COMETH THE HOUR COMETH THE MUDHOO
Ripley v Hetairoi  Sunday 21 May 2017
We should have known that this might be Jonathan’s day when he arrived with a baggy green cap perched jauntily on his head and his own name printed on his cricket shirt. 
“I’m only here for a nice day out- I don’t mind what I do at all” he said with skipper-pleasing self-effacement.  As it happened, that turned out to be more or less everything except keep wicket and make the truly delicious tea that always draws a full team of Hetairoi gourmands to this sylvan glade.
My two Hetaroi games this season have followed a similar pattern. As at St John’s Oxford, a well-disciplined and youthful bowling attack proved exceedingly parsimonious in ripping through our vaunted upper order on a tricky pitch and early trips back along the M40 or A3 were morosely anticipated. On both occasions we were in all sorts of trouble at around 50 for 7. Then a warrior emerges from the Hetaroi deckchairs, starting steadily and finally laying about himself with great abandon. At St John’s this was Brian, playing savage shots all around the wicket and including sometimes on the off-side. On Sunday it was Mr Mudhoo shepherding us to the dizzy heights of 108 off 33 overs and, as at St Johns, able assistance provided at the death by Stephen Matthews, bat whirling like a deranged threshing machine and charging up and down the wicket like a goaded bull. 
The similarities with St John’s do not end there. After a banquet of a tea so fulsome and extended that it only lacked the accompaniment of a minstrel’s gallery, the Hetairoi were transformed into a very different outfit from that serving up that early afternoon limp nurdlefest.
From John Ball’s brutalist mirror shades, Matt Robinson’s Marcel Marceau tribute war paint, Tim Drake’s lasered throw-ins and Andrew Wilson’s flinty stares at mid-wicket to Neal’s jack in the box athleticism behind the sticks, we were the real deal. 
No mercy was shown to the hapless Mid-Surrey striplings.  Moiz, mixing the unplayable with the unprintable, nipped out their opener and bowled with real hostility. Jonathan took several wickets and caught several more. They went to 3 for 3 and from there to 25 for 7. The batsmen were showing distinct lemming-like tendencies and there are few people more willing to offer friendly directions over the nearest cliff and an avuncular shove than the wicket-mad miller of Shipton. Ripping the ball out of the skipper’s hand, he duly delivered the denouement and, having despatched the last bewildered adolescent, they were all out for 31.
There will be times this season, possibly very soon, that we feel old and arthritic and irrelevant but this was a good win. We were very good in the field. It is our fourth in a row and we should enjoy it while we can