Washington Cricket Club - 40th Anniversary Year

It left his skipper Pete Grzonka with a broad smile on his face: ‘that was a most fabulous innings: he hits the ball like a rocket’, he said, adding: ‘it wasn’t all slogging either: there was one fine cricket shot in there towards the end’.

Hope’s innings was the highlight of a good all-round performance from a Wash XI that lacked many regulars. That inexperience placed a big burden on the shoulders of opening bowlers Alex Quin (2-36) and Neil Martin (2-43) at the outset. Their response laid the foundations for Washington’s eventual success.

So tight was the bowling that Park amassed only 15 runs off the first 10 overs, which left the home side under pressure for the rest of the afternoon. Although the momentum picked up when South African right hander Shultz came to the crease and unfurled a series of elegant drives off front and back foot, his dismissal for 46 steadied Washington at a critical juncture.

Skipper Grzonka rallied his troops skilfully, and in Eric Stoughton found the bowler to unlock the Southill Park middle order. Stoughton bowled superbly and picked up three well deserved wickets, including one to a sharp catch at slip by Hope.

There were also wickets for Stevie Brown and Christian Bell, while some late blows from skipper David Pike carried Park to a respectable 185-9 at the end of 40 overs. Wise heads in the home changing room, however, reckoned they might have come up at least 60 runs short. So it proved.

Hope set about the bowling from ball one, crashing a 4 and a 6 in his first three deliveries and never looking back thereafter. He and Matthew Cragoe (8) added 51 for the first wicket, before the latter lost his off stump to a big away swinger that pitched on leg; then the big Aussie put on exactly 100 with Brown.

For Hope to perish with a century in his sights was a cruel fate, but Wang’s catch also highlighted the spirit of a Southill Park team who kept fighting to the end. They never gave it up.

A perfect summer’s afternoon ended with Brown stepping forward to loft the boundary needed to win the game for Wash, and simultaneously bring up a typically cultured and intelligent 50 of his own.

Yet as the teams followed their lengthening shadows off across the neatly mown outfield at the game’s end, with the sound of the local church bell chiming the hour, the old cliché presented itself irresistibly: the ultimate winner of the afternoon had been that old favourite, cricket itself.

Wash: Grzonka (c), Cragoe, Hope, Brown, Harris, Skinner, Always (+), Bell, Quin, Martin, Stoughton.