There's No Magic Here

I've had sort of cricket day really. A fortunate reprieve from a day of being really rubbish at second team level - I've had a hearty dose of realism as to what my skill level is actually like - meant I found myself at my usual 3rd team standard, playing Notts and Arnold 5th XI out at Dale Field, which I shall call the Buzzard Ground from now on, for there are always Buzzards circling there keening away.

I end up crying, the Buzzards keen.

We found ourselves bowling first against a team I think we possibly slightly underestimated, at our peril for we were a very young side today - 7 junior players - which meant muggins here got to have a crack with the wind behind him with the new cherry.

As ever, wide disease was a problem. This curious ailment which happens usually once per over drives my captain and team-mates mad, and me all the madder. It comes out of nowhere, two screamingly good deliveries can happen either side of it, and like the full toss disease I also suffer from, it seems to be very difficult to cure.

I do wonder if there is a Tourette element to this, if there is sometimes a tic in my bowling. Hmmmmm.

So I did castle their opener, a 15 year old kid, with a pearl of an inswinger, my speciality delivery - when I can bowl it  - and had another catch dropped but seeing as only one catch went down today I can't grumble. More importantly, I TOOK A CATCH! This doesn't happen very often and so it was well worth celebrating excessively, running around skipping. Ah well, I'm only a young child of 44.

Pleased actually, fielded pretty well today and have done so the last few weeks. That's a hex put on me for tomorrow then.

We had better bowlers than me, especially our young mystery spinner who is a genius bowler and took 3 wickets today. He leads me as 3rd team wicket taker by a few now, and deserves it. But we shouldn't have let them get 144-8.

After tea, I searched out the magic mushrooms I'd been told were at deep mid-wicket. Sadly, they weren't magical, just fairy ring fungus. I might have batted better, or at least more entertainingly.

Batting. Oh dear. The team as a whole are struggling at this at the moment, with me being totally dreadful since my early season patch of form. But as I was batting at 10, I could enjoy the buzzards, and the bees while the early batters did well against an odd fast bowler who flung it down off a one pace run up. Must try that.

Trouble was, as I sunbathed shirtless, it all became a bit what we call "binary batting" after that. All 1s and 0s. I was one of the 0s, horribly LBW to another very slow spinner. I just feel like crying about my batting at the moment. What happened!

Buy hey, a catch. And a wicket. 20 for the season now, so I can't be all rubbish. That was one of my goals.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 01.07.16