A Fierce Crack on the Skull

Don't worry, not for me though...

Today we were at Dale Field, Collingham, to play host to Fiskerton and Thurgarton. I'd cunningly arranged a flypast by a Lancaster bomber to commemorate our appearance, and it helped our batting. What had might have potentially seemed a week line up actually got to 135 for 6 off 40 overs, a competitive score with our strong bowling attack, with our juniors at the end having a really strong game.

I never batted. Instead I operated the electronic scoreboard like a pro (ha!) and sketched the ground. Nature wise, we had a great show from kestrels, buzzards, a sparrowhawk, and a large flock of adult and junior wagtails peep-peeping around the boundary.

The most noticeable bird, as ever, were the swallows, unerringly flying between fielders, twittering, skimming the ground to feed, riding the breeze in aerobatic splendour. Now the swifts are gone they are the best flyers around, and a far nicer sight than the dead hedgehog I found next to the practice nets.

Glory be.

So, I was allowed to open the bowling today, and after a ropey start where I was adjusting to my modified action I bowled with decent pace and swing, and no bloody luck as usual. Two catches went down, one of them off my own bowling, AAARGGGGH the nightmare, but we were in the game right the way through, helped by an awful incident where our bullet arm pro fast bowler threw the ball in from the boundary, seemingly innocuously.

Instead, it took a nasty bounce and kicked up and smashed into the cheekbone of the opposing batsman with a sound like rifle shot. He went down with a yell, and we thought we had something really serious on our hands. We called an ambulance, but as it turned out he was driven to A and E by a friend after he was able to walk off the ground.

At the very least, he will have a huge black eye.

We worked and worked and worked, but couldn't dislodge a couple of key batsman, and went down by 5 wickets in the second last over.

So close!!! AAARRRGGGHHH again!

Si