An end-of-season affair like no other, but one final, farcical memory for Rikki Clarke

NICK FRIEND AT THE KIA OVAL: At 4.05pm, it happened. Wicketkeeper Chris Cooke, the bowler. Opening bowler Michael Hogan, the wicketkeeper. The first time since 2016 that all 11 players have bowled in a County Championship innings. Ollie Pope made 274

Kia Oval (final day of four): Glamorgan 672-6 dec, Surrey 722-4 - match drawn

Scorecard

In an interview with The Cricketer last week, James Bracey described cricket as “a game where you probably achieve what you want to achieve about 10 or 15 per cent of the time” – a gloriously apt image upon which Rikki Clarke will be able to reflect in the years to come as he reimagines the final throes of a tremendous career.

One last five-wicket haul perhaps? An eighteenth first-class century maybe? The chance to dust off the county circuit’s best hands one final time for an exhibition in slip-catching?

Or none of the above. How about 177 overs in the field, Rikki? “Everyone says you’ll regret it, but at this moment in time I don’t at all,” he told me last Friday as part of an interview about his retirement to be published this weekend. We didn’t follow up our conversation today, but one suspects that events of the last week are unlikely to have altered that viewpoint.

For 17 overs across Tuesday and Wednesday, he ran in without reward on a pitch termed quite beautifully by Jamie Smith – yesterday’s centurion – as “the least responsive surface that I have ever played on”. And then, he watched, watched and watched some more, before striding out to bat just after tea to be greeted by a guard of honour. Surrey – the morning after their end-of-season awards – batted, batted and batted some more, a perfectly reasonable response to Glamorgan’s approach in the first two days, which was to bat, bat and bat some more.

In the first three days’ play, umpire Nigel Llong didn’t have an appeal at his end; he wasn’t on the beach – to borrow from footballing parlance – but whenever there was a leg-bye, he patted his thigh with the appropriate measure of enthusiasm for a man slowly melting in the September sunshine. When Hashim Amla missed a sweep shot off Callum Taylor, who had bowled 41 overs without reward, Llong was finally called into action, 1,831 balls into proceedings. He shook his head, and the game moved on – but not forward. Later in the same session, he was struck on the shin by a straight drive that deflected off the stumps.

I came here on a day off, desperate for one last glimpse of County Championship cricket before its proprietors put it away for the cold, hard winter, and left thoroughly, farcically entertained.

40-year-old opening bowler Michael Hogan has someone's keeping pads on. Wicketkeeper Chris Cooke has the ball in his hands. Glamorgan are about to use an 11th bowler. YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS

— Nick Friend (@NickFriend1) September 24, 2021

When both teams started the season with a one-in-eighteen chance of title glory – as has been recycled nationwide across the last four months among the promoters of the three-tier system – this presumably wasn’t quite what they had in mind for its final curtain. Michael Hogan spent a day in the field without bowling a ball. The first sign of the drinks-running twelfth man came 15 minutes into play. Eddie Byrom collected his first two wickets as a professional cricketer with his developing – at this stage, optimistic – leg-breaks.

Ollie Pope went to his fourth first-class double century, having earlier gone to his eighth Oval hundred with five overthrows that would sooner have had the red carpet rolled out for them than been backed up. Kiran Carlson – moustachioed and armed with piercing blue eyes – came into the attack in search of his first wicket of any kind since 2016, at a stage in his career when he had recently become the youngest player ever in English cricket to own a first-class hundred and five-wicket haul. For what it’s worth, he was far better than tenth-bowler material, and he added the not-insignificant scalp of Amla, doubling his tally for the last 1,844 days.

It meant that Chris Cooke – Glamorgan’s captain and, more problematically, wicketkeeper – was the only man on the field yet to turn his arm over. Would he or wouldn’t he? Once Pope was dismissed when Surrey’s all-time record score – 357 by Bobby Abel – was within reach, whether Cooke would bowl became the one remaining subject for discussion.

Royal London Cup final: A day for Glamorgan, for Michael Hogan and for a team of new heroes

Even Hamish Rutherford, a veteran of 114 wicketless red-ball matches, had a go, delivering his left-arm orthodox from over the wicket with a field that didn’t suggest an enormous degree of faith. According to Cricket Archive, Cooke’s current wicket list includes one against Pontarddulais seven years ago in the SWALEC Premier Cricket League Division One, preceded by another in 2013 in a T20 exhibition between a collection of Glamorgan Legends.

In all, just 10 wickets fell in the match at a cost of 1,394 runs. The ball after Pope’s overthrows – and if there is a man who needs a helping hand on this ground, it is not him – Glamorgan contrived to drop Amla at slip, handing the great South African his fourth life after three missed chances on Thursday. On a pitch as amusingly lifeless as this, that was a bold strategy.

Pope, by the way, brought his Oval average back above 100 after a few months back in double figures but fell one run short of keeping it there, instead going into the winter sat on 99.94, giving credence to a nickname as the Oval Bradman. Captaining in the County Championship for the first time, he passed his highest first-class score. It is easy to joke about a rubber quite so dead as this, but it still requires a remarkable power of concentration to do as Pope does, almost as a routine.

^{Jamie Smith was the big winner at Surrey's end-of-season awards evening on Thursday evening}

Eventually, however, even he was not immune to the farce, giving Rutherford – a contemporary of Daniel Vettori – his maiden first-class wicket 13 years after he started. He had fallen for 36 on the first morning of this match, when things were relatively normal. Four evenings later, that remained the lowest score for a dismissed batter.

This had all the vague hallmarks of the last day at school, where you could wear whatever you wanted and the teachers would get you watching the same 50 minutes of Gladiator for the fifth year in a row. There is a particular moment in a game of Monopoly, where every participant remembers what a long, tedious drag it has been to that point and – stopping short of tipping up the board – they begin engaging in radical, risible transactions to speed up its conclusion. This only sped up once the captains shook hands on a draw at 4.20pm, but neither skipper could be accused of a lack of imagination.

At one stage, Pope drove back at Dan Douthwaite, knocking over the allrounder in his follow-through. At another juncture, Amla would have been run out had the bowler not missed the stumps as he went to whip off the bails. “Get on with it,” came a lone shout from the crowd which, if nothing else, has seen its fair share of runs.

By the end, it was village fare, but very gloriously so. It didn’t say a great deal for the pitch: both teams made the third-highest scores in their history. For Surrey, it was their biggest since 1909.

Warwickshire win County Championship after thrilling final round

Just before the players re-emerged for the final session of this never-ending summer, Cooke teased the remaining assemblage of spectators by bowling into the mitt of one of Glamorgan’s support staff, while Hogan – 40 years old, well upwards of six feet tall – practised his wicketkeeping.

At 4.05pm, they made it happen. Cooke, the bowler; Hogan, the keeper. The first time since 2016 that all 11 players have bowled in a County Championship innings. You could pinpoint the moment at which the occasion dangled on the edge of disrepute – a full toss aimed at Ben Foakes’ hip as Cooke warmed up his arm. After all, this was the first time ever that he has bowled in a professional game.

But on the final day of a long season – as Warwickshire fought for the title – Surrey and Glamorgan were serving up their own kind of finish. Match drawn: five points each. Clarke, not out at the end, with a second guard of honour. And when he looks back on it all, that memory – with a tear in his eye, no doubt – will soon outweigh the finer details of a strange old day.