Valley of Peace Captain’s XI v President’s XI, 28th Mar 2021

The last match of the season at the Valley of Peace Cricket Club was again met with good weather, a great result after only having lost one fixture all summer due to weather.

The injury toll for the Valley of Peace membership has shown the effects of all that cricket towards the end of a long successful summer – going from a full 11 vs 11 the evening before the game to starting the match with 8 vs 9. At least I can say some of the injuries were cricket-related (read Tim Fulton’s match report from Dean’s XI with Hamish Anderson involved!). We were very lucky to have Hamish at the ground in his moon boot though as he managed to wrangle all the extras required – no mean feat on the morning of a match.

Teams were chosen for the President’s Captain (Hugo Davison) and my own side trying to ensure an even match and so it proved to be. Hugo’s team was put in to bat on a very hard deck, and early on it was an exciting fixture. Ben Larter had Hugo (48) all tied up (think Harbhajan Singh vs Ricky Ponting), while at the other end George Ritchie and then Tom Music (25) came and went to fine edges. Once Hugo retired after an excellent 40 (including seeing off some great quick bowling from Matty Lewis) young Nick Gibb (23) and James Barringer (41) came together to bat well right through to drinks.

Lunch was taken at 1:15 precisely to celebrate a very special day indeed. Scott Cartwright had arranged for all but one of the Valley of Peace Life Members to come out and enjoy lunch together in the sun. This was served by another Life Member (Barry Frost) while another came straight off the cricket field still in his whites (David Hearn). Scott made a great speech welcoming everyone and explaining the work the club has done thanks to the kind sponsorship of the ANZ bank to get our archiving and museum curacy work underway.

Also on hand were Tim Jones from the Christchurch Art Gallery and his colleague Howard Lange, both of whom have done the work. After lunching these men took a tour alongside our Patron Derek Banks with the Life Members to show off the work done in the Pavilion. A special thanks to all those involved in this gesture – over the winter more information will follow for our membership about what we’ve done and how it can be appreciated.

Back on the cricket field, it was a very exciting second innings…. Dan Byrne, George Ritchie, and Stan were all bowling well to restrict the scoring rate of the Captain’s XI. Needing 183 to win against this attack was always going to be tough. The youngsters in the team made a great start with Ben Heitmeyer making 26* and Matty Lewis 43* while the veterans Frazer Offwood and Greg Jones didn’t make quite as many. David Hearn really held up an end, while he watched batsman come and go at the other. Even Ben Larter’s hard-hit 35 wasn’t quite enough and the Captain’s side went from needing 34 off the last 5 overs, to 24 from the last 3 to finally 14 off the last delivered by the evergreen Stan Wooliscroft. Stan himself took the bails off to effect a runout and it was over.

So a close-run 13 run loss was the result as Hugo and the President’s XI bowled us out. An excellent day celebrating not only a great summer on the field but also off. A huge thanks to everyone who made the day possible – particularly Scott Cartwright and Barry Frost as hosts and Ant Polson as groundsman after a full summer of cricket.

Jesse Tritschler.