Nearly Stuffing it up

 Sunday saw the visit of Attenborough to our ground - the Nottingham suburb rather than the naturalist - and they had got me in a quandary before the match had even started.

They had told me earlier in the week that they were bringing a side with four adults, and seven juniors. On paper, we had quite a strong side, and so I had been working out in my mind how I was going to approach this to ensure a decent contest.

Would I only be able to use slower bowlers?

Would I have to tell our bats to go easy on any very miniture bowlers? 

If we batted first, would I have to declare rather than let our batters go mad and post 300 plus?

When the opponents turned up, may of them barely taller than the stumps, these thoughts returned. As it turned out most of them were moot, as they won the toss and batted first on a blisteringly hot and humid day. 

I opened the bowling with what I would thing of as being medium intensity medium pacers, firstly to see how well the youngsters were going to handle the bowling, and also because our two quickest bowlers were late and we only had nine fielders to start with.

Stellar capataincy and organisation from me there. 

One our openers had a couple of early wickets caught at mid off and in the covers, and then ran a very young lad out off his fingertips, an appeal I immediately and generously withdrew, thinking myself a very sporing captain. "No little kid is getting run out like that in a Sunday game on my watch" I thought smugly. 

Of course, he turned out to be their best bat, and very competently spanked boundaries, leading me to realise I could turn the bowling up a bit, with some first and second team bowling that prised out a couple of wickets with some lovely left arm swing in the heavy air, pregnant with a thunderstorm that never happened. 

I even brought myself on, and found that remembering to really keep my left arm high and active meant that I could bowl accurately and beat the bat, even if I was barely turning the ball. Got a wicket with a short ball dollied to mid wicket, before castling a young'un in my 5th over.

Five overs one maiden, two for fifteen. I quit while the going was good.

Now, there was a different kind of problem. I had managed the game well, getting different and unusual bowlers on, trying to give everyone a go, but we were still taking too many wickets and they weren't scoring enough runs. In a friendly, you don't want to kill the game, you want the opponents to get a reasonable score so it gives your batters a chance to have a reasonable game. They were about 70 for 7 at this point.

So, I allowed the chairman and third team captain to swap the keepers gloves with the first team captain - hilariously, I was captaining captains - so he could bowl some sort of googly variant that he only "unleashes" on Sundays, and brought on a leggie at the other end just as a chunkily built Kiwi came out to bat for Attenborough.

He proceeded to wallop some big old sixes, but the leg spinner was taking wickets when he wasn't batting, and after they had got to 128, I decided enough was enough and decided to bring back the opening bowler, who promptly took one ball to shut down their innings. 

Now, with our batting line up, we ought to have chased that total down fairly easily against a young bowling attack, and indeed I wasn't too worried about our batting line up and even though we had the first team opener in the side who had taken a wicket earlier on, I sent out the first and second team opening bowlers, who both normally bat a number 10 in their league sides to give them a chance to score some runs.

Right decision too, as they made it to 60 without loss with some good strokeplay, as ever making me completely envious of anyone who has any kind of batting ability whatsoever. However, in the twelfth over right on the stroke of drinks, one of them looped a catch up.

I now took a stint at square leg, and watched as our team seemed marooned in the 60s for what seemed like ten overs while losing wickets. Number three lobbed up a caught and bowled, number four was lbw off the bottom of his bat and the third team captain looked purposeful before spooning up a caught and bowled. 

So, umpiring stint over, back into the shade of the pavilion but wickets continued to fall, however at least a few more boundaries were being hit. For our first team captain and chief ship steadier was still out there after a sticky start as the wicket, which had been a belter most of the match, began to slow up and misbehave a little bit after it had about 600 runs scored on it over the weekend. 

We crept nearer the total, wickets still fell. But thanks to the ship steadier, we just got over the line 8 wickets down, with the unwelcome sight of me padded up and waiting to bat on the pavilion steps. 

Still, both teams got a lot out the game, players got a chance to do things they don't normally do, and our Sunday side remains unbeaten.

Good day all round really!

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.06.23