Bedade Smashes His Way

Into Record Books

2002 Sykes Cup 1^st Round

Golcar v Hall Bower – 11 May 2002

By Peter Redding (Hudds Uni – 2007)

Hall Bower fancied their chances against Golcar when they met in the first round of the 2002 Sykes Cup, so much so that money was on the table before the match started. “The bet was £10 a player at 3/1,” as David Thorpe, ex- Golcar player and spectator that day, recalls.

Hall Bower were after all in the top section of the Huddersfield League; Golcar, on the other hand, were still in the Cedar Court Conference fighting for the right to play against teams like Hall Bower week in week out.

‘The Lilies’ knew that they would need players to put their hand up and produce special individual performances in order for them to cause an upset. Cricket is after all a team game but in one-day cricket if three or four individuals perform that is often enough to win the game. It is very rare, however, for one individual to win a game of cricket virtually by themselves, but that is exactly what happened on 11 May 2002.

Atul Bedade, who had played 13 One-Day Internationals for India, was the overseas player for Golcar that season and was known for his big hitting; his strike rate of 86.33 in One-Day Internationals showed how destructive he could be at the highest level.

2002 was his fourth season at Swallow Lane and he had been prolific in his previous three seasons making several aggressive centuries. For every great player there is always a defining moment in their career and the Hall Bower match would certainly be the one that placed Bedade’s name among the immortals in the Lilies’ history.

Golcar batted first and were in trouble early on. They lost openers David Law and John Cooper and no.3 Richard Cook before they had even registered 50. Bedade arrived at the crease with the Lilies in trouble at 41 for 3.

The great thing about Bedade was that he was never one to let the situation of the game dictate the way that he played. He played his natural game regardless of what the scoreboard said and his natural game was to be aggressive. His first six came when he was still in single figures and it wasn’t going to be the last.

The Lilies knew that they would need a big score because the pitch was playing well, Swallow Lane had been a ground that was favouring the batsman for most of the season and this was the case again. Wickets continued to fall throughout the innings, though, and Bedade was the only batsman that managed to get himself in.

The match was becoming reminiscent of the memorable England v West Indies One-Day International in 1984 when Viv Richards cut loose in similar fashion. Like Richards, Bedade was running out of partners and, like Richards, Bedade attacked more with the fall of each wicket; the situation never clouded his thinking.

The home side were reeling at 137 for 7 and looking a long way off a big total. They needed to bat for another 24 overs at this stage with only three wickets in hand. On most occasions you would look to try and bat out the overs and pick up what you could. Getting to 200 would be a good effort from this position, pick up a few boundaries towards the end, and maybe you could get 220 or 230 but what was to happen next only happens once every so often.

In a nutshell: 24 overs of absolute carnage in which no bowler was spared from the long handle.

Bedade hit 19 fours and 17 sixes in a record-breaking 234 not out. In the process he added 206 runs for the last two wickets with tailenders Craig Ruscoe and Richard Hall; the fact that they contributed 28 runs between them shows how prominent Bedade was within the two partnerships.

The stand with Hall contributed an unbroken 162. Bedade had taken Golcar from a position of serious trouble to one that was virtually unassailable; his innings was made all the more amazing by the fact that nobody else even made it into the 30s.

John Cooper was Golcar’s opening batsmen in the game, in his 35^th season at the club, and what everybody witnessed was new even to him. “I’d never seen anyone score so many.

Atul deals in sixes, big sixes, but when someone plays like that it normally only lasts a few overs. What he did was to score consistently.

He threatened a few roof tiles that day. It really was a pleasure to bat with him at the other end; he could score so quickly that he took the pressure off his batting partners”.

343 on the board meant that the bowling was a formality, so much so that the Hall Bower players “paid up the money for their bet at half-time before they’d even walked out to bat,” as David Thorpe recalls. Hall, the tail-end hero, dismissed the top five batsmen in his tally of 5 for 56, Michael Smith picked up 3 for 19 and David Law took two wickets to wrap up the tail.

All of the plaudits of course went to Bedade; it takes a very special player to single-handedly turn a hopeless situation into a winning one and that was what Bedade did that day; his score of 234 not out was, at the time, a new Sykes Cup record.

He hit the ball over the ropes for fun during his time at Golcar and nobody will ever forget the ease with which he did it on 11 May 2002.

MATCH SCORECARD

Golcar 4 6

D. Law b S. Jones 6 1 0

J. Cooper b A. Gregory 8 1 0

R. Cook c and b S. Jones 8 2 0

J. Smith (capt) c H. Willerton b A. Gregory 20 4 0

A. Bedade Not Out 234 19 17

C. Fawcett c D. Moss b H. Willerton 23 4 1

M. Illingworth (wkt) Run Out 0 0 0

J. Charlton lbw b H. Willerton 0 0 0

C. Ruscoe c S. Jones b A. Gregory 11 2 0

R. Hall Not Out 17 3 0

Extras (nb 4, w 4, lb 8) 16

TOTAL (for 8 Wkts, 50 overs) 343

Hall Bower Bowling Figures

O M R W

A. Gregory 20 2 92 3

S. Jones 17 0 134 2

A. Peaker 7 0 64 0

R. Haider 2 1 18 0

H. Willerton 4 0 27 2

Hall Bower 4 6

M. Wimpenny lbw b R. Hall 11 2 0

B. Balicki b R. Hall 10 1 0

H. Willerton (capt) c A. Bedade b R. Hall 30 2 0

S. Jones c A. Bedade b R. Hall 6 0 0

R. Evans (wkt)              b R Hall                           34        3   1

T. Sykes Not Out 44 8 0

A. Gregory b M. Smith 0 0 0

R. Haider lbw b. M. Smith 1 0 0

C. Senior st M. Illingworth b M. Smith 0 0 0

O. Moss c C. Ruscoe b D. Law 0 0 0

A. Peaker b D. Law 2 0 0

Extras (nb 4, w 1, b 7, lb 9) 21

TOTAL (all out, 37.3 overs) 159

Golcar Bowling Figures

O M R W

C. Ruscoe 6 1 16 0

R. Hall 16 4 56 5

J. Smith 5 0 23 0

M. Smith 6 1 19 3

D. Law 2.3 0 5 2

C. Fawcett 2 0 21 0

Result

Golcar won by 184 runs