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Ton Up Hodson

Ton Up Hodson

Reigate Priory Cricket Club13 Jun 2017 - 21:40
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Reigate Priory’s opening fast medium bowler Will Hodson celebrated his 100th game with the Llamas on Saturday

Paul Bridge writes...

Reigate Priory’s opening fast medium bowler Will Hodson celebrated his 100th game with the Llamas on Saturday at Graburn Way much as he has done in the other 99 games – wholeheartedly, with little flamboyance but with deadly intent.
In over a thousand overs bowled since his debut at Park Lane in May 2011 Hodson has taken 176 wickets in league cricket at an average of 21.3 and with an economy rate of 3.65. Each of his three captains – Chris Murtagh, Neil Saker and Luke Beaven – has used him as a ‘go to’ bowler, the man you turn to when all else has failed.
Reigate’s cricket supporters will remember his debut game in May 2011, when Paul Stirling, then of Sunbury and now of Middlesex and Ireland, took his bowling apart with a six into the Blue Anchor pub and several other 6’s into gardens neighbouring the Park Lane ground. His debut figures were 6 overs for 60 runs with no maidens and no wickets.
This has never happened since. One year later – 2012 – he was top wicket-taker in the league with 45 wickets at an average of 13.02 apiece and a best bowling of 8-30 against Weybridge, a year in which he had a total of four 5-wicket hauls.
He took 7-64 against Beddington in 2015 and each year since his annus mirabilis in 2012 he’s been a leading wicket-taker at the Priory.
Hoddo, as he’s called, is metronomic. Shut your eyes and you can see his measured loping run-up to the wicket from the Blue Anchor End dropping the ball on a length on a spot on the off stump, just as Alec Bedser said it had to be done.
Hodson is, of course, a Yorkshireman, and while his record of 176 wickets at the Priory places him as the eighth highest 1st XI wicket-taker at the club since the Packham records began in 1979, he also took some 120 wickets for Castleford in the Yorkshire Premier league between 2006 and 2011, when he came south, with a best bowling of 8-38 in 2010.
Hodson, now the number 11 batsman in the Priory side, still makes an impact with the bat. His invaluable 10 not out against Sunbury earlier this season in an unbroken 10th wicket partnership of 23 with Richard Stevenson won the game for the Priory.
No-one who saw Hodson’s magnificent 36 not out in 18 balls against Ashtead in August 2011, with one 6 and four 4’s will ever forget it. That innings was a game-winner, too.
His highest score ‘up north’ was his 81 not out batting at number five against Hull in May 2008
But Hodson, despite these batting successes, is primarily a bowler and Reigate Priory supporters look for his career to continue unabated with the Llamas. Without question he’s one of the finest opening bowlers the club has had.

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