For all of you old enough to remember it must have been like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (when Jack Nicholson took all the mentalists out for a day’s fishing) as us lot turned up to play the posh boys from the country club, but what a nice place to play cricket.
Before the toss that I lost, their skipper had already told me how strong their batting line up was, so we already knew that our tough day could get tougher. When we were asked to field, I was quite pleased. A 40-over game (“we don’t like timed games” said their skipper, ” we like to get a result), so we knew it would get even tougher. Why do I always get the tougher games as skipper?
The new tactic of bowling five-over spells worked quite well, until both their very good opening bats decided to try and smash every ball out the ground, with small boundaries on two sides. There were a few super shots in there with some good bowling, and a few just not going to hand. Their 61/0 off 10 overs soon became 150/0 off 20. We did drop a few catches in that time, which was a shame as we did field okay. The first wicket came courtesy of Dino as the opener just walked down the wicket, did not play a shot, and kept walking back to the pavilion for 101, in the 22nd over – 168/1. The second opener retired with a hamstring injury for 74* in the 25th over – 189/1. Now we knew we had them! We were into the tail and three quick wickets came, so they were soon 202/4. These included the first wickets for Stone for Chungy, who took two, and one for Ryan. We still thought they were going to get 300 at this point, but we had stopped the rot a little. Slates and Dino both took a wicket each, and Bateley took a good one-handed catch. We had the ‘Free Will’y dive (good catch, Kelvin!), and they finished on 257/6 in the end. The bowling figures were as follows: Slates, 1-51 (8 overs); Jordan, 0-31 (5 overs); Dino, 2-46 (8 overs), who was turning it lots; Glenn, 0 for 60 (7 overs); Chungy, 2 for 28 (6 overs); and Ryan, 1-28 (6 overs).
After a nice tea, we went out for the long run chase. We started very well, reaching 63/1 in the 11th over. Krish was first out for 32 (from 25 balls) with some super shots, then Ross was out LBW for 6 not long after. Chungy steadied the ship with a good 26 and built a fine partnership of 42 with Bateley chipping away as usual at the other end, before he went in in the 28th over. It went downhill a bit from there with us losing four wickets in six overs: Kelvin for 0 (LBW), me (just for a change LBW) also for 1; Glenn for 1; and Jordan for 4. Slates came in at the end and smashed a few to finish with 21*, with Bateley finishing on a hard-fought 56* (off 110 balls) and he did buy a jug. We finish on 167/7 off our 40 overs – quite a good effort really considering a few batsmen failed. A good Stone ‘draw’ though, but a loss all the same.
Off we headed to the country club bar. I was surprised we got in without a tie. Everyone stayed and, as Ryan said, what a nice place to get smashed (at cricket, not the bar). I have never enjoyed getting beat so much. We enjoyed Dave’s Jug and good chat about cricket with two new awards handed out. Performance of the Day, and taking home the Ryan Garratt picture trophy, was a tie between Bateley for his 56 and Chungy for 26 runs and 2 for 28. And, to help with the Mug’s Mug (need to get the trophy back from Geoff), is Sh*tbag of the day – we were going to award it for cricketing reasons until some banter went a little too far, so the first winner is Ross.
Off we went about 8.30pm into the night gloom, and roll on next week.
– Dartsy