulthood – if we remove the games he played up to 2012, before he was a teenager, then that average would be 45.3 and only Pat would be ahead of him). He needs just over a couple of thousand runs more to catch Dave Tickner in fourth.
Dean recorded a five-fer for the first time since his debut game against Leatherhead in 2021, which remains his best ever bowling figures (5 for 36). Five wicket hauls are becoming a rarity in these days of unremitting limited overs contests, and especially given that more and more of our opponents are requesting even less cricket in the form of 35 over games instead of 40, and there have been only two other five-fers in the four years since Dean’s last – Daniel at Blindley Heath last season and Billy against Putney later in 2021.
Rob played his 185th game for the club, joining Keith Miller on that number in 18th place on the lifetime appearances list. He also passed Graham Davenport into 23rd place on the all-time innings list with 127.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Another debutant this week, in Errol “JJ” Brown, and unlike Ben last week he was able to snare his first victim within a couple of legal deliveries, albeit that remained his only success at the end of the day.
This week’s eleven were a little more experienced than last’s – 1010 caps versus the 628 flagged up in the last match report – but there was an even greater imbalance this week with Mark (590) and Darrell (288) accounting for 87% of those caps whereas last week Darrell (287) and Jake (215) represented a mere 80% of the total for the team.
T-Russ returned his best ever bowling figures, with 4 for 41 surpassing the 2 for 27 at Woodmansterne last month. I suspect that he will bowl better for less reward but there are no pictures in the scorebook.
Darrell’s first wicket, a diving catch to his left, was his 300th wicket for the club, the seventh Badger to reach that plateau. It also makes him only the fifth to have scored 3,000 or more runs as well as taking 300 or more wickets – behind Brian Moore, the Tickner brothers and skipper Mark. I would like to be able to tell you how he compares for the caught and bowled count too, but the Badgers database currently only has that information back to the middle of 2012 and back-filling is proving a slow and sometimes painful process. In the data that I do have his 20 catches off his own bowling is third behind Jake (22) and Mark (26).
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Ben Rayner made his Badgers debut in this game, returning very creditable bowling figures whilst regularly watching the spoils go to those he was bowling in tandem with.
Goldie commented after the game that the day’s team had felt like a rather different Badgers line up to other games he had played in, and when I checked out the numbers it turned out that the total number of appearances for the club (caps, if you will) was 628, with most of those coming from Darrell and Jake, and that represents the least capped team we have fielded since a game against Rowan in 2000 where only 506 games of Badgers’ experience took to the field (and there are three names that even I don’t remember, perhaps because they only played four games between them, all in that 2000 season). To put this in further context, there was a bloke watching from the sidelines and scoring the game into his tablet, who has more than that 628 on his own (at least 636). Had I been fit enough to play and make up the eleven that would have more than doubled the number of caps on the field!?
Extras, courtesy of eleven byes, three leg byes, eleven wides and a no ball, contributed 26 runs to the Badgers total of 72, which represents 36.1% of that score and, at least going back to 1984 which is as far as I have that level of detail, is the highest proportion ever, bettering the 27 of 78 (34.6%) from the game against Epsom Methodists in 1997.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Billy recorded the first hat-trick for the club since Mark did so to wrap up their innings six years ago at Dormansland and Bill’s feat is now recorded for posterity. That final triple-wicket maiden also took him past Alan Wilkes into seventh place on the lifetime maidens list, being the 282nd he has bowled. Whilst he needs another 27 to catch Dave Tickner in sixth and the gaps then start to become difficult to cross, the key figure for me is his maidens per over percentage which, at 29.6 is significantly better than anyone other than Brian Moore, who managed 31.8% despite sending down the second most overs in club history.
Darrell walked out to bat for the 232nd time for the Badgers and thus passed club president Roy Gordon into seventh place on the lifetime slate. He is now chasing Wardy, who is eleven ahead but both will need a couple of seasons to have any hope of overhauling Brian Moore in fifth.
Whilst I have no statistical basis for this, the winning six that Tom hit must be one of the longest in club history, no mean feat in and of itself.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Joe becomes the 20th Badger to score a ton and almost certainly the holder of the fastest ever ton in terms of balls faced. However, historically that detail simply isn’t available but the previous fastest century during the eleven seasons for which I have a full record is the 54 balls that Jake took on his way to racking up an unbeaten 137 against Leatherhead in 2021. The 24 balls that Joe took to score his first fifty is definitely not a record though, with Mark (20 balls against Overbury on tour in 2022) and Jake (22 balls at Blindley Heath a month later) having bettered that rate.
Sam made his highest ever score for the club, smashing his previous best of eight recorded at Banstead last season, and obviously therefore registered his maiden fifty. The 145 that he and Joe added for the first wicket is the joint eighth highest in club history.
