Home > Tales from the Meadows > Kieran's Nice Over

In April 2010, a dozen hardy cricketers took part in Tottington St Johns' first-ever overseas tour to the South of France. We'd been invited over by the Riviera Cricket Club, from Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey, around an hour north of Nice. The full report of this trip remains available, providing some additional details and context around the story below!

This particular tale surrounds our loveable Yorkshireman, the honourable Kieran Coe. As we all know, KC is the most redoubtable of opening batsmen, a true belt and braces diehard blocker in the mould of Sir Geoffrey, with the odd bout of pyrotechnics thrown in during his later years. His contributions to the on-field part of the game have always very much been with bat in hand, but in Nice it was his prowess with the ball that left everyone with a lasting memory.

The game had in fact been very much going to plan for KC. His opening act on foreign soil was to aggressively wave off a young child playing on their bike behind the bowler's arm! He then settled in and enjoyed the dominant role in an opening stand of 75 with TSJ alumnus Matt Hunt. We'd agreed before the game that the "retire when you get to 50" friendly rule would apply, and KC had reached 45 before selflessly attempting to blast the ball into outer space and getting out. He actually tamely chipped one to square leg, but let's not let facts get in the way here.

With everyone chipping in, we reached a total of 189-6, which seemed pretty competitive on a challenging wicket. Indeed, early pressure from Matt Cotton and the magnificent Nick Marsh reduced the home side to a wobbly 43-5. Nick, it should be said, had already provided one of the tour highlights the previous evening. Having checked into our hotel we'd already taken note of a couple of extremely rough looking local taverns as places to avoid. Imagine our surprise 5 minutes later when we spied young Marshy arm in arm with the proprietor, who invited us in for some "special local rum". Your author took his life into his hands by asking if there was any Malibu, earning a rather frightening stare from the locals, and a grand old time was had.

Anyway, back to the cricket ...

With the home side clearly in all sorts of trouble, we decided to experiment with the bowling a little. Andy Walker was brought on, much in the manner of old county championship games when captains sought a quick declaration. His mix of long hops, full tosses and outright beamers didn't go down well with Kieran, who kindly reminded Andy "it's not blooming rocket science, aim at the green bit". Andy's retorts involved some comments about a suspect pitch length and the thinner atmosphere at altitude, neither of which appeared to help KC's mood in the simmering heat.

In such circumstances what else could captain Dickie P do than bring on the man himself. Kieran's first ball, the most brilliantly looped up off spinner you could imagine, was met with a cavalry charge by the batsman who missed it and was stumped by a good yard and a half by the magnificent Pete Allen. However in a shocking twist, the square leg umpire announced that it wasn't out despite the batsman himself being halfway back to the pavilion. Pete went into fever pitch at this, and Kieran was properly simmering now. He threw another delivery into the French air, the batsman heaved mightily, and a routine catch was unfortunately spilled in the deep. To suggest KC was not best pleased would be doing the moment little justice.

Pete Allen then took a totally brilliant stumping in the next over, screamed "THAT'S STILL OUT!" at batsman and umpire, and then it was time for Kieran's second over. Surely it couldn't be more eventful than the first could it? Could it? The first ball was looped up again, once more the batsman heaved at it and the ball fell into the safe hands of Nick Marsh. Who promptly dropped it - over the boundary - for 6. Kieran was by now approaching Defcon 2. The very next ball was almost a carbon copy, with the ball smashed high into the deep and this time the very safe hands of Matt Cotton somehow managed to spill another catch. KC hit thermonuclear levels and went into full-on loud ranting mode, which was simultaneously quite scary and bloody hilarious.

Ball 3 passed uneventfully before the fourth delivery where Kieran went for a new tactic of forcing the batsman to hit a catch directly back at him. It probably won't surprise anyone still reading at this point that KC shelled it, the third drop in four balls. The next delivery was sent down at a pace akin to peak Michael Holding, with your author retreating rapidly at slip to much laughter.

As with all our Tales from the Meadows, there is of course a happy ending: Kieran eventually got his wicket, we won the game and eleven of the twelve tourists were left with a very happy memory of that afternoon!

Do feel free to remind KC of this the next time you see him!

Pyrotechnics