Never Mind the Personal Disaster, We Won!

I have had a hell of a week, and the reason for this has been cricket. 

I had previously arranged an away game; that was cancelled by the opposition on Monday. I then arrange a home game with another team, which then also had to be cancelled for ground reasons. I then arranged another away fixture, but a lot of our players had then made other plans, and so since Wednesday I have been trying to put a team together for me to captain. 

Finally got a side together yesterday night, and so today we headed out to Chilwell, a club playing at a public park with a wicket that "does a bit" to use the standard parlance. Our side included a dad playing with his sun, a husband playing with his wife, a hopeless injured cripple - me - and others. 

Knowing were a bit light in decent bowling - because of me - I desperately wanted to win the toss so we could bat first and avoid what I thought would be the proverbial leather-chase for forty overs. 

My dears looked to be confirmed when the opening bats made a good start against our opening bowlers, not helped me by me throwing myself to the floor rather than attempting a catch to a shot whacked hard at my head as I never saw it our of a house-brick background until it was about 3 metres from my face.  

Another boundary an over or two later was rather more my fault however. It was, as we say, "a refusal". 

Our change bowlers however, lower paces being better suited to the wicket, did much better, and indeed Mr Chairman took 4 wickets with some excellent bowling so we pegged Chilwell back to about 125 for 5 after 25 or so overs. The good bowlers were now bowled out however, which meant it was me with my knackers yard ankle had to bowl a few overs before the openers came back, and they were frankly awful.

I did ok last week, being accurate if with no pace, but today I was bowling full tosses and half trackers, all of which were obliterated to the boundary. The decent balls I bowled did cause problems; I shaved the stumps a couple of times and a had a few nicked through the slips, but not enough.

I felt resigned, it was awful. I did take a wicket, but that was with a rotten long hop. 

Luckily it didn't have to last too long, and I got the opening bowlers back on to restrict Chilwell to 205 for 9.

Disappointing, but hardly disastrous, I thought.

After tea - nothing in my case -  we went out to bat and made a so so start, with the erratic bounce on the wicket causing problems. But our two young lads went in and made a great fist of things, one of them making a great 50 in good time. Run rate was never a problem, but wickets were, Mr Chairman not able to replicate his fine efforts with the ball with the bat. A good partnership between our number 5 - a mighty hitter - and our number 7 followed, but when the latter was LBW it was generally agreed the match was over, as our number 8 was myself and we still needed about 60. I survived my first ball, which was a wide - I shall consider this "getting off the mark", and proceeded to look down to remark my guard at the crease. 

I looked up to see the ball already heading towards me. It popped up off the wicket, bobbled off my splice and was taken at cover. 

I felt utterly hopeless.

The good news was that this enabled our number 9 to come in, the last of our competent batsman, and husband of our number 10. Really he should have batted above me, but he had bowled a full stint and I rather liked the idea of a husband and wife batting together.

Mike Brearley himself could have have come up with a better tactic. 

He batted really well, and we edged closer and closer to the target. However, he was castled by one that kept low with only 7 left to win and we all thought that was it, as his wife had never played proper cricket before, and the number 11 wasn't a regular player either.

However, she kept out three deliveries, amid nail-biting tension, and our number 5 monstered two big 4s to take us to victory by two wickets. 

Always restrained, I jumped around the boundary edge yelling "GET IT. GET IN!!!"

The Chilwell boys, a nice bunch took it well, although they were a bit disappointed. Truth was, it had been a cracking game of cricket for both sides.

But just a little bit better for us.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 01.05.22