The team score of 282 is the highest we have ever made, bettering the 277 we amassed at Ham & Petersham last season and exceeding our previous highest of 235 against Dormansland, which dates back to August 1970 and which took 40.2 overs (compared to the 43 overs that Dormansland faced in holding out for the draw on 121 for 9). Their 215 in reply was the second highest they have made against us, just one shy of the total they made in May 2009, but that took 47 overs and also ended with a drawn game.
Jake batted for the 190th time for the club, moving him past Pete Legge into 14th place on the all-time list of innings, whilst the two wickets that Darrell bagged took him past Greggy into seventh place for lifetime wickets taken.
View the detailed scorecard of this game
My apologies for the lack of a report for this game, but nothing was written at the time and there is little or no chance that anything will be now
Statistical Notes: Daniel became the 34th Badger to pass the one thousand run mark for the club and at the rate he has been going in recent times should be chasing down the next four on that list in fairly short order.
Billy made his 157th appearance for the club taking him out of a tie with Alan Wilkes and into either 23rd or 24th spot on his own. As ever the doubt arises because of the missing scorebook for 1981 but for the curious I explained the full scenario after the Ham & Petersham game in 2021. His pair of wickets also moved him three clear of Jake in ninth place on the wicket takers slate, a fact that I should have mentioned in the final report for last season when the actual overtake took place.
Joe was particularly chuffed with his spell of five overs for no runs and it evinced some discussion amongst the ‘staterati’ as to the likelihood of it having been done before and especially what the chances were that Brian Moore had not done so. Back in the day it would have been highly unusual to have been taken off after five overs for no runs and indeed the only other example of a bowler finishing with that state involved taking a wicket to end the game with the final ball of the fifth over. However, since I needed to dig through the scorebooks anyway, because we do not have the full data beyond 1984 currently, I was able to look for spells that started with five overs for no runs
| Player | Date | Opponent | Performance |
| Brian Moore | 20 Jun 1964 | St. Johns | five maidens at the start of an opening spell of 9-6-9-1 |
| Peter Ward | 15 Jun 1968 | Old Walcountians | six maidens, two of them wicket, at the start of an opening spell of 8.4-6-11-5 that ended with the opposition all out for 42 (Brian started with four maidens, one of them a wicket, at the other end whilst recording figures of 9-4-18-5) |
| Alan Tickner | 23 May 1970 | Cheam Parish | five maidens, three of them wicket, at the start of an opening spell of 9.2-5-12-6 that finished when the opposition were all out for 31 |
| Brian Moore | 17 Aug 1974 | Meadowbank | five maidens, two of them wicket, at the start of an opening spell of 16-8-16-3 – it was a different game in those days, with the opposition taking 40 overs to record 86 for 8 |
| Alan Tickner | 21 May? 1983 | Franklin Lewin | five maidens at the start of an opening spell of 7-5-4-0, although it looks like the game was abandoned, didn’t count for the averages and no other game exists in the records against this particular opponent (who were identified as Streatham Levin on the fixture card for the season) |
| Dave Tickner | 22 Apr 1989 | Nat West Bank | a closing spell as the fitfh bowler used of 5-5-0-1 to complete a 129 run win |
| Alan Wilkes | 25 May 1991 | Wallington Old Foresters | six maidens, one of them wicket, at the start of an opening spell of 8-6-6-1 |
| Mark Gordon | 9 Jun 2002 | Stoke d'Abernon | seven maidens, one of them a wicket, at the start of an opening spell of 16.3-9-16-5 at the end of which Stoke were all out for 42 but, by virtue of the rain getting heavier during the tea interval, the game was eventually called off without the Badgers facing a ball |
| David Aldwinckle | 15 May 2004 | Leigh | five maidens at the start of an opening spell of 6-5-3-0 |
| Vinny Cibardo | 7 Aug 2022 | Mynthurst | five maidens at the start of an opening spell of 9-5-9-1 – and strangely similar to the first entry in this table |
| Joe Hyatt | 27 Apr 2025 | Churchleigh | an opening spell of 5-5-0-2 |
| NOTE that the above might be missing some spells that meet the criteria not just because of the missing 1981 scorebook but also because the detail has been lost forever where the only information recorded about our bowling were the final figures for each bowler (there are nearly forty such instances between the early 1980s and the 2000s where a bowler recorded at least five maidens in a spell of more than five overs) | |||
| For those in the know this will come as no surprise, but Brian also owns the best five over spell of bowling in the club’s history: | |||
| Brian Moore | 2 Jul 1966 | Montrose | an opening spell of 5-4-2-10 resulting in an opposition total of 20 all out after just nine overs, although it might be worth noting in the ‘how the game has changed’ column that it took the Badgers the better part of 15 overs to reach the winning line with five wickets down